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April 22, 2008
"The Battle to Reduce Waste" Claims Another Casualty
The latest from trash-obsessed Airstrip One:
With his rubbish collected only once a fortnight, Gareth Corkhill's wheelie bin was so full the lid wouldn't shut. And for that, the father of four finds himself with a criminal record. Magistrates convicted the 26-year-old bus driver after hearing evidence that the lid was four inches ajar, which is against rules to stop bins overflowing.
He was ordered to pay £210 — a week's wages — after he declined to pay an on-the-spot fine imposed by the local council's bin police, who visited him wearing stab-proof vests and carrying photographic evidence of his crime.
To add insult to injury he was told to pay a £15 victim surcharge to help victims of violence — despite there being no victim — and threatened with prison if he failed to pay. Rapists, murderers and other violent criminals who have earned a jail sentence rather than a fine are immune from the penalty.
Yesterday the council, Copeland in Cumbria, said that Mr Corkhill's family had caused problems for "the battle to reduce waste".
Britons will also be fined if they put their bins out earlier than 7 a.m. — never mind that some people leave for work before then.
What are they supposed to do with their garbage if they can't throw it away? Why, recycle it, of course!
On a tip from essemess.
Posted by Van Helsing at April 22, 2008 6:48 AM
Comments
Perhaps Britons need to read today's WaPo editorial on how green policies are:
- using more energy than ever before
- starving a good chunk of the world population to death
- poisoning local water resources
- destroying fragile habitats
- global deforestation, including destruction of the world's largest "carbon sink", leading to, ironically enough, higher carbon emissions
And all this, from two leading green environmentalists.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/21/AR2008042102555.html?hpid%3Dopinionsbox1&sub=AR
P.S. according to the article we are using an astounding 1/4 of the U.S. total corn output for fuel, which is estimated to have had no impact on oil consumption.
Posted by: mega at April 22, 2008 8:28 AM
The thing of that is, mega, that all of those consequences were things right-wingers warned would happen if Congress passed the ethanol mandate... but we were vilified and ridiculed by the greens, the left, and Republicans looking to play to the miseducated masses.
Posted by: V the K at April 22, 2008 8:35 AM
The problem is that, thermodynamically, ethanol production must be close to a wash. The compound is already partially oxygenated, thereby reducing the enthalpy of combustion. And the enormous energy input necessary to distill the ethanol from a dilute aqueous solution must pretty much account for the fuel value of the product.
Silly.
Posted by: Jay Guevara at April 22, 2008 10:27 AM
This story sounds like a Monty Python skit gone awry.
Posted by: on-the-rocks at April 22, 2008 10:35 AM
The BBC World Service radio has the victim saying he'd be fined less for littering if he just threw the trash on the ground.
Posted by: BURNING HOT at April 22, 2008 9:16 PM
