« Moonbats Want Monkeys Classified as People | Main | Moonbat Killjoys Target Barbeque »
May 5, 2007
British Bureaucrats Milk Enviromoonbattery
Enviromoonbattery does serve one purpose: it allows bureaucrats to provide less for more, while simultaneously gnawing away at our freedoms. In Britain, the government has been exploiting green mania to make life all but unlivable.
Many local councils now pick up garbage only twice a week. The excuse is that this will force people to recycle their garbage, thus helping to meet European Union targets for reducing landfill volume. In actuality the only result is the garbage piles up and stinks, attracting disease-spreading rats and flies. But it does save the councils some money.
Envirokookiness also allows bureauweenies to generate new income. Brits pay $200 fines for not separating their recycling properly. It even permits charging twice for the same service, as when citizens are asked to pay up to $2.56 per mile to drive on roads that were already paid for with their taxes.
An apparent objective of liberal bureaucrats is to discourage employment, so that the largest possible percentage of the population is dependent on the government teat for subsistence. How better to do that than with road pricing schemes that could cost commuters as much as $50/day to go to work?
If you think gas is expensive in the US, trying filling up in the UK, where there is a $4/gallon tax on it, plus a 17.5% VAT on both the gas and the tax on the gas. That's right, the greedy green libs running Britain tax even taxes.
London imposes a "congestion charge" that has quickly risen to $16. The area it covers just doubled. Mayor Red Ken Livingstone now wants to jack the rate up to $50/day on vehicles deemed to be high carbon-emitters, which includes even some sedans. In Richmond, it can cost $600/year just to park in front of your house.
Another advantage of envirokookiness is it excuses the expansion of the surveillance state. Microchips have been implanted in garbage bins to keep track of how much garbage people are throwing away — all the better to regulate it.
As Lionel Shriver puts it:
Britain pursues monetarily punitive policies to advance environmental goals. Expediently, punitive fiscal policies line treasury coffers. They not only disproportionately penalize the less well off, and stultify economic growth; these fees, fines, duties, and charges lurking on every corner also create a larger social climate of oppression, resentment, and paranoia.
But what a small price to pay to be protected from the imaginary global warming crisis!
On a tip from Varla.
Posted by Van Helsing at May 5, 2007 11:23 AM
Comments
George Bush wants to eavesdrop on terrorists and the left explodes in fury.
But, if Big Brother Is Watching You in the name of Gaia, they're totally cool with that.
Posted by: V the K at May 5, 2007 12:32 PM
Yeah, as far as the "Liberals" and their foolish constituency are concerned, it's not WHAT is done that is important- it's WHO is doing it.
Posted by: Toa at May 5, 2007 2:00 PM
The big stink in the UK at the moment is over the weekly collection of general rubbish being gradually changed to a once every two weeks collection. Here in England I have a large black bin on wheels for general rubbish, emptied once a week, a blue wheelybin for glass in which a clear plastic bag for tin cans is to be put, emptied every two weeks, a brown wheelybin for paper, emptied every two weeks and a large green wheelybin for compostable green stuff, emptied once a month. The spychips have not yet been attached to any of my bins and the local refuse collection vehicles have not yet had the expensive electronic equipment installed to read the spychips so they can fine any environmental criminals who do not recycle properly but some areas have already had their bins fitted with the spychips without letting the people know.
Posted by: Pete at May 6, 2007 5:01 AM
Wabnt to know where the bi-weekly collection thing is coming from? While they dress it up in virtue with their claims that it'll force people to recycle, the truth is this is a policy of desperation. The EU recently imposed a 'tax' on landfill, which we in the UK have managed to perfect in to a paragon of efficient waste management and disposal, using it to reclaim land that would otehrwise be quite useless. A lot of so-called 'new towns' were built on old landfill sites. I can think of mroe than a few quarries that were returned to a natural state by using the old holes as landfill. All of that is now taxed per tonne, so they're cutting back on waste collection in order to reduce the amount of landfill waste. The irony of this is of course lost on most people, as landfill is far less polluting than the incineration favoured by most other EU members, and less polluting still than the current favoured method of simply exporting the waste to china for 'recycling'.
Short version is: there's always an EU angle. If the government were to admit that this is a direct result of EU policy it would demonstrate just how little power they have, which would be disastous for their little schemes and pensions. Instead they pretend they're doing it for the greater good.
Posted by: Archonix at May 6, 2007 8:12 AM
Hey Archonix,
Don't whine about the EU octopuss more than us on the Continent. You Brits still have your money (I mean the sterling).
Posted by: Demesure at May 7, 2007 3:00 AM
I won't respect anything across the atlantic until I see real change there.
watch V for vendetta and do it already.
Posted by: furballz at May 7, 2007 12:20 PM
