Some progress, then. Ordinary dust-bin collections once a fortnight rather than weekly, because we won't have so much to put in them once we've separated out the paper, the glass and the tins. And these, the paper, glass and tins, are going to collected weekly.
That suits our household down to the ground. We only put out our wheelie bin once in about 3 weeks anyway. And the black plastic box isn't big enough for the recycling stuff, now that my son has trained us to put everything in the right places.
What I think could be improved is the sanctions on those who don't comply. Let me quote:
What if I don't want to sort out my household waste?
From now on the Household Waste collection services offered by Mendip Dostrict Council will focus on recycling and waste minimisation. The government requires us to do this, we need you to help. .... If you do not want to sort out your household waste you may find that you will not have enough room for your waste in your wheeled bin, as extra waste will not be collected you will have to take it to your HWRC for disposal.
That's an invitation to those who don't care about the environment to sort just the minimum, enough to ensure that their dustbin doesn't overflow. I remember Alistair Cooke in one of his Radio 4 'Letters from America' telling how they sorted their waste, because otherwise they would be fined. That was about 10 years ago, in the Great Polluting Nation. If it's important to save our countryside from being taken over and poisoned by buried rubbish, why ever not make sorting compulsary?
It's the same weak government (I'm not talking party politics - they're all the same) that allows gas-guzzling 4by4s, with their child-killing bull-bars, to clog cities, that is lax in enforcing speed limits, and that bends over backwards to let the rich kill our villages with second or third homes. On a phone-in this week a gentleman from one of the Scottish islands, I think, proposed to a government minister that those who owned a second home should pay double Council Tax on each home, and those who owned three should pay triple tax on all three. The concern was the way houses in the country are being snatched from village people and all housing there made unaffordable for workers. The minister would not even contemplate this financial disincentive to the rich.
Weak, weak, weak. My fear is that the nation will sink to such a state that a dictator will take over. It is not unthinkable. Mussolini was accepted by a very ancient and cultured nation, and made the trains run on time. Far better that our elected politicians show some backbone before it is too late.
