Rubbish

The local council has just issued its new guidelines for rubbish collection. It is to be:

recycling weekly, non-recyclable rubbish in a wheelie bin half the size of the present ones, and collected once a fortnight.

While I appreciate, like most conservatives, the need to do something about our various environmental problems, this solution seems harsh and dangerous. Firstly, it is designed to make people suffer, a principle that is being ejected from the criminal justice system, but apparently alive and well in environmental circles. Where is the carrot, the benefits one could accrue from recycling? Secondly, it assumes that families of different sizes can be made to use the same amount of material. This will lead to people driving the 10 miles to the local tip, and dumping their crap there. you cannot just slice in half the stuff you use. Thirdly, leaving rubbish lying around, whether in kitchens, gardens, or wherever, for two weeks will present a health hazard. The collection of rubbish is one public service most conservatives are happy to have provided by the state or agents thereof: its introduction was primarily for public health reasons and it is those that are being completely ignored here. Over and above some putative threat to the earth the first priority of a government ("with limited resources" as we're always being told) should be the health of its citizens. But now they are using the threat of disease as another stick to beat people into changing what they see as outrageous "consumerist" lifestyles.

Naturally, as far as our council is concerned, it is just because of "targets" and you know us guv, our hands are tied.

I saw this quote on Samizdata today:

Despite the compelling evidence against recycling, Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth wants everyone to be forced to recycle. He attacks support for "the personal freedoms of citizens... this is a basic value that will need to be reviewed."

It's difficult to avoid the thought that for many on the green left, this already is being reviewed, and it can be done nice and easily as the first priority for anyone is the imminent destruction of earth. Unless we abandon everything that socialists have always hated (except when they were celebrating the latest pig iron and steel production figures from the socialist bloc), we will all die. As before, socialists dismiss the liberty of the individual. Then, it was in the service of releasing the proles from bondage. Now, it's saving the earth. Either way, the individual is of little consequence, although as a small reward, they can have as many orgasms as they like (why does the Green Party take the line that under 16s have a right to "satisfying physical relationships" as I saw in a letter to the Times recently, I wonder).