WRITTEN ON October 30th, 2006 BY Richard S AND STORED IN Uncategorized

Increasingly we hear about local councils and other “authorities” gaining extra powers to fine and punish residents: Strangely little is heard about the converse: Authorities accepting blame…

Humans make mistakes and have domestic crises. However, in our topsy-turvy country, any deviation from the “norm” as ordained by “authority” must be punished. Following Gordon Brown’s “Stern Report” we can all expect more frequent and more severe punishment. However, the same standards do not apply when “authority” fails to deliver a service that we pay for:

Last week, my local council again failed to collect my refuse. We have an ever changing scheme of alternate week collections: Normal waste one week; recycling and composting on the other week. The council’s definition of recyclable waste changes every couple of months: Even when an item is marked with the recycling symbol, it may well be rejected by the council. Residents are expected to know and understand the council’s latest policy, and to be perfect sorters of their refuse:

Apparently, the council’s refuse collection process cannot tolerate any human errors, however small: The tiniest amount of “contamination” by the “wrong sort of refuse” results in the whole load being rejected; taken to the land-fill tip and incurring land-fill charges which are paid from our council tax.

Although this refuse collection process demands such absolute accuracy; it’s actually operated by busy residents who don’t know its rules, and by workers on the minimum wage employed by the lowest bidder.

Naturally, if something goes wrong, the residents are blamed: Bin put out on wrong day; bin left out too long; bin not out early enough; wrong refuse in bin; too much refuse that week; failure to recycle enough; etc. etc. etc. All these “environmental crimes” can result in penalties and fines.

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Again last week, I returned home to find that my refuse had not been collected. Next morning, I phoned the council (no Internet service!) on their “rip-off” non-geographic phone number. After listening to rustling paper for several expensive minutes (refuse reports are on paper, not searchable by PC), the operator informed me that my refuse “had been reported as contaminated” so could not be collected. The report gave absolutely no details about the nature of this supposed “contamination.”

I checked the contents of the bin: There was no “contamination.” Also, the separate “composting” refuse had not been collected: To me, it seemed extremely unlikely that two separate containers had both broken their separate complex rules: To the council, this just confirmed my guilt – two “crimes”!

A suited inspector eventually conceded that there was no “contamination”: The refuse has now been collected: However, the council now seems to suspect that I have removed the “contamination.” (I have not removed anything: However, if it had been so easy for me to remove, why could their contractors not do this?)

In reality, it probably was a cold wet day; the refuse crew was running late; they forgot to collect my refuse; they lied about it and fabricated a reason! This lying will go unpunished!

Wibbis:

• Councils and “authorities” did not automatically presume that residents are guilty.
• Bureaucrats lost the power to impose penalties on residents unless they also pay penalties for their own errors.
• Bureaucrats remembered that they are employed by the public as public servants, not as masters.