What a load of Rubbish

At times I wonder if our MPs actually live in the real world, then with the recent talk about rubbish allowances I get my answer – nope they're living in La-La land sitting on mushrooms and drinking mint-tea with the King and Queen of all the Fairies.

For those of you not paying attention to the latest craziness to hit the corridors of Whitehall, talk is once again rearing its ugly head about setting allowances for household rubbish and either enforcing penalties for those exceeding those limits or rewarding those who stay under them. To counteract the crazy here's why it won't work.

The first problem is that I don't believe the MPs realise that due to the councils fortnightly or alternate collections the third-party refuse collection industry has made enormous gains in the household market, so how does that affect things?

Plucking figures from the air imagine I'm paying £10 a week to have my rubbish collected by a non-council third-party. Now let's say the penalties and rewards are greater then this at £15. If I leave my rubbish for the council to pick up then I pay £15 a week, so it's better to stick with the third-party; even better because from the council's point of view I'm below limit then I can claim my £15 reward. I'm up a fiver.

Now what if it wasn't £15 but £5, well it now becomes cheaper for me to have my rubbish collected like everyone else and pay the penalty. If for some reason I decide to stick with my third-party then again my bin's empty and I get a fiver back. So I save a fiver.

Notice that in both cases I either gain £5 or save £5 regardless whether only penalties or rewards are in play; and that in both cases the amount of rubbish has not changed.

Let me continue.

People are people, if you've got a big pile of rubbish that'll put you over your limit and inflict you with a fine then you'll dump it in your neighbour's bin. Sorry that's just the way it is. So all the bins will need locks and presumably a master key for the collectors to open them all. Do that and I guarantee the locks will be non-functional in a fortnight, either from someone smashing them open to dump some rubbish or someone just stuffing the lock with chewing gum; or just as likely broken by the legitimate owner having lost their key.

If the system is somehow made 'foolproof' then I predict an increase in fly-tipping

Need more?

I'm guessing limits will be set as to adult and child (under-16) this means that the council need to know who's living in your house and need to keep track of it. So that's a whole new layer of bureaucracy waiting to happen and needing funding. If you have a guest staying can you fill in a temporary resident form to increase your limit? Someone needs to monitor that to prevent abuse and so the bureaucracy increases in size.

And finally the greatest indignity of all

It is businesses and not households that produce the majority of waste in this country. That's businesses who already have to pay extra for their rubbish to be picked up and who are offered no incentives or disincentives to even recycle let alone reduce the amount they chuck out.

So here's a thank-you to all the MPs who are trying to promote this, you've done your country a great service by sticking your head above the parapet and proclaiming in a loud voice "I haven't got a clue how the real world works; make sure you don't vote for me in the next election".