What's it got to do with him anyway?

So Gordon has pulled the plug on a plan to allow councils to run pay-as-you-go rubbish collecting schemes.

I've got mixed feelings about it really. Yes, the councils would have gone price-rise crazy. It would have been unpopular with voters.

But why on earth does a local council have to ask central government how it should deal with rubbish collection anyway?

Comments

[Kit]

I would go further, why on earth does the local council deal with rubbish collection? All other utilities are now private why not rubbish? I would be very happy shop-around. I may even find a company willing, at a price, to walk up my drive to collect the rubbish or turn up on demand.

[IanCroydon]

It's one of the "42" moments. Councils are not asking the right questions about rubbish collection. The reason we have council controlled rubbish collection is all the little shits who dump their rubbish everywhere they can, not the nice considerate majority who regularly bag and place their rubbish for collection, guess which one the Pay-as-you-dump scheme addresses ?

The question is not who will pick up _my_ rubbish, as the first poster says, I could pay for it to be done myself if inclined. The flytippers and messy little shits, from the chav dumping his fag butts out the car window, to the cowboy builders dumping their last load of rubble, they are the ones who need policing, and any rubbish collection scheme needs to address them.

[Bishop Hill]

It would be nice wouldn't it? But how would you do it?

[andrew duffin]

What Kit said.

When I lived in the US, to get your rubbish taken away, you called a few local rubbish collection outfits, haggled about prices, told them whether you wanted monthly, weekly, or (yes!) daily collection, they did it, and you paid the bill.

City Hall would have been bemused at the idea that THEY ought to do it. Why, they would have asked? How would that be better?

And as we see, it's not. In fact, it's far far worse, because not only does it turn into a revenue-enhancement opportunity, but they make an arse of it as well.

[IanCroydon]

"But how would you do it?"

Er, perhaps the same way we've been doing it for ages.

Just like the Fire Service and any other local amenity, we have to collectively pay for it all, I want the fire in the house next door put out just as much as I want the flytipped rubbish dumped at the end of my street to be cleaned, neither are my direct responsibility.

The council should _not_ be asking how individuals should pay for _their_ rubbish, but how general rubbish should be cleared, and how it can be prevented, if that is a better cost saving.

It figures, that if you're going to contract people to clean up the chav's dumped fag ends, they might as well take away regular domestic rubbish too, saves time and money, no ?

[Bishop Hill]

Interesting that they seem to have avoided the need for a state-run monopoly in the USA, as per Andrew Duffin's comment above.