South Bucks Council recently informed local taxpayers of ‘exciting changes’ being made to their waste and recycling collection service, but one local resident is ‘excited’ in a completely different way.
‘I am rarely excited by matters of waste disposal,’ says South Bucks resident and TPA supporter Susan Dudley, ‘but I have to say that in this instance they were right as I am excited by feelings of anger and annoyance to find that my council tax money has been spent on issuing households with a third new wheelie bin, a black one with a fancy blue top. Quite apart from the desecration of the street scene by the addition of a garish, inappropriate bin [in addition to four other current containers], I am horrified at the wanton expense. South Bucks has, in effect, not only discarded perfectly serviceable green bins and are charging for a service for which council taxes are already paying, but they have spent a fortune on new and unnecessary plastic street ware.’
South Bucks Council wants to charge £45 for a fortnightly garden waste collection that had previously been free to residents who already paid for waste removal through their council tax. In addition to this, the council has issued a bewilderingly complicated plan for collecting different kinds of waste in five different kinds of colour coded taxpayer-funded containers over alternating weeks!
‘I am assuming that these changes have come about because of some change to the waste collection contract,’ says Dudley. ‘Why should I pay more for my previously free garden refuse collection when the money is being profligately squandered on “new bins for all”? Surely the idea of green bins to recycle waste is being undermined when huge plastic bins themselves are targeted for wanton disposal.’
‘To complain about such a small and seemingly unimportant issue seems petty in these times of gargantuan public debt, biblical levels of flooding and ordinary people squeezed in their pockets in all aspects of their lives,’ continues Dudley. ‘Nevertheless, it seems to have been the policy of the Tax Payers' Alliance to tackle waste, large and small on a case by case basis and that has been the basis of its resounding success in changing attitudes to public profligacy.’
Thank you, Susan, you are quite right. The TPA’s War on Waste is aimed at both small and large examples of government wasting taxpayers’ money—especially when it comes down to five different colour coded bins to remove garbage.