Oh Dear: Rubbish bag 'tax' to encourage recycling

[Fleetwood]

Bring in woolly,fuzzy, generally incomprehensible tax-legislation and retroactively apply it to things that aren't doing their "fair share" of moving.

[mcquiggd]

Not sure how they are going to work this out for communal flats. Probably use those spy planes they use to search for people who have ornamental borders and garden gnomes for extra council tax.

Not long now until even our faeces are weighed and disposal charged for, with a 'windfall tax' if you had a curry the night before.

[DaveB]

Not long now until even our faeces are weighed and disposal charged for, with a 'windfall tax' if you had a curry the night before.

Douglas Adams suggested that one some time ago

"The fabulously beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulative erosion by ten billion visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete while on the planet is surgically removed from you body weight when you leave: so every time you go to the lavatory there it is vitally important to get a receipt."

[Joe Black]

Not sure how they are going to work this out for communal flats.

A guy I know here - lives in a group of flats - actually got done last year for this sort of thing, not separating his rubbish.

How they figured out it was him God only knows, rummaging through everything until they found an envelope with his name on it?

Still, fair cop. A quick €100 added to his communal tax.

No doubt coming to the UK by EU directive soon.

[Fleetwood]

How they figured out it was him God only knows, rummaging through everything until they found an envelope with his name on it?

Don't laugh, that is exactly how they do it in Belgium. Honest.

[threaded]

It's actually quite a good way to get-yer-own-back on an annoying neighbour: go in their bins, pull out some letters, envelopes etc. with their name and address, mix with some rubbish, fly tip the mix, wait for a result...

[Joe Black]

What sort do you have zeitghost, straight?, crosscut?...an S6 compliant one? ( )

Mine's almost given up the ghost so I'm looking for a new one over the next few weeks.

What can I say, shredding's fun.

[DaveB]

Pair of big scissors...

He turns the paper in to Giant Alien Lizard paper chains

[Joe Black]

Pair of big scissors...

Straight cut then, I presume?

[vista]

Reading nutters lead the way

This sounds like a good idea to me. Except that:

1. It should replace the Council Tax element for the binmen, not supplement it

2. People will stick their rubbish amongst other people's to avoid paying

3. People will fly-tip to avoid paying

4. How do they weigh each bin's-worth of rubbish to record the charges?

5. How do they collect the charges?

6. What happens when people dispute the charges?

I see a fiasco here that will make the Tax Credit system look like a smoothly run operation.

In Reading the council is going to stop picking up rubbish weekly and do it fortnightly, many people have bitched that rotting material will cause health scares and that they'll be an massive increase in flytipping - risking big fines.

Whilst its fun to predict the worst I'm off to B&Q to buy a huge bin and look forward to seeing the different colours various waste materials produce when burned - I'm sure that as this peaceful fineless practise gains popularity that the NHS will easily be able to deal with the f v ckwitts that decide to burn pressurized containers and other equally dangerous materials, I think that the smog created could well rival that of california and will look very attractive as it shrouds the town at night time.