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by Paul Scully | Jun 22, 2008 | News |
A senior LibDem councillor has broken party ranks and attacked the Council for wasting money on waste collection. Paddy Kane, chairman of the scrutiny committee that investigates waste collection services was moved to contact the local newspapers when he discovered that a 40-tonne dustcart (similar to the Sutton vehicle in the picture) had been sent on a 12-mile round trip to collect a single green garden waste bag, branding the move as ‘absolutely frivoulous’.
Cllr Cliff Carter called the Council last Saturday to inform them of a resident who had paid the unpopular £35 green garden waste charge and whose bag had not been collected from the front of her house. The Council had promised on two occasions to collect the bag but did not until Cliff’s intervention.
Instead of using one of the Waste Management Service small vans that are often seen driving around the borough, a massive truck was driven to the resident’s house in Aultone Way from the depot in Beddington Lane despite the fact that the dump in Kimpton Road is only eight minutes away. Cliff told the Advertiser “If you pay for a service you expect to get results, but there’s no reason at all why they should send out a large lorry.”
The LibDems are split on their view on the unpopular £35 charge with some favouring a lower £10 charge and others supporting our position for a reversal of the decision. I’m pleased that Cllr Kane has put his head above the parapet in attacking the endemic waste of his party’s administration saying “This is gross misuse of council resources. Sending a 40-tonne truck for one bag of garden waste is not environmentally friendly. It’s absolutely frivoulous.” I hope that this is the first of many interventions from the committee which looks at value for money in waste management, transport, planning, roads, parks, libraries and sport. I’m sure that if he continues to scratch the surface, he will find plenty more examples.
![Green Garden Waste 4 – LibDem Joins Our Call]()
by Paul Scully | Jun 22, 2008 | News |
Residents are dismayed at having to pay the unpopular £35 green garden waste charge and are then fuming when they see that the green jute bag is nowhere near the size of the old clear plastic bags. The LibDems seem to be taking “Mars Bar” economics to a new height, charging more for less.
Seizing advantage of the nearby Sutton Tennis and Squash Club, Cllr Tony Shields decided to research these concerns in a scientific way that would make New Scientist readers proud; by filling both bags with tennis balls and counting the difference.
The capacity of the old bag beat the new one game, set and match with the scores
- Old bag 522 balls
- New bag 270 balls
This is a difference of nearly 50%. Tony’s able assistant in the picture, South Sutton resident John Turner told Tony “This scheme hasn’t been properly explained. As a resident, I want to recycle and cut waste but the size of this new bag is a load of balls.” Defending the size of the bags, we were told that it was an industry standard size. Interesting, but isn’t that an answer to another question? I’m not sure if many residents will take succour in knowing that their bags comply to an industry regulation. To cap it all, during the experiment, the handle fell off.
![Green Garden Waste 4 – LibDem Joins Our Call]()
by Paul Scully | Jun 22, 2008 | News |
Both local LibDem MPs have been making mischief in their attempt to divert attention from their Councillor colleagues almighty blunder in introducing the unpopular £35 green garden waste charge.
In correspondence from Carshalton & Wallington MP Tom Brake and a newsletter from Sutton & Cheam MP Paul Burstow, they strongly suggest that the unjustified extra cost was implemented with cross-party support. Neither expressed an opinion as to where they stood on the issue. (I wonder if either have bought a bag themselves.)
In fact, two of my colleagues, John Kennedy and Graham Whitham predicted much of what has transpired when expressing their opposition to the way that green garden waste has been handled. We are fully supportive of the aim of the overall scheme which is to minimise the amount of waste that goes to landfill. The Council will face punitive fines if action is not taken which could make recent Council Tax increases look paltry in comparison. So, we do need to take action now. Stopping the collection of black bags sitting alongside the wheelie bins is an inconvenience that we have to accept.
Garden waste doesn’t go to landfill. Encouraging people to compost more at home is an excellent idea but is not a panacea. A bin full of grass clippings will become very smelly and sludge-filled. There is a knack to effective composting that most people (including me) will not be fully aware of. The £35 per bag charge seemed to appear from nowhere rather than as a result of detailed modelling and research. The communication of the changes has been woefully inadequate. The charge is supposed to cover the new kerbside glass collection. However with only 3000 bags sold at the last count, there will be a big hole in the figures. This will be exacerbated by the need to open a new facility at Beddington Lane for residents to take their own garden waste. This is costing the Council about £5000 per week. We have called for the scheme to be halted whilst the Council go back to the drawing board and consult residents.
![Green Garden Waste 4 – LibDem Joins Our Call]()
by Paul Scully | Jun 22, 2008 | News |
The unpopular green garden waste collection charge has been covered at length in the local newspapers. In eight days, a group of councillors are meeting along with officers to review the scheme. My Conservative colleagues will continue to oppose the £35 charge.
In the meantime, Eric extended a helping hand to an 80 year old resident who could not afford to buy a bag and was physically unable to take the garden waste to the dump. The resident from Oxford Road contacted Eric in desperation. He visited her the next day and resolved to take the bag himself in the back of his car. After 20 minutes queuing at the Kimpton, he was finally able to get rid of the cuttings.
Eric said, “The LibDem Council really don’t care about who are hit by this charge, like the elderly widow in my ward. As a Conservative I believe minimising waste is a priority but this charge really is hitting vulnerable people hard. I support the call for an urgent rethink on this policy.”
He concluded, “The dump was chock-a-block with cars waiting to get into the dump. If it was that bad on a Tuesday morning, I shudder to think what it was like over the weekend.”
