Small Government = Big Fraud, Poor quality of life
Discussion
Have seen this piece today: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec...
TL;DR: the waste disposal licensing regime is so under funded it essentially does nothing.
Yes, I don’t like Monbiot either sometimes, but in this case he’s simply reporting.
The more I see of the cutbacks in our public services and regulators, the more I feel we’re at a tipping point. If the fraud figure in that article - ~£140bn pa - is accurate, that’s 6% of GDP. How much higher does it have to get before confidence starts to collapse?
TL;DR: the waste disposal licensing regime is so under funded it essentially does nothing.
Yes, I don’t like Monbiot either sometimes, but in this case he’s simply reporting.
The more I see of the cutbacks in our public services and regulators, the more I feel we’re at a tipping point. If the fraud figure in that article - ~£140bn pa - is accurate, that’s 6% of GDP. How much higher does it have to get before confidence starts to collapse?
skwdenyer said:
Have seen this piece today: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec...
TL;DR: the waste disposal licensing regime is so under funded it essentially does nothing.
Yes, I don’t like Monbiot either sometimes, but in this case he’s simply reporting.
The more I see of the cutbacks in our public services and regulators, the more I feel we’re at a tipping point. If the fraud figure in that article - ~£140bn pa - is accurate, that’s 6% of GDP. How much higher does it have to get before confidence starts to collapse?
How else are you going to move public money into the private hands of your chums and sponsors?TL;DR: the waste disposal licensing regime is so under funded it essentially does nothing.
Yes, I don’t like Monbiot either sometimes, but in this case he’s simply reporting.
The more I see of the cutbacks in our public services and regulators, the more I feel we’re at a tipping point. If the fraud figure in that article - ~£140bn pa - is accurate, that’s 6% of GDP. How much higher does it have to get before confidence starts to collapse?
Pastor Of Muppets said:
When I saw the title I immediately thought...Not another SNP thread.
Mr one of my favourite usernames it’s not always about bonnie Scotland and I say that as one who knows it’s not always about NI either.Underinvestment in basic infrastructure is a problem. Regardless of whether you’re a big or small government type. Some’s devolved, some isn’t in the case of NI, guessing Scotland has more control than here but similar circumstances apply.
markcoznottz said:
Remember what cunmings said about Whitehall/ civil service. It’s more important to signal that you are doing ‘something’ than doing productive work. Look at the % of custodials for fly tipping it’s less than 1% .
As so often, he was pretty much spot-on. You don't have to like the man to recognise that he had some useful observations to make.The bigger question has to be this: where is all the money going? Obviously, the fact we're a pretty low-tax country - about on a par with Moldova, 26th in Europe, when measured by tax take as a % of GDP - make a big difference here. But since personal taxes do not seem especially low, it must mean an awful lot of GDP is essentially untaxed...?
turbobloke said:
Electro1980 said:
Standard government answer “cut funding! That will stop waste”.
Great joke, ha ha ha.Increasing funding will cut waste?
The thread title - awesome propaganda.
This is the licence I would need if I put any waste in my car from a job. Not having that licence could land me with a big fine. We used to take our waste to the local waste disposal centre but no more. If the customer is able I tell them to put it in their car and take it to the tip or we put it in smaller bags and they add it to their general waste bin over a few of weeks. I have access to a companies skip so occasionally give them a few quid in return for putting a few bags in for an older customer but risk a fine in doing so.
My other alternative is to pay the local 'waste disposal experts' to dump it god knows where at £120 a time... The whole system, which used to work perfectly is now utterly f
ked...
My other alternative is to pay the local 'waste disposal experts' to dump it god knows where at £120 a time... The whole system, which used to work perfectly is now utterly f
ked...I don't generally like Monbiot, but I did like his goldfish alias.
Restrictions on tips is my bugbear, as Surrey what £4 off me to throw away a single bag of rubble.
But I see why they did it: with landfill tax paid on tonnages, and the law technically saying DIY waste isn't household waste, it was an obvious way to shave a few hundred grand from their budget.
The thing is though, the EA could never police waste carrier licences. Like scrap metal, it's just too big for them, or even the actual police to police.
Eg I live in a small town near Gatwick. We've got 2 metal recyclers, several aggregate and recycling processors that are obvious from the main roads. There's probably many more.
They'd have to be a police van on every corner, on every trading estate, on every yard or compound to realistically prevent illegal waste carrying.
It would also I'm sure highlight any number of illegal vehicles, driving offences and other such things
But we'd have lurched towards a police state, and frankly the cost would be massive (plus needing to find treble the number of people who want to be in the police)
Restrictions on tips is my bugbear, as Surrey what £4 off me to throw away a single bag of rubble.
But I see why they did it: with landfill tax paid on tonnages, and the law technically saying DIY waste isn't household waste, it was an obvious way to shave a few hundred grand from their budget.
