Bin Tax / The Late Late

AngelofFire

refuse disposal is an essential public service in the 1980s when the country was in recession we never had to pay bin taxes. why should we start paying for it during a time of considerable prosperity. Our income tax pays for it already. if you ask me the governemnt is just slowly trying to sell off the entire refuse service to a private corporation. Our taxes pay for the service already why should we have to pay an extra charge? our money is only going into the backpockets of the fatcats.

Originally posted by AngelofFire
Our taxes pay for the service already why should we have to pay an extra charge? our money is only going into the backpockets of the fatcats.

Lovely rant there, but incorrect .
I'm curious, since you are entering a discussion here, have you read the other points raised which are totally at odds with your soundbites.

mm

ReefBreak

First off, the Anti-Bin Tax people got absolutely hammered on the Late Late the other night. The fact that the audience applauded whenever they were shown up for being the Ideology-Before-People Marxists that they are was very informing. It shows that the vast majority of people have no time for them.

(Wo)Man of the Match award goes to the elderly lady that spoke at the very end - she very eloquently destroyed the Anti-Bin Charge people in the audience. The Anti-Bin Charge people did get plenty of time to promote their cause - I would say about 33% of time when to Brid Coppinger and her ilk, 33% of time to Martin Cullen and 33% of time to various opinions in the audience.

Claire Daly and her husband were also completely destroyed on the Marian Finucane show this morning (no, I do have a life - I listened to it on the way to work in my car). They were going round in so many circles, it was hilarious.

Anyway, like Cork and Bonkey have said, tax rates now are far less than they were in the 80s. And I would rather pay lower taxes and also pay bin charges, because it means it forces me to recycle and well, all the other reasons that Cork and Bonkey have stated.

[Waaaay of topic] I think Pat Kenny did a good job. The Plank is definitely very bad at "light" entertainment, but he's very at home with political debate such as the above. And I quite like his radio show too, when I'm not working. But that's for the TV forum.

dathi1

Anyway, like Cork and Bonkey have said, tax rates now are far less than they were in the 80s. And I would rather pay lower taxes and also pay bin charges

And as I pointed out at the start of this thread I agree with the idea of user fees...but what amazes me here is everybody seems to be ranting on about low taxes and recycling and not debating the real issue of who is responsible and accountable for giving residents the best deal! ? What's the point of introducing a new council tax when its just going to sky rocket like the TV tax and Parking Tax in town?
This new Council tax should be scrapped now and when its made accountable to residents it then should be implemented by elected councillors on behalf of those residents.

and reef....come on lets face it....Pat Kenny isn't worth $140 a year.

Originally posted by dathi1
What's the point of introducing a new council tax when its just going to sky rocket like the TV tax and Parking Tax in town?
This new Council tax should be scrapped now and when its made accountable to residents it then should be implemented by elected councillors on behalf of those residents.

What do you mean made accountable to Residents?
The residents are voting with their pockets and paying up.
It's only a minority who are refusing to pay.
The service cannot be funded by manna from heaven, it's paid for by the user which is fair.
And as regards the TV license, would you like to see an end to public service broadcasting in Ireland? and consequently a Sky one schedule on RTE one?? No thank you!

Your parking comment is way off the wall too in my honest opinion, what do you want , free parking and clogged up streets??

Two off topic and unrelated issues there, which you've thrown in to deflect from the issue at hand ie how one should pay for waste disposal.

mm

dathi1

The residents are voting with their pockets and paying up.

Either you are Cullen himself or you haven't visited areas like Ballyfermot or Finglas. The lie of 80% payment is sounding a bit tired now.

And as regards the TV license, would you like to see an end to public service broadcasting in Ireland?

TG4 does a good job and only costs 16million...that will do nicely.

Your parking comment is way off the wall too in my honest opinion, what do you want , free parking and clogged up streets??

If I had a metro system like they have in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok or Singapore I'd fine people for entering the city centre in a car.....but its not like that is it.
again nobody in the public sector is accountable so why should we accept their dictats on this new tax.

Sparks

Originally posted by Man
The residents are voting with their pockets and paying up.
It's only a minority who are refusing to pay.

Actually, the latest figures from the council that were obtained through a freedom of information request showed that Fingal and Dun Laoighaire council areas were seeing approximately 20% of people paying the bill.

The service cannot be funded by manna from heaven, it's paid for by the user which is fair.

If the Polluter Pays, why are so many people being penalised with enormous bills when they only produce 15% of the landfill waste per annum - and of that 15%, a fair proportion is waste that was brought to recycling points to be recycled and was then just dumped to landfill sites.

