Tory trash talk fails to halt bin bugging plans

The UK government has green-lighted microchip wheelie bin pilot schemes despite one council calling for the technology to be scrapped because it “failed to work” under test conditions. In 2002 Tory-controlled South Norfolk Council was the first in England to use the microchipped bins, which have been designed to allow …

[Jamie]

Another example of guilty until proven innocent

How can the council prove that the rubbish in my bin is mine as the lid is not locked so anyone can open the bin. Then the next big issue is that I live in a row with 5 other houses and all our bins go out for collection in the same little area. The bin I take in Thursday this week may not be the bin I take in Thursday next week.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I for one welcome...

...our wheelie-bugging cyber-bin overlords..."

Well, someone had to say it...

Jobsy, 'cause he's been selling chips attached to garbage for decades...

(and AC so the Mac-istas can't find me :P )

[Anonymous Coward]

lol

So what if it doesn't work, the NeoLabory party have no interest in it working just how many chums pockets they can fill.

ID cards won't work sides filling pockets, NHS It plans don't work, sides filling folks pockets, the list of unworkable or illegal things the NeoLabory party have done is longer then an unraveled roll of andrex, but hey who cares? The world is gonna sink, terrorists are eating babies, and men who live in basements are prowling about just waiting for a chance to commit a sex crime.

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd combination

"Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)"

That's as bad as the US ATF, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

Mine's the one with the pint of whiskey, pack of smokes (fags for you Brits), and shoulder holster sewed into the lining.

[Elmer Phud]

Must remember to not put the bin out

I'm lucky I can keep my bin at the back of the house -- out of the way of the possibility of fly tipping.

Will they get suspicious if the bin doesn't get emptied?

Is it cheaper to drive my rubbish to the local dump instead?

Will young whippersnappers go round leaving bins open when it's pouring with rain?

[Bryn Evans]

A new meaning to Moonlighting?

Cue the emergance of the new moonlighter - Filling up the neighbours bin

with your rubbish.

Only to find that the neighbours have swapped their BinChip with yours !

Only a govment that is so expert in IT could think of this.

[Tim]

Use your neighbours bin!

Does using your neighbour's bin count as fly tipping? can i put a lock on my bin to stop my neighbour putting 3 hundred weight of rubble in it?

It would be nice to have better recycling (i have three bins at the moment, normal waste, garden waste and paper). I dont use the paper one much as i do everything online, the garden waste one gets used a couple of times a year, so i have 3 bins and use only one. now if i had a glass and plastic one, that would be used every week!

At least it should even out the unfair council tax though. I pay the same as my neighbour with 10 kids, so they will kop it wth any waste charges.

[Anonymous Coward]

Chip and bin?

I'll get me coat.

[John Robson]

And they measure the amount recycled by?

The council round here are too inept at recycling. The only things they take are my non recyclable rubbish and my garden waste (thank goodness they've got around to doing that - I generate quite a load of grass trimmings and have much privet hedge, generating piles of trimmings several times a year).

Kitchen waste now please - If other councils can manage high temperature composting (enabling all kitchen waste, including cooked meat and bones) to be recycled I don't see why they all can't.

All the recyclables go to the local tip because the council won't collect half of it, and only supply tiny little red boxes, not nearly enough space for a fortnightly collection.

The trip to the tip is combined with a shopping trip, adding perhaps 300 yards and 3 minutes to the journey.

The newly refurbished tip is a joy to use, and there is always someone there to help if you have any awkward items.

So my recycling rate according to the council - 0%

My real rate - Don't know. Just done some back of envelope calculations and I reckon its 50% ish

[Beelzeebub]

Dumping

Next we will have to pay to use the lav, but if they try to chip me or my bog, I'll see them all here.

Phew, it's hot, no coat needed.

[Liam]

ffs... anyone can see the massive problems this will cause...

1) i have to put my bins out at 7:45 am, before i go to work. the bins then sit there an hour or so before the bin men come. any bastard can stick whatever they like in my bin and i know nothing about it!

