From The Telegraph:
At least 2.6million households now have microchips in their bins which can be used to weigh the amount of waste used. Information collected by the microchips, which electronically measure the weight of rubbish in bins, is meant to be used to educate households about cutting waste. But critics fear the chips will make it easy for the Government to resurrect plans for a £50 pay-as-you-throw tax on millions of families...
I just don't get it. Ignoring the ludicrous Landfill Tax (which is a tax on councils, but income for central government), the total cost of collecting household rubbish is only a couple of billion pounds a year (household rubbish is only about a third of all waste by volume), maybe a hundred pounds per household.
Tracking down and somehow taxing everything that people throw away is nigh impossible, but as (a) it only seems fair to pay for refuse collection via user charges on volume, and (b) the amount of rubbish you throw away is broadly proportional to the amount of stuff that you buy, why not just earmark a very small fraction of the tens of billions in VAT collected from the sale of new goods as the payment towards refuse collection, meaning that refuse collection can continue to be 'free at point of use'?
Anyways, the punchline is right at the end of the article:
A spokesman for the Local Government Association, which represents councils, added: "Microchips simply identify the house to which a bin belongs... If an elderly resident needs help getting their bin collected and returned, a microchip quickly flags it up to the refuse collector, saving time and money."
Do they seriously intend to kit out every bin man (or bin woman) with a hand-held scanner to walk up the garden path, read the chip in every bin that was not placed within the prescribed number of centimetres of the pavement, and, if that bin is not shown as registered to an elderly or disabled person, walk back down the garden path sans bin? That's one heck of a snub to the physically-fit-but-forgetful crowd, and hardly saves 'time and money', does it?
Now, I know that some people proudly mark their own wheelie bin with their house number, but if its the elderly and disabled we're worried about, why not give them big yellow stickers to put on their bins (marked with the house number) and have done with it? OK, this idea needs a bit of work, as some elderly people might be nervous of advertising the fact to possible burglars, but hey. Alternatively, they could give the driver of the bin lorry a list of such houses or something - worth a fortune down the pub, but they still could collate these lists themselves by scanning the microchips, so that's not really an argument against?
Nope - it was ridicule
1 hour ago
7 comments:
An incisive analysis by http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2529&Itemid=81.
I removed my chip when they first came out.
Just sorted my own business cardboard.
Used to have to sort it by grade,flat pack it, remove all tape and staples and must fit within a normal sized wheelie bin, lid firmly closed or would be refused.
I used to bung the bin man a £10 to take the extra.
Now I pay a private collector £5 a fortnight and they take as much as I have in any manner I choose to give it to them.
Done the council bin man out of his cut though.
I'm with your VAT hypothecation method. That way when some scrote fly tips another filthy mattress in one of my field gateways or hedgerows, the service will exist, and be paid for, to come and get the it. And you could make it refundable - if you take x kg of waste to the council tip, you get £y in refunded tax. That way people would be scouring the countryside for rubbish. Give it a value and it will be sorted.
Just like scrap cars were a few years ago - I used to get abandoned/burnout cars in field gateways regularly a few years back. Then scrap prices went through the roof, and the market kicked in, no more abandoned cars. Problem solved.
But that would reduce the need for all manner of govt employed staff to organise, operate and police the current system. Can't have that can we? People doing things voluntarily, guided by market forces? Perish the thought!
"Ignoring the ludicrous Landfill Tax (which is a tax on councils, but income for central government)"
It's also a tax on business, as they have dispose of all their waste into a skip and the cost of skip is increased by the landfill tax. Pre-landfill tax, you paid so much per skip. Now you pay so much for the skip and the first ton or so and then so much a ton after that.
"but as (a) it only seems fair to pay for refuse collection via user charges on volume..."
MW, this is only fair if the charge is removed from the annual council tax bill and charged separately. I somehow don't think it will be.
HC, you pay the charge when you buy the goods, no need for any further charges after that.
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