I will leave your off topic remarks on the TV license alone except to say I totally disagree,start a thread in ICDG and I'll argue that one out with you there.

again nobody in the public sector is accountable so why should we accept their dictats on this new tax.

Because we live in a Democracy in which we elect representatives that control these issues and govern on our behalf.

The lie of 80% payment is sounding a bit tired now.

Could I have a source for that being a lie please

mm

Sparks

Originally posted by Man
Could I have a source for that being a lie please

As was pointed out in the Humanities Bin Tax thread, FOI requests from the councils involved revealed that payment figures were actually running around 20% or so. The council was adding in waivers and partial payments (of any and all levels) to come up with the 80% figures.

http://www.stopthebintax.com/payment_calc.htm

ReefBreak

Oh god, stop, stop, you're cracking me up here. Everyone should read that link - just to see the type of people running the bin-charge campaign. The "Stop The Bin Tax" campaign have decided that waivers and partial-payments are the same as non-payment, and so have come up with 80% non-payment. Although interestingly, no figures are included on the page.

For a truer figure, you need the following calculation:

Total that have paid-up fully + (Total that have partially paid x Average Percentage of Payment)
...divided by...
Total that have paid-up fully or partially + Total people that have yet to pay, but do not qualify for a waiver.

For the partially paid people, you could take each individual payment and multiply it by the Payment Percentage, but obviously that would take too long.

Or for an easier calculation simply:
Total that have paid-up fully
...divided by...
Total that have paid-up fully + Total people that have yet to pay, but do not qualify for a waiver.

Sparks

Originally posted by ReefBreak
Oh god, stop, stop, you're cracking me up here. Everyone should read that link - just to see the type of people running the bin-charge campaign.

You know, that would be a cutting, decisively winning comment, totally undermining your "opponent's" credibility, were it not for two small things:
1) Your "side" is Fianna Fail.
2) This isn't actually a sports competition and what affects the people you're deriding is coming for you next.

The "Stop The Bin Tax" campaign have decided that waivers and partial-payments are the same as non-payment, and so have come up with 80% non-payment. Although interestingly, no figures are included on the page.

The figures are on the rest of the site - that page is supposed to show how the figures are calculated. Maybe had you actually read it instead of looking to score points, you're have noticed that.

Total people that have yet to pay, but do not qualify for a waiver.

And why would you include those that do not qualify for a waiver only? After all, the "other side" are the ones that decide who qualifies for a waiver, so that would seem to be a tactic that's designed to let Fianna Fail decide who the "victors" are...

ReefBreak

It's pretty simple. There are 10 people in a room - 5 people have fully paid, 5 people have a waiver and have not paid. By the Anti-Bin tax calculations, that's a 50% payment figure, when in reality it's a 100% payment figure.

Also, I applaude FF/PD for this campaign. It's time we had a modern waste system in Dublin.

This isn't actually a sports competition and what affects the people you're deriding is coming for you next.

Please explain.

Sparks

Originally posted by ReefBreak
It's pretty simple. There are 10 people in a room - 5 people have fully paid, 5 people have a waiver and have not paid. By the Anti-Bin tax calculations, that's a 50% payment figure, when in reality it's a 100% payment figure.

Which would be correct were it not for the fact that those that decide who gets a waiver and who does not are those who have a vested interest in the figure being as high as possible to further their agenda.

Also, I applaude FF/PD for this campaign. It's time we had a modern waste system in Dublin.

Indeed it is - since at the present those "producing" the waste are putting far more effort into recycling than those in charge of managing the waste infrastructure.

Please explain.

I pay waste removal charges to a private company (Noble, out in wicklow). Their charges have risen by 20% or so every six months on average, as was pointed out on the Late Late show (which by the way, Cullen disgraced himself on, and in which the bin tax protestors came off as most assuredly the more credible people). There's no alternative here - Noble have a monopoly, as in Bray. And with monopoly comes high prices, poor service and no control over the service whatsoever. And the introduction of private markets requires regulation which means leglislation - and as we all know, this government has 115 seperate pieces of legislation in the queue, only 15 of which are currently ready as bills to be "debated" (excuse the sarcasm, but you read a dail transcript or watch oireachtas report and you'll understand my meaning) in Dail Eireann, so there's a long wait for any needed legislation and legislation isn't something you can rush without significant risk.
So privitisation (as we already knew thanks to the thatcher years in the UK and their aftereffects, as well as thanks to the Eircom privitisation here) is a bad idea - and it will affect you just as surely as it will everyone else. So while you deride the bin tax protestors now because you're upset that they're refusing to pay what you already pay on the basis that it's unfair, their best interests and yours actually coincide here.

bonkey

Originally posted by Sparks
If the Polluter Pays, why are so many people being penalised with enormous bills when they only produce 15% of the landfill waste per annum

Are you implying that those who produce the remaining 85% (business, I assume) are not being charged accordingly?