2) i recycle a lot so my black bin hardly ever goes out. will they be able to get an average of my yearly tippage? how will they take into account such things?

3) whats to stop someone just throwing litter into my bin whilst unattended? it could even be none-malicious but i can get fined for it!

4) whats to stop the always useless binmen from dumping their shit into our bins?

5) what if its pissing down with rain, my house is about 10 mins walk from a school, i can see the kids flipping back all the bin lids to let them fill with water so we all get screwed...

6) its hard to be annoyed with people who do not recycle after finding my council (Lincoln) wasnt recycling lots and was, in fact, dumping it. WE then get fined by the GOV through council tax hikes due to this council's shite behaviour!

this is just a farce! what next? scanning our sewage to see if we have been smoking 'killer' skunk or 'binge drinking' (when i was younger we had binge drinking - it was the fucking weekend!)

so, the question is.... do all politics degress come with a lobotomy?

ahhh fuck the black choppers!

[Marc Savage]

Huh ?

I thought Gordan promised not to roll this out ?

Personally if they roll out microchipped bins in my area I will in the spirit of being pissed off remove the chips and jump up and down on them.

We already suffer in my area with kids opening the bin lids and then they fill with water.

Also your bins end up with other peoples rubbish in them.

If they do this a V style march on London will be called for.

[ImaGnuber]

Pubs next

What an amazing country - everything is so wonderful that the gov can turn its attention to something like this. I think I'll have to move there (rotfl). A safe bet is that there will soon be an ever-increasing charge by weight for removal.

I guess you can also look forward to chipped toilets and urinals? Mandatory in pubs and able to read the chips in your ID cards so beer drinkers can be taxed twice (coming and going).

Amazing.

[Solomon Grundy]

@Odd combination

It's actually BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) aka Lords of All the Fun Stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Kill the Chip

As it's probably just a standard RFID chip then just kill it with a microwave or some other suitable device depending on where the chip is.

Get a cheapo RFID scanner just to ensure it is dead and then just throw whatever you like.

If the council complain, tell them that you don't know what happened - blame it on an electrical storm if you like and that you'd love them to replace the bin (at *their* expense).

Then go round and randomly blast a few other bins near you, wait for the council to replace these bins.

With the cost of wheelie-bins, I can't see this making any money at all!

[Henny]

I wonder

what would happen if you collected all the chips from all the bins on one road, and put them into one bin just in time for the collection...

Paris? 'Cos she's as clueless as our Government seem to be....

[Anonymous Coward]

Waste

I don't bother with bins. I have a large tank of helium, a box of balloons and some string. When I have some waste I tie it to a balloon and release it out my window.

[Anonymous Coward]

Another law...

Obviously nobody has noticed the other law that our beloved dictators have sneaked in allowing councils to insist that all such bins are locked shut. Failure to comply will bring the usual prison sentence, fines, etc while the real criminals (rapists, murderers, politicians, etc) get off scott free because they're too much trouble to prosecute and not profitable enough.

The alternative plan, of course, is to find the addresses of your local councillors and just dump your rubbish in their gardens - taking care to remove all addressed items first, of course.

[Gilbert Wham]

What we need

Is a body with veto powers, whose job it is to go round and inspect our various organs of government and then advise them, 'just fucking stop it, OK?'

[Michael]

@ Kill the Chip

All they'll do is make it your responsibility to ensure your bin and its sensor are secure. If it breaks, they'll just charge you an arbitrarily high figure until you get a new one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oi! Councils, NO!

If this starts up in my area I'm going to turn uban gorrila on them.

How about dumping as much rubbish as I can in the gardens of high ranking members of the council? Not my own rubbish mind, no point in making is easy for them to trace me ;)

AC because they could be watching me right now...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gordon promised not to roll it out...

But when does that man ever keep his promises?

[Wonderkid]

Why no alternative before punishing people?

Why doesn't the government offer an alternative to over use of packaging BEFORE stressing people out with these fruitless fascist efforts?

