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“Ridiculous overuse of Council power” story of the week
Found this story on the BBC website and just had to share it with you, as it’s so amazingly stupid.
A man now has a criminal record because he over-filled his wheelie bin and the lid wouldn’t shut properly. The council decided that this was obviously the work of a unreconstructed scum-of-the-earth type and sent the enforcement officers round. They were apparently expecting trouble from this ne’er do well who dared to throw his rubbish away, in the receptacle provided for the purpose, because they came to his door in full stab-proof outfits.
Now I accept the Council’s point that they are trying to encourage people to recycle more, but let’s face it; there are five people in the house and no matter how much you recycle there’s always going to be something left. Most Council run recycling schemes will not deal with ALL the rubbish a household generates. And let’s not forget that a slightly overfull wheelie bin for a house of five for two weeks is way better than a lot of other people.
Perhaps rather than spending all this time and money taking one guy to court for a slightly overfull bin, Whitehaven Council would have been better to re-instate weekly rubbish collections or provide larger (or even a second) wheelie bins.
Update: in the interests of balanced reporting, I should draw your attention to this follow-up story, wherein Copeland Borough Council (I got it wrong before and called them Whitehaven Council) insist that the man concerned was a serial over-filler, who already has a 50% larger wheelie bin to take the rubbish of his large family. So that just leaves re-instating weekly collections as the solution then.
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One Response to ““Ridiculous overuse of Council power” story of the week”
I think you know what to do....
Wolfs Stuff
Wolfs Helpers
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Did you by any chance see “Dom Joly’s Complainers” the other night? I didn’t see all of it but the bit I did see had him walking with a bin crew in Exeter who would report home owners for putting the wrong stuff in their bin.
The council would then send a guy round to “have a word”. The family they went to were “repeat offenders” but as it was over a year previously they couldn’t issue a fine and had to re-issue their initial “letter” and start the whole process again.
Weekly collections would be nice!