Any links?

Which would be correct were it not for the fact that those that decide who gets a waiver and who does not are those who have a vested interest in the figure being as high as possible to further their agenda.

OK, but hold on Sparks. Either people have waivers, or they don't. Are you saying that the pro-bin-tax are giving more waivers in order to make the overal payment percentages seem higher? To what end? To up their percentages but have less money? That would seem to fly in the face of your "money grabbing thieving bastids" argument.

If they are not giving excessive waivers, then surely your comment is meaningless.

And if they are giving excessive waivers, why have you been complaining so vociferously up to now about the farce of how few people qualified for them, and how little they were given, and how the entire waiver scheme was just another joke to convince people that they wouldn't be robbed. Now you're saying that its in the scheme's interest to give too many waivers.

You seem to be arbitrarily representing the situation different ways in order to suit your reponse to any given post - which is hardly a convincing approach.

jc

Sparks

Originally posted by bonkey
Are you implying that those who produce the remaining 85% (business, I assume) are not being charged accordingly?

Well I wasn't actually, but it's an interesting question. I don't have numbers for how much businesses pay for waste removal - does anyone else?

OK, but hold on Sparks. Either people have waivers, or they don't. Are you saying that the pro-bin-tax are giving more waivers in order to make the overal payment percentages seem higher? To what end? To up their percentages but have less money? That would seem to fly in the face of your "money grabbing thieving bastids" argument.

Actually it doesn't jc, it just means that those pushing the bin tax need to have a brain in their heads and a basic understanding of people. Begin by introducing the tax with waivers given out generously, then when it's been introduced and accepted, begin to move the threshold for getting on the waiver scheme. It's not like it's an unprecedented move in this country...

You seem to be arbitrarily representing the situation different ways in order to suit your reponse to any given post - which is hardly a convincing approach.

I think that's more an artifact of the different ways waivers are applied in the different council areas JC.

bonkey

Originally posted by Sparks
then when it's been introduced and accepted, begin to move the threshold for getting on the waiver scheme. It's not like it's an unprecedented move in this country...

And thats what it all boils down to, really, isn't it.

The bin-charges are ultimately wrong because you will trust nothing the government does. If they offer waivers, you claim they'll only take them back again. In fact, no matter what they do other than back down completely, it will be the first step on a slippery slope to our doom.

I accept that there's grounds to distrust the government, but surely the whole bin issue is just a cover - a mechanism to whip up public support on an issue thats significantly popular in at least some localities, because people in general aren't ever going to get off their ass-ends and just make a change on their own.

Maybe I'm wrong, but the more I see of the standard complaints, the more I'm convinced that this is the driving force behind so much of the criticism of public services. Its not that the government may be doing something unpopular, its that almost no-one trusts them to do the right thing.

Its scary, but I just don't see whipping up agitation on issues as the solution, because all you're doing is asking/telling the people you don't trust to offer a different option.....which you're not going to trust either.

Sure, we can hypothesise that sooner or later they might learn how to end this...by becoming trustworth...but while the public re-elect the usual suspects time after time after time for whatever justification they see as valid, change will never come.

jc

Sparks

Originally posted by bonkey
And thats what it all boils down to, really, isn't it.

What, the bin tax debate or the motivation behind how I feel about it? Or did you confuse the two for a moment there?

The bin-charges are ultimately wrong because you will trust nothing the government does.

Ah. You did.
Nope, sorry JC. I don't trust the current system of government, and those serving in it. But that's got little to do with whether or not the bin tax protests are correct or not.
It colours my interpretation of what I see, yes - but not necessarily in an incorrect fashion. It's not like the current members of Dail and Seanad Eireann haven't earned their reputations, after all.

If they offer waivers, you claim they'll only take them back again. In fact, no matter what they do other than back down completely, it will be the first step on a slippery slope to our doom.

It's not that simple. For a start, had you read what I've said over the last week on this, you'd know I think that the underlying fundamental idea behind the bin tax is in fact correct - but the way the government has implemented it and plans to continue implementing it, is a perversion of the fundamental idea of the bin tax (ie. that the polluter pays so that the cost is spread fairly), and then there's the whole privitisation idea in the wings - one I have serious objections to for good reason. And I'm not alone in this.

but surely the whole bin issue is just a cover - a mechanism to whip up public support on an issue thats significantly popular in at least some localities, because people in general aren't ever going to get off their ass-ends and just make a change on their own.