[The Cube]

Simple solution

These chips are easy to interrogate and clone, the hardware is cheap and the software readily available. What you do is;

1) Pull / drill out the chip module in your bin

2) Use a hand held reader to read the bin RFID of the nearest MP who voted for 42 days detention

3) program said ID into the new, read-write chip in your bin (a couple of quid on eBay)

4) post the ID # on the Internet so lots of other people can also bill their rubbish to those who really should pay

[Christoph]

Has this lot got one brani cell between them all?

Re the problems of dumping in other bins as listed above, of course it's not *their* fault when neighbours get into screaming arguments about who dumped what in whose bin. Nothing to do with them making it inevitable that this will happen.

My local lot only partly empty the recycling bin each week - they leave a whole lot at the bottom. Presumably I will get charged twice for this as it's weighed again the next week.

Am I now going to be charged for throwing away all the advertising junk that gets dumped through my letterbox. INCLUDING THE "NEWLETTER" THAT THE COUNCIL THEMSELVES SHOVES THROUGH THE DOOR (which is simply a bragsheet for them to boast how wonderful they are and actually reveal yet again their incompetence).

Oh well, I'll just save the junk up and dump it in the forest every so often. I think I'll buy a red VW microbus and fill it with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction.

[Steve Liddle]

just burn it

Bedfordshire council have some plot of land that is going to be used for incinerators, 10% used, so space for another 9 incinerator units.....

Guess they will be importing rubbish from london as per usual ?

Next door neighbours are poles, they have lots of rubbish, if it ends up in my bin, it will get dumped on the road

[Dave]

Bin Scales

I think I'd invest in a suitable set of scales so I could weight the bin when I put it out, then dispute any difference if the council claimed it weighed more. And that's after I'd invested in something to zap RFID chips. I can see a market for such a device, with the RFID technology becomine ever more prevalent.

[Anonymous Coward]

A big chuckle

In the village I moved to in France some time ago we had a a small problem - - just over half the village were given wheelie bins and were told they would only have a collection TWICE a week the remainder of us in the old part still get our THREE times a week collection because we have common bins and they can only get a small pick-up up the roads to empty them. We also have large glass, paper and plastic collection points dotted round the village.

In fact the Mayor was voted out of office because of it in the last elections.

Watching Stalin, sorry, Gordo's speach on TV it appears that those left in England will have to beware the english goulag that will be set up to house all those that want freedom.

[Rich]

Is your electricity meter spying on you as well?

Shouldn't power be charged at a flat rate however much you use? How is garbage different, then?

There is a simpler way of doing this. Don't have bins, have council pattern garbage bags on sale at supermarkets for $5 or whatever, including collection. That's how it works here in Wellington, NZ. Or, you can go to an alternative garbage collector who provides a bin.

[Gary]

Rubbish!

Sorry! Had to say it. The tossers, sorry council, where I live have designated my particular street one which cannot have wheely bins, for reasons as yet unclear. They waffled on about bin lorries unable to get down the lane at the rear which they have previously been doing for 28 years. (Suddenly got a piss artist driver no doubt!!!) Still, its an ill wind! Black bags it is then! And we all know where to dump those 'cos how many office blocks/factories and other places of torture(sorry work, must have a complex tonight!) have no rubbish bay. Love the chip zapping suggestions though, 'cos ANYTHING that screws the council or government gets my vote! Powerful magnets and high voltages shot through wire coiled around chip seems promising, as does a powerful dose of RF for the radio geeks smongst us.On the subject of green bags the tossers who run the council have admitted they send it all to China for processing.And to think I know folks who wash the stuff prior to green bagging it! Who in their cotton pickin mind is going to worry about the state of any of the stuff which goes in THAT scow! If they can afford to ship garbage to PRC,they can knock a few bucks offf my garbage bill! Either way, I'll beat these bastards! Oh yes, this should be loads of fun! ENJOY! Gary

[Mark]

re: Use your neighbours bin!