The thing is though, the EA could never police waste carrier licences. Like scrap metal, it's just too big for them, or even the actual police to police.
Eg I live in a small town near Gatwick. We've got 2 metal recyclers, several aggregate and recycling processors that are obvious from the main roads. There's probably many more.
They'd have to be a police van on every corner, on every trading estate, on every yard or compound to realistically prevent illegal waste carrying.
It would also I'm sure highlight any number of illegal vehicles, driving offences and other such things
But we'd have lurched towards a police state, and frankly the cost would be massive (plus needing to find treble the number of people who want to be in the police)
skwdenyer said:
Have seen this piece today: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec...
TL;DR: the waste disposal licensing regime is so under funded it essentially does nothing.
Yes, I don’t like Monbiot either sometimes, but in this case he’s simply reporting.
The more I see of the cutbacks in our public services and regulators, the more I feel we’re at a tipping point. If the fraud figure in that article - ~£140bn pa - is accurate, that’s 6% of GDP. How much higher does it have to get before confidence starts to collapse?
Pinko commie rag. That article is just word soup to make up the content quota before end of month payday. TL;DR: the waste disposal licensing regime is so under funded it essentially does nothing.
Yes, I don’t like Monbiot either sometimes, but in this case he’s simply reporting.
The more I see of the cutbacks in our public services and regulators, the more I feel we’re at a tipping point. If the fraud figure in that article - ~£140bn pa - is accurate, that’s 6% of GDP. How much higher does it have to get before confidence starts to collapse?
Ian Geary said:
I don't generally like Monbiot, but I did like his goldfish alias.
Restrictions on tips is my bugbear, as Surrey what £4 off me to throw away a single bag of rubble.
But I see why they did it: with landfill tax paid on tonnages, and the law technically saying DIY waste isn't household waste, it was an obvious way to shave a few hundred grand from their budget.
The thing is though, the EA could never police waste carrier licences. Like scrap metal, it's just too big for them, or even the actual police to police.
Eg I live in a small town near Gatwick. We've got 2 metal recyclers, several aggregate and recycling processors that are obvious from the main roads. There's probably many more.
They'd have to be a police van on every corner, on every trading estate, on every yard or compound to realistically prevent illegal waste carrying.
It would also I'm sure highlight any number of illegal vehicles, driving offences and other such things
But we'd have lurched towards a police state, and frankly the cost would be massive (plus needing to find treble the number of people who want to be in the police)
These are good points.Restrictions on tips is my bugbear, as Surrey what £4 off me to throw away a single bag of rubble.
But I see why they did it: with landfill tax paid on tonnages, and the law technically saying DIY waste isn't household waste, it was an obvious way to shave a few hundred grand from their budget.
The thing is though, the EA could never police waste carrier licences. Like scrap metal, it's just too big for them, or even the actual police to police.
Eg I live in a small town near Gatwick. We've got 2 metal recyclers, several aggregate and recycling processors that are obvious from the main roads. There's probably many more.
They'd have to be a police van on every corner, on every trading estate, on every yard or compound to realistically prevent illegal waste carrying.
It would also I'm sure highlight any number of illegal vehicles, driving offences and other such things
But we'd have lurched towards a police state, and frankly the cost would be massive (plus needing to find treble the number of people who want to be in the police)
A start would be licensing builders (like most civilised countries do). No licence, no work. If losing the licence to trade was the penalty for not sorting waste out properly, I suspect that would weed out a lot of the trouble. If you make it an offence to hire an unlicensed builder, that would put the onus on householders too.
People complain of "big government" but we have nothing of the sort. If you want to start a business, it is like the wild west here.
Meanwhile, in what used to be the wild west, you need a licence. California has the Contractors State License Board; North Carolina the Licensing Board for General Contractors, and so on. If you want a licence, you have to demonstrate you're fit and proper, and pass some exams.
But, no, we're "freedom-loving people" so we have no need of licences here. Just let people be ripped-off, waste dumped, and so on.
In terms of "police state", I don't think you grasp that we'd only be "lurching" back to where we were in the past.
Since 2010, real day-to-day spending on police services in the UK (i.e. excluding capex) has dropped 16%. In real terms. The cut in police numbers is extraordinary. We have as many officers as we had in the late 1990s. Yet the UK population has increased by 17%. That 20k officers Boris banged on about? That's not even reversing the cuts his party implemented.
So we have far, far fewer officers per head. At the same time, we've significantly increased the range of crimes police have to deal with.
The only crime figures that seem to matter to the Governments we've had in the last decade have been those from the British Crime Survey. Those don't include things like illegal waste dumping - they're off the radar of the tabloids. Ergo they get no attention. The EA (per the article) has had its funding cut by 90% since 2007.
This laissez-faire approach to regulation has been normalised here. And still people want *less* regulation, FFS.
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