And now you're confusing the bin tax protestors (who are ordinary people) with the SWP politicians who saw the protests and immediately cashed in on a popular movement as politicians of all kinds do, and have been doing - FG against, FF against, SWP for, Sinn Fein trying to stay really quiet because they said for but acted against, and Labour with infighting over which way they're going to jump.
Again, this is an artifact of the system of government we have and I don't think any system is ever going to prevent it

Its not that the government may be doing something unpopular, its that almost no-one trusts them to do the right thing.

That's not lazy thinking though JC, that's born of long experience. Even the good ideas the government has thought up and implemented well (and they're rare indeed) has become a political football and had people trying to pervert it - like college fees for example.

all you're doing is asking/telling the people you don't trust to offer a different option.....which you're not going to trust either.

Yup. Which is why I'm convinced that our system of government is the real problem that needs solving, not the people in the seats.

ReefBreak

Yup. Which is why I'm convinced that our system of government is the real problem that needs solving, not the people in the seats.

So the Bin Tax isn't really the problem? It's the system of government that's the problem. Fine, you can help change the system by voting for someone else the next time. But until it changes, you're compelled to pay your waste disposal charges like everyone else.

dathi1

Listening to Ken Livingston on Marian Finnucane this morning and even Red ken said that Central Government should control local government issues like Waste collection. I would have to agree. We need more local government on local issues and more accountability so that we cant be ripped off like the people in Wicklow with their 20% rise every six months for bin collection.
Yes..Scrap the Bin Tax and reform local councils to make them more accountable.

But until it changes, you're compelled to pay your waste disposal charges like everyone else.

At an unknown cost and a unknown cost rise per year which has no accountability...eh no way.

ReefBreak

http://www.stopthebintax.com/figures.htm

This is where the figures come from that produced the "80% non-payment rate".

Out of 64,951 homes sent bills 12,786 had clear accounts at week ending 2nd May 2003. A further 6,380 have paid the first moiety. 13,839 have made other form of payments during the peroid 1/1/03 to 2/5/03. A further 18,627 households have made payments or received a waiver during the peroid 1/1/00 to 2/5/03. 13,319 households have made no payments at all.

So 1/5 have paid and 4/5 (or 80%) haven't paid up (in full or at all) yet.

This info is from Catherine Keenan, Freedom of Information Officer D/R

Council now claiming that 33% of households will face non collection i.e have paid less than E200 over the years. Council.

So in summary then:

64,951 households

12,786 clear accounts
6,380 paid first year
13,839 partial payments from Jan 03 to May 03
18,627 partial payments or waivers (from Jan 00 to May 03)
13,319 no payments

The 80% non-payment figure is complete rubbish, you can take any number of conclusions from these figures.

ReefBreak

The Indo has a good article on the issue in today's paper.

While political activists continue the bin charges war, many families are quietly getting on with the task of playing their part in solving our waste crisis. City Life Editor JOHN SPAIN and FIONA GARTLAND report

BLOCKADING bin lorry depots, waving placards and even ambushing bin trucks in housing estates - that's easy. What's difficult is actually doing something about the waste crisis facing the country in general and Dublin in particular. And that has to happen on an individual level.

As all Dubliners should know by now, most of the city's traditional landfills are full and much of our waste is being exported to other places like County Kildare (where, ironically, the residents pay for bin collections).

We will face a real crisis in about four or five years when the Balleally tiphead in the Fingal area closes. Even though Fingal are attempting to open another tiphead in their area before then, one expert has suggested that we are now "on a knife edge."

Whatever happens, landfill as a way of getting rid of huge quantities of waste has run out of time, especially in the Dublin region. The new TV ad depicting an impending waste Armageddon may seem alarmist. But unless Dubliners start changing their attitude to waste and changing their behaviour, even that appalling vista could become the reality we face.

Arguing about bin charges won't solve the problem. The only thing that will avert the crisis is individual action to reduce the waste we produce.

And that means effort on an individual level; house by house, estate by estate, we all have to play our part. Bin charge campaigns may get you on the Late Late or increase your vote in the local elections. But it is the humdrum reality of every family and every household in the city reducing the amount of waste they produce that will be the real solution. That is the real revolution to be won.

There is no other way that Dublin's waste crisis can be solved. And the only way we are ever going to achieve this is by sticking to the principle of paying for what we throw away. Once you subsume the cost of a bin service into overall taxation, you remove any incentive for people to cut back on waste.