My neighbours are already practicing for this. Where I live 6 flats share a common bin area with a bin each. We use about a third of our bin capacity over a week. Two of the neighbouring flats seem to have a serious fetish for heavily packaged consumer goods and use all bins for their crap. All 6 bins are usually overflowing with 3 days to go before collection. My East London council couldn't give a rats arse about this or the attendant health issues, and will doubtless similarly not care when they charge me for my neighbours 'fly tipped' crap.

Paris, 'cos anywhere on earth is better than Newham

[foo_bar_baz]

useless

We simply pay according to the size and number of bins. In the neighbouring council it's by how often it's picked up. Never heard of abuse by neighbours. I guess Brits are just too unruly to be trusted to play by the rules.

[Nik]

Trash Billing

If the council are charging for the rubbish I throw away (although I stupidly thought that was what Council Tax was for?) can I expect an itemised bill at the end of each month like my credit card?

In line with 'Green Credentials' will my council rather than sending a paper copy out then create an eTrash statement administered wholly online, and allowing you to charge heathens who still recieve the paper version?

And will the administration of this in some data centre cost more in resources and council tax than just collecting the bloody stuff in the first place?

I seem to be getting more and more confused as to what the point of all this is.........

[A J Stiles]

I don't see the problem

Someone who uses energy-saving light bulbs and switches off appliances at the wall when not in use pays less for their electricity than someone who leaves filament light bulbs and electric heaters blazing away in unoccupied rooms.

Someone who has a high-efficiency combination boiler and TRVs on all radiators pays less for their gas than someone who leaves pans uncovered and has an inefficient, permanent-pilot boiler with a poorly-insulated, gravity-fed hot water cylinder.

Someone who drives a small, efficient car when absolutely essential and sticks to Shanks's Pony when it isn't pays less for their petrol than someone who runs a four-wheel-drive with automatic transmission and insists to drive anywhere further than the end of the street.

Someone who has a dual-flush toilet, takes only showers, makes sure they have a full load before running their washing machine or dishwasher and uses a rainwater harvesting system for watering their garden pays less for their water than someone who has a leaky swimming pool, takes two deep baths a day and wastes a full bowl of hot water to wash up just one cup.

So why the fuck should I pay the same amount to have a two-thirds-full wheelie-bin removed about once every six weeks, as somebody who puts out an overflowing wheelie bin every single week?

[Steve]

Re: Kill the chip / Simple solution

Guys, forget the drills and microwaves - you just need a screw driver.

The chip is a disc a little bigger than a 5p coin thats held in place under the rim of the wheelie bin with a plastic plug. Just pry out the plug with a screwdriver and switch the RFID chip with the chip from your MP's bin. It only takes a few seconds.

Or do what I did and throw the chip in the bin - it seemed poetic justice.

[Anonymous Coward]

meh

My area has the perfect defence for this kind of thing, it's called bin burning chavs. See we don't have wheelie bins becouse whenever they tried to set them up they got set fire too.

[Paul]

What about me?

I live in a block of flats with comunal bins. How will they work out who owes what for us, because im not paying for someone elses rubbish.

[Neil]

Neighbour fly tipping

So we need a chip in each bin, a lock on each bin to stop neighbours using them, and the binmen can have a seperate truck to carry the keys for all the bins in.

Or the government could apply pressure to the companies who package everything 3 times and observe the effect of reduced packaging = reduced consumer waste.

A mass wheelie bin protest would be quite comical though if we all wheeled our bins to the council offices with pitch forks.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ all the "why should I pay as much" crowd

All those who think it is unfair that they should pay as much for their 20% full bin as for someone with a family of 4 and a full bin every time please raise their hands.

OK, quite a few of you.

Now, put your hand down if you think that in a pay to throw system you will in actual fact pay the same or even more than you do now.

Ah, not many hands left. Now put your hand down if you are a drooling retard.

So, no raised hands anymore.

Last one, raise your hand if you think that by everyone paying more to have their rubbish collected your local council will either improve services or reduce council tax or charges.

Still no hands then.