![Green Garden Waste 4 – LibDem Joins Our Call]()
by Paul Scully | Jun 12, 2008 | News |
I joined the many Conservatives that would have been watching the news at 1pm with an open mouth as we slowly took in the fact that David Davis had resigned his seat in order to fight the subsequent by-election on the single issue of 42 days detention. I’m still a bit too shell-shocked to figure out if it was a good move or not. What I am sure about is he has my absolute support on the issue of detention without charge.
Polls suggest that people support 42 days detention by two to one. Some of the comments on my blog and many on other websites clearly show that the Government have failed to put across exactly what this insidious piece of legislation actually means for ordinary people in the UK. If you asked me if I would put terrorists in prison without charge for 42 days, I would say yes without hesitation. However, this is not what we are talking about. If it is passed, people suspected of terrorism-related crime will be allowed to be held at the whim of the Home Secretary. Let’s look at how other crime and anti-terrorist measures have been used in the UK by this Labour Government.
- Three men were extradited to the USA without any evidence being produced having been accused of a fraud against NatWest (not a USA company)
- CCTV cameras which were introduced to fight crime are now being used to issue parking tickets long after the car has moved.
- A lady was arrested for reading aloud a list of names in Trafalgar Square.
- An 82 year-old man was arrested for heckling Tony Blair.
- Compulsory ID cards may be introduced at a cost of £18bn; more than the Home Office spends in total on policing, immigration control and security each year.
In addition to this, Gordon Brown has the ability to ban public meetings, set up special courts and postpone elections thanks to the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. This legislation is already robust enough to give the police and judiciary the powers that they need to deal with complex terrorism inquiries. I am perplexed that at a time that trust in politicians is at an all-time low, people should allow the very same people to determine the future of a British citizen in this way.
You will see from the chart at the top of this post that no other western democracy feels the need to have such controls. Vladmir Putin must be green with envy that he can only hold people in the Lubyanka for a maximum of five days. At 28 days we are already double the limit of anyone bar dictatorships. Why does this Government feel that our police are not as capable as those in Spain who suffered in the Madrid bombings or the USA who face a more severe terrorist threat than we do?
There is no need for Al-Qaeda to commit another atrocity in the UK. They have acheived an important objective in changing the behaviour and attitude of the population in this country in a way that the IRA never could. I remember the stoic attitude of my work colleagues as we were evacuated onto Leicester Square only to hear the Surrey Tavern pub bomb explode 300 yards away. Now, in a blinkered attempt to play tough politics the government has given fuel to a small number of nutters ready to prey on susceptible kids ripe for radicalisation. I end where I started. Terrorists deserve the severest punishment and then some. Locking people up without charge rips up the Magna Carta, the premise of ‘innocent until proven guilty’, Habeas Corpus, however you want to describe it, no longer exists in this country. It may take a decade or two but this legislation will go the way of other anti-terrorism legislation and be extended quietly to cover other circumstances.
David Davis stated his case in a superb statement that I have reproduced in full below. If he is right in his view that the Parliament Act will be used to force this legislation through it will be the ultimate irony; using legislation meant for a completely different set of circumstances to push through controversial legislation for political expediency:-
“The name of my constituency is Haltemprice and Howden. Haltemprice is derived from the medieval proverb meaning ‘noble endeavour’. Up until yesterday I took the view that what we did in the House of Commons representing our constituents was a noble endeavour because for centuries our forebears defended the freedoms of the British people – or we did, up until yesterday.
“This Sunday is the anniversary of the Magna Carta, the document that guarantees that most fundamental of British freedoms, habeas corpus, the right not to be imprisoned by the state without charge or reason. Yesterday this House decided to allow the state to lock up potentially innocent citizens for up to six weeks without charge.
“The counterterrorism bill will in all probability be rejected by the House of Lords very firmly. What should they be there for if not to defend the Magna Carta. But because the impetus behind this is essentially political not security the government will be tempted to use the Parliament Act to overrule the Lords. It has no democratic mandate to do this since 42 days was not in the manifesto. Its legal basis is uncertain to say the least. But purely for political reasons this government’s going to do that.
“In truth 42 days is just one, perhaps the most salient example, of the insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedoms.
“We will have shortly the most intrusive identity card system in the world. A CCTV camera for every 14 citizens, a DNA database bigger than any dictatorship has, with thousands of innocent children and a million innocent citizens on it. We’ve witnessed an assault on jury trials, that bulwark against bad law and its arbitrary abuse by the state, shortcuts for our justice system that make our justice system neither firm nor fair, and the creation of a database state, opening up our private lives to the prying eyes of official snoopers and exposing our personal data to careless civil servants and criminal hackers.
“The state has security powers to clamp down on peaceful protests and so-called hate laws which stifle debate, while those who serve violence get off scot-free. This cannot go on, it must be stopped and for that reason today I feel it is incumbent on me to take a stand.
“I will be resigning my membership of this House and I intend to force a by-election in Haltemprice and Howden. I will not fight it on the government’s general record; there is no point repeating Crewe and Nantwich. I will fight it on my personal record. I am just a piece in this great chess game. I will fight it. I will argue this by-election against the slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms by this government. That may mean I have made my last speech to the House, possible. And of course that would be a cause of deep regret to me. But at least my electorate and the nation as a whole would have had the opportunity to debate and consider one of the most fundamental issues of our day. The ever-intrusive power of the state into our lives, the loss of privacy, the loss of freedom If they do send me back here, it will be with a single, simple message. That the monstrosity of a law that we passed yesterday will not stand.”
A senior LibDem councillor has broken party ranks and attacked the Council for wasting money on waste collection. Paddy Kane, chairman of the scrutiny committee that investigates waste collection services was moved to contact the local newspapers when he discovered that a 40-tonne dustcart (similar to the Sutton vehicle in the picture) had been sent on a 12-mile round trip to collect a single green garden waste bag, branding the move as ‘absolutely frivoulous’.
