A householder has been left with a £225 bill and a criminal conviction after over-filling his bin.
There was a time when we were largely a law abiding nation. The implicit deal was that there weren\’t that many laws which we had to obey and there was great social pressure upon people to obey them. A criminal conviction was, for example, a badge of shame for a large percentage of the population.
That deal rather breaks down when there are now a myriad of trivial things for which you can indeed gain a criminal conviction.
The 26-year-old claims that the bin was overfilled by four inches, although the council says it was "more like six".
Over-filling a bin….
A spokesman for Copeland council said Mr Wilson-Corkhill had been issued with an extra-large bin. "What we have to get across to people is that central government is asking us to reach strict targets on recycling. If we don\’t achieve them, we will be heavily fined."
That spokesman says more than he actually means there. For it is indeed the central government which insists upon these absurdities: the one in Brussels. It is they who insist that we should not use the simplest and most efficient method of waste disposal, landfill, and that we must meet absurd, costly and entirely counter-productive recycling targets.
Our provincial government at Westminster has nothing to do with it.
Can we leave yet?
The courts will be very busy coping with the cases dealing with the first rubbish collection after Christmas.
Another point would a jury have convicted him?
“A spokesman for Copeland council said Mr Wilson-Corkhill had been issued with an extra-large bin. “What we have to get across to people is that central government is asking us to reach strict targets on recycling.”…”
“….so it’s no good you peasants refusing to do as your masters bid you!”
Just what would the local council prefer Mr Wilson-Corkhill to do with the rubbish he obviously can’t fit into the bin provided?
Eat it? Fly tip it? Put it in his neighbour’s bin?
You can sense the bafflement in that spokesman’s voice, can’t you? ‘But, there’s a law! People have to recycle! Does…not…compute! ‘
“Another point would a jury have convicted him?”
You’d like to think not, but you never know…
does he now have to provide a dna sample?
“does he now have to provide a dna sample?”
Not unless he was arrested. This was probably dealt with by a summons.
At least the chap put the rubbish in the bin. Round my way my way one isn’t prosecuted for a slight “overfill” – the binmen just leave the wheelie untouched.
I am sure that is nothing to do with the growing flytipping in our nearby woods. Nothing at all…
Bastards.
“there are now a myriad of trivial things for which you can indeed gain a criminal conviction”
He has a criminal conviction for not paying a civil penalty for something that he clearly and obviously did. Were he not an utter idiot, he would have paid up and would not have incurred a criminal conviction…
Flytipping in our district has increased enormously during the last year, as any thinking person might have predicted, since it is becoming harder and harder to throw anything away legally. All “they” will do, of course, is punish people ever more severely, because “they” probably have no discretion to deal with the cause of the problem. Our local authority has no authority of its own.
“Flytipping in our district has increased enormously during the last year, as any thinking person might have predicted…”
We should find some of those ‘thinking persons’ and elect them to the UK Parliament, so they can tell the EU where to shove its rules.
It’s not the EU that dictates our rubbish is collected every two weeks. In Portugal we get our rubbish collected every two days. in parts of Spain it’s a daily collection. This is just “Peaked-cap syndrome”. As I’ve said before elsewhere, the Nazis’ biggest mistake was to wear uniforms. Our gauleiters dress in civvies and get away with a lot more because of that.