[Norbury]

What a load of moaning bitches

The idea's good. STFU and help make it work. Why should I have to pay the same to throw my stuff as someone who has twice as much? It will make people think twice about how much packaging they buy with their shopping and increase pressure on supermarkets to stop selling vegetables in trays etc. Those complaining about dishonest neighbours protest too much I think. Maybe if you got on better with your neighbours you wouldn't have a problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're targetting the wrong end.

To my shame, I work in one of these local red tape manufacturing plants that we call councils. Our recycling figures (across our county) are at 40% and they want to get it up. The trick is this ... people can only recycle what they buy which IS recyclable.

If the government want to target someone, then get on the backs of the manufacturers to sort their packaging out, not penalise residents for not being able to recycle more.

Green & Blacks chocolates is a case in point - I had a go at them in Dec 2006 for their package waste. I was surprised a year later when they sent me another box of chocks - packaging completely redesigned - only the chocolates themselves were wrapped in virgin paper and the box was made from recycled paper; the plastic tray had gone completely and even the plastic see through window was reduced to half of its previous thickness. The whole box took half the space of its predecessor and that had savings in storage and transit costs to boot.

Congratulations Greene & Blacks for a stunning performance ... and get on yer bike government; and don't run any red lights while you're at it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hidden Chip

Apparantly they did a trial round here with some bins - I've checked mine with an RFID scanner so know mine doesn't have one, I'll have to pop and see some friends out who live a few miles away.

Gotta be fun to play switch-the-chip. Just doing it once a month on a handful of bins will mean that the councils data is totally incorrect.

Probably the next step will be a nice LCD on the back of the bin lorry to tell them which house the chipped bin should belong to so it ensures that the right chip ends up back at the right house after a week.

All those people who painted their house number on their wheelie bin might be a bit confused why the binmen keep giving their bin to someone else though!

[Mitch]

We already pay to throw ...

that's what council tax is for. Damn thieves.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fly tipping anybody?

The best statement we've had from the government about this is that it will reduce the incidence of fly tipping? What!? How? The only thing it will do is increase fly tipping. Your local authority will then, in effect have to pay for the clean up twice. First they will have to pay for the clean up then they will have to pay fines for missing their targets on fly tipping.

They will fund this by increasing the charges that honest people will pay for filling their bins, which will increase fly tipping further, and so we enter a positive feedback loop.

But the government will not accept any responsibility for all this because they have stated that councils have free will in all this. The sad thing is that the government seriously believe that they won't get the blame just because they've told us it isn't their fault.

[Mark Roome]

Next step:

There will be a scale at the entrance to each bus, tube and train entrance, which will then check how much you weigh and then charge you weight and distance to your destination. It only makes sense when they are trying to charge you for every little thing.

[Francis Fish]

Works in Dublin

Apparently. You get rebates if you do it properly. I wonder if any Irish readers would care to comment??

[Steve]

Tax creep...

Our income taxes used to pay for regular collections.

Then poll/council tax was introduced to fund for the service (telegraph.co.uk: "At present the £125 of the average council tax bill goes to cover the cost of rubbish collection and disposal"), but the income tax didn't reduce.

Council taxes inexorably increased.

Now we have to pay again - again, for the same service, yet our council tax still goes up.

On top of that the collection rate substantially reduced (bi monthly, about to be made monthly), so the cost of the service is substantially reduced.

Then you have the 'two finger' rule where a binman will refuse to take the bin if they cannot move it using two fingers, even though they have 8 available per man.

Then there is the closed lid rule where failure to abide can get you a criminal record.

Then we have the 7:30am rule where putting out rubbish earlier than that on the day of collection will see you fined (I know people that leave for work at 6:00am, WTF should they do?)

God help you if you accidentally put the wrong sort of rubbish into the wrong bin, even if the council mixes it all up anyway.

Furthermore, it has been stated that a bin with a damaged chip will not be emptied.

As someone touched on above, a law will be / has been snuck in such that the bins have to be padlocked.

To those who voted these f***ers in: do you still believe you won? Don’t you instead feel like we are the laughing stock of the world?

