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Big brother hits the bins
4:33pm Friday 18th January 2008
JUST Like Two Jags Prescott, who blathered on about environmental concerns despite owning a couple of gas guzzlers, it now seems other MPs will be following the do as I say, not as I do' ethics of the lardy bumbling bruiser.
While families struggle to meet the cost of new pay-as-you-throw rubbish charges, it has been revealed that MPs will be excused the burden of paying bin taxes on their second homes.
The taxes are intended to persuade families to throw out less rubbish in the interest of encouraging recycling and fighting climate change.
MPs, however, will be able to claim their bin taxes back on their controversial expenses scheme, the Additional Cost Allowance.
This allows those with constituencies outside inner London to claim up to £20,902 a year to cover the costs of maintaining a second home.
As far as I'm concerned this stinks as much as the MPs rubbish probably does.
On another matter 10 councils have decided to set up a total of 33 automatic number plate recognition cameras at 29 rubbish dumps across the country.
Spy cameras linked to the DVLA driver database are being deployed at dozens more rubbish tips to check if families are flouting waste rubbish rules The cameras read number plates, record what is being dumped and log how many times a vehicle visits a dump.
This allows councils to monitor exactly who is using their tips, opening the way for illegal dumpers to be hit by huge fines or even jail.
And while Trafford hasn't announced any intentions of introduce such Big Brother' tactics, wouldn't bosses love such cameras in the new state of the art' rubbish dump which looks set to be built in the region and reported on in last week's Stretford and Urmston Messenger.
It's been reported that the site will process garden and food waste in super sized sealed vessels -speeding up the decomposting process to as little as three weeks, all the latest technology for Trafford, but God help you if there's an empty packet of corn flakes in there!
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