fly tippers - when's open season?

[Martin]

living in a narrow lane (single carriageway with passing spaces) with several farm gates, it is nothing unusual to find the gateways blocked with flytipped rubbish, but last night, they plumbed the depths - according to the police in attendance, they're now doing "running tips" - just drive down a lane, up with the back whilst driving, leaving the whole load in the road.........my wife came across them clearing it up this morning, after some poor hapless motorist had ploughed into it!

[kenboak]

Martin,

We have the same problem in North east Surrey. I wrote to the Surrey Mirror (local rag) a few years ago.

It is a fact that we are rapidly running out of holes in the ground to dump last years possessions.

I spoke to the foreman at the local recycling depot in Earlswood. On a bank holiday they fill 70 of the big yellow super-skips. That's a lot of rubbish, and most of it could be recycled or used to produce renewable power.

They had the option to build an incinerator here, and make heat and power with the East Surrey Hospital as principle customer. Incinerator is a dirty word round these parts and so everything has to be landfilled.

As a consequence, the council had to pay to dump their waste and so tried to cut back their waste volume by banning or charging for certain waste materials. As a result - blatant fly tipping.

The same happened in the early 1990s when they started charging for vehicle disposal - as a result the old cars were abanndonned by the roadside, burnt out and cost the council a fortune to have them put out by the fire brigade and then removed.

If you consider the amount that we have to pay in council tax, you would think that local governments could employ people that can see "the big picture" for a change and not just see how they can line their own pockets.

They are now going to reduce the bin collection toevery 2 weeks. How much does it really cost to have a bin emptied once a week? Surely the £1300 I pay a year in "polltax" should cover 50 collections a year. It'snot the Polish bin men that cost much, it' the Waste Management firms Executives who are on 40K a year.

Sorry, but your tale touched a raw nerve. Rant over.



Ken

[Martin]

know the feeling - £160 a month for what? - a wheelie bin emptied once a week..........that's IT!
The other £159 goes to giving employment to the otherwise unemployable - local civil servants, who are neither civil nor servile!
My nerves are pretty raw too!

[Muddypause]

Gad I hate these misery-fests. I guess I should just leave you to it and ignore this thread.

But consider: roads, schools, police, parks, libraries, leisure services, cemetaries, social housing, pest control, road sweeping, planning and building control, allotments, social services, dog wardens, drains and sewers, electoral roles, environmental health, graffiti removal, food safety inspectors, community grants, museums and archives, playschemes, buses, street lights, and a dozen other things I can't think of right now, all have to be paid for, administered or funded by the council. The idea that they just deal with bins is absurdly off the mark. The suggestion that all those people are just wasters is utterly reprehensible.

We're going to fortnightly collections here, too. The fact that we all now have two bins (residual waste and recycling) means that there are twice as many collections to do. Collecting alternately on a fortnight basis means that the costs are only staying level - just as much waste is being dealt with on a weekly basis, and you will still get a bin emptied each week; simple maths shows that this is not a penny pinching exercise.

As to abondoned cars, the problem is now solved - they all get dumped down our road.

It always amazes me that when you go for a walk in the coutryside, two miles from the nearest road you will always find an old washing machine. What is the thinking of those people? - "We could take it to the corporation dump for free, or we could risk hernias and slipped disks struggling out to some inaccessible part of the countryside and just leave it there". It must have been a tough choice for them.

As for fly tipping - I don't know what the answer is. I think it is probably right that people should pay to dispose of their waste, especially commecial waste, but it seems inevitable that flytipping will result. Sounds like a good reason to always carry your camera with you, Martin.

[ina]

A little hint for fly tippers - deposit your stuff on a farmer's land. Then he has to pay for removal, not the council.

It was a serious problem when I lived on a farm near Glasgow - we could have furnished an entire flat most weeks with what they left down the track. Three piece suit? Just state your prefererred colour, and we surely could have found something suitable within a month or so. Strangely enough it's not a problem (yet) where I am now - obviously too far away from a major urban centre.

[Martin]

I do take Muddy's point that it does go for other things too - but far too much is utterly wasted - I see profligate waste by local authorities of our money - and yet offer few real services in return - lots of small minded bureaucrats with bottomless pits of our money to fritter away on "schemes and initiatives".... our local authority specialises in stupid things like £2 million community centres that noone wants, that stand virtually completely unused a few years later!