Did you know that throwing paper/cardboard in a landfill acts as a carbon sink? (and a renewable one at that) - that is, if you believe we can really can ‘stop/curb/tackle climate change’!

[Anonymous Coward]

so that's it then

It's pitchforks and torches at 7 at the council.

[b]

Of all the things to get pissy about

Seriously guys. Get a grip.

[A J Stiles]

You pay for it all anyway!

If you actually look at what makes up the bulk of your rubbish (remember that *recycling* will still be picked up free) you'll notice that it is all stuff that you bought and paid for.

The solution is surely simple: throw less away! (Never mind that there is no such place as "away".) You'll save money in the long term too!

Why, when I buy a litre of milk in a supermarket, am I forced to buy a brand-new plastic container at the same time? Even although it's HDPE and therefore recyclable, energy is still being wasted melting it down only to make it into another one just the same -- especially given that it is potentially useful as a container for much longer than the lifetime of its contents. Why isn't there just a pump dispenser that squirts out an accurately-measured litre of the appropriate grade of milk (skimmed, semi-skimmed or normal) into my own container (which I have either brought with me from home -- remembering to bring containers would hardly be any more bother than remembering to bring a wallet -- or bought brand-new, at a price which will definitely make me remember to bring it with me next time) placed under the appropriate nozzle?

[Andy Bright]

Quite right to get pissy

Because once again the government is working out new ways to tax us twice. Council Tax should more than cover the cost of rubbish collection, along with everything else it's supposed to fund.

The reason local and central governments want to find new revenue sources is not because they give a shit about the environment, they need to do so to cover the costs of failed and over budget government contracts.

The UK generates almost 50% of the tax revenue of the US, and yet can't afford to provide services to a population 1/5th the size. This is because we keep allowing our government to give out juicy, expensive and almost invariably grossly inefficient contracts to crony-run big business.

And what do we do about it? Nothing. We just keep letting them get away with raising taxes, whether it be on petrol, cigarettes and alcohol, or by inventing ridiculous schemes like this one, or metered water, or energy taxation or back dating new car taxes 8 years, or whatever else they decide they need to do to afford to pay for things we don't need.

Want a way to save billions of pounds? Try NOT making a new passport and id card. Try NOT creating the IT nightmare that must (but won't be able to) support such schemes. Or better still, try voting for anyone but the current member of parliament for your area.

Why not? What you actually think they'd do worse? How could they? It's not like the current lot have a fucking clue.

The fallacy that prevents people from voting for someone else is they think that it could be worse, and their replacements might not have the experience to know how to run government. No, actually it couldn't. The people there right now don't know how to run government. Tell me exactly how many government contracts and schemes have both come in on budget and done what they're supposed to, i.e. make things better. Pick a date, say 2004, and tell me that what we have now is better or even as good as then. Really? You think hospitals are as good as they were then? Food prices are as good, energy prices are as good, the amount of money you have available to do things is as good?

These are the test results of your government, and telling me that anyone at all couldn't do better is bullshit.

Ok what about security? Hmm yes, this government is so competent it allowed the London Underground to get bombed. Boo hoo I'm not being fair. If you're going to tell me that it isn't their fault, because they don't have control over such things, then why would knowing how to deal with security even be a consideration when voting?

So really the choice is yours. Let your incumbent politicians continually raise taxes and make things worse in return (any of you really think we're getting value for the money we give them?), or try someone new. Completely new, as in not been a member of parliament before. Doesn't matter which party, they're all shit at their jobs. And this is the thing. You can't actually make thing worse by doing so. The only way to make things worse would be to vote for the same people all over again.

[Steve]

Quite right to get pissy 2

Well b,

I can only assume you're happy to pay two additional lots of taxes for a service that has become substantially worse and unfair, let alone poorly managed - yes?

[Liam]

hmmmm

@ "To those who voted these f***ers in: do you still believe you won? Don’t you instead feel like we are the laughing stock of the world?"

erm... i still seem to remember joyfully voting out the wankers who sold everything off.. its almost like everyone seems to think that the tories were wonderous before.. i think sometimes we forget how bad things used to be also... do the blues hand out rose tinted specs? :)

thats not me saying im pro labour... i just remember when we owned rail, comms and hospitals before they were all sold off... remember that tories dont really help anywhere north of watford (especially if you arent white and middle/upper class)! oh and lets not forget the massive interest rates of the 80s when my parent and a lot of others almost lost everything.

the big issue is what do we do next?...

useless reds

dont earn enough for conservative to benefit me and they arent much better from memory

lib dems could make everything even worse (£900/year road tax my arse!)

the problem we have is that 3 useless sets of idiots are all we have to choose from.

cant we just get stephen fry to be PM and let everything else fit in place :)

as said before it seems hard to punish people for the rubbish that is created. for example. i am a good consumer.. i buy plenty of stuff.. unfortunately that stuff comes is massive oversized boxes... now, with me paying a nice amount of VAT for all this shit, isnt the cost of recycling included in the VAT?

we have just let the tories in round here.. back to weekly black bin collections (sigh). the only people that moaned about the lack of weekly collections were the ones who didnt recycle really. my black bin goes out every few months, wheras the recycle bin always seems full but its only fortnightly

[Steve]

@ Liam

I agree, the main parties are all self-serving idiots, which is why I don't vote for any of them.

What we really need is an overhaul of the government such that we can vote (after a national debate) on individual policies, not on an ideology which is subject to change without notice (is there a party that offers that?). Opposing parties (and their inevitable catfights and cross party bribing) would become redundant - beautiful!

[Wayland Sothcott]

WWII people retired

What we have now is government by the nieave. In the past we had people who had been through World War 2, who knew what had been fought for and so made a point of protecting our liberties.

Now we have people who think it's a great new idea to have everyone carry an ID card and keep the data in a big computer in London. IBM did this for the Nazies with punched cards.

We have people who think it's an amazing new policing technique to check people incase they have something illegal. Crime prevention.

These people think that anything they don't like, just make a law against it. Keep it wide and flexible, it will be more versitile that way.

I can think of amazing new technology driven things that solve todays 'very real' problems. How about a chip in every appliance which allows your electricity meter to monitor each one individually. Individually monitored electric would be sold at a heavy discount compared to the old default metred appliances. People would rush out and buy the new cheaper to run gadgets.

THEN the government starts adding environmental surcharges, computer juice costs more than TV juice. In fact they could start charging per minute rather than by power consumption. Too much time on the PC.

You see anyone can come up with a daft scheme using technology to enforce idealogical morals, or at least to tax sin.

[Anonymous Coward]

OK this is how i see it going down, a time line of insanity

1) Chip n Bin is introduced

2) Mass incidents of "bin Hi-jacking" occur forcing new wheelie bins of all types to be issued now with locks at tax payers direct or indirect expense.

3) Parliament passes law making "Bin Hi-jacking" specifically illegal

4) First legal challenge to bins weights as the customer possess no metering equipment to check the councils figures.

5) Installation of bin weight measuring devices at every house, built into new bins, with locks, at tax payers direct or indirect expense.

6) Fly tipping become such a problem that a new government agency is set up to deal with it.

7) Prohibition on unmetered flat rate rubbish removal spawns a new area of criminal enterprise which attracts elements of organised crime as they like anything that makes you money.

8) Bin chips are hacked giving you your neighbours rfid code forcing new issue of bins at tax payers direct or indirect expense

9) Organised crime infiltrates the bin men and off the book corruption of waste begins

10) New laws to deal with the growing menace of Organised Crime in domestic waste disposal is passed including wide ranging powers to deal with hi and lo-tec scams

etc.

Face it, its a stupid idea, especially since my Council only manages monthly collection for paper / card, metal and plastic. Glass, kitchen waste, garden waste dont get a look in. However where i used to live, it was glass and paper and grass cuttings but not plastic and metal.

I think before they even thing about charging me, i want national compulsory recycling collections, at least monthly for domestic Glass, paper / card, plastic, metal, kitchen waste and garden waste. If they still have a waste problem after that then we can talk.