That is the reality. Nothing works like charging. Most of us are well-intentioned, but lazy. It takes an avoidable charge to get us to make the effort.

Why should you go to the bother of sorting out cardboard and paper, plastics, tetra packs, cans and biodegradable waste, if your neighbour just throws it all in the bin and gets rid of it for nothing?

Which is why many so many families in the Fingal area support the bin tag system. They pay a €5 bin tag charge to have their black bin emptied. If they pay the black bin charge, their green bin is emptied for free every few weeks. Unlike central taxation, or even an annual bin charge, this bin tag system encourages households to reduce waste.

All bins in the Fingal area carry the slogan You Only Pay For What You Throw Away. With a bit of effort, putting all your paper, cardboard and cans in the "free" green bin, recycling your bottles and plastics at your local recycling centre and composting your kitchen waste in the garden, you can drastically reduce the amount that you put in the black bin.

With good management you might only have to put out your black bin every second or third week. So you buy fewer bin tokens. That's where the saving comes in. And that's where the incentive lies.

Yes, it might seem like a lot of trouble. But the surprising thing is that behind all the controversy and the aggro, a lot of families in the Fingal area are quietly getting on with the job of making the system work.

At the weekend we visited one such family, the Goulding family who live in an estate in Clonee in the Dublin 15 area. Monica and Peter Goulding don't know what all the bin charge fuss is about. This year they will only pay €60 to Fingal to have their bins collected because they now only put their black bin out once a month.

When the charges were introduced they made a decision to try to recycle as much as they could. They still don't have a composter to take kitchen waste but even so they have managed to substantially reduce what they bin. All their paper, cardboard and cans go in the black bin. Glass, plastic and tetra paks are bagged and brought to the Bring Centre every few weeks.

They agree that recycling requires a shift in attitude and a little effort but they don't believe that it's hard work. "We don't think it's such a big deal, we've been segregating all of our waste for the last two years," says Monica.

"We've always been conscious of waste. We reuse all sorts of things in the house. If we get a nice jar or a nice plastic container we'd use it again. Old clothes go to be recycled or if they're good enough, to one of the charity shops."

So she has always been environmentally conscious. But when Fingal introduced the bin charges she decided to put in a bit more of an effort.

"We were putting out a fairly full bin at the beginning and then when they started putting the €5 charge on we thought how can we limit the amount of times we put it out? So we put more of an effort and more thought into it."

It helps to have somewhere to store plastic bottles, tetra paks and glass, but according to the Gouldings, it's not essential to have a lot of space. "We do have somewhere to store the bags of plastic and glass. But my parents live in an artisan cottage and they only have a small back yard yet they still manage to do it."

Peter wasn't quite as committed to recycling as Monica in the beginning. "To be honest, I only came on board when it started to hit me in the pocket," Peter says. "I think it's the same as with the plastic bags. That seemed strange before it became law, but now everybody does it."

They have moved from putting their black wheelie bin out every week to once a month and they don't have a composter yet (in Fingal there's a two-month waiting list for composters which cost $28). "We intend to get a composter soon. Once we get that we'll be able to put in all the organic stuff, the leftovers after meals, the vegetable and fruit peelings, the stale bread, the egg shells, the teabags and the grass cuttings. When we are able to keep the kitchen waste out of the black bin it will be great."

Even without the composter the Gouldings fill only a two litre ice cream tub of rubbish a day. "I keep an ice cream tub on the drainer with one of those little vegetable bags inside it. That just sits on the counter top beside me and as I'm working during the day whatever comes to hand goes into that, and it's dumped into the bin at night."

Unrecyclable plastics, like yogurt and spread tubs, are placed carefully oneinside the other, to reduce bulk, and then into the ice cream tub. They don't use a bin on the floor with a lid that closes because they believe it makes them less aware of what they are throwing away.

"If there is a bin on the floor and it has a lid you aren't going to squash down containers every time," says Peter. "But if it's up there on the counter in a tub you are more conscious of it."

It took a while to get their two teenagers into the recycling routine. "In the beginning they couldn't remember what goes in which bin. Now they are fairly good and they would know to leave plastic bottles up on the counter for washing. Of course they won't wash them themselves - they are teenagers!"

Paper and light cardboard goes straight into the green bin, which they keep just outside the back door. Aluminium and food cans are rinsed and join the paper in the green bin.

Plastic bottles are washed, squashed and stored in a box inside the green bin and then moved to a black sack in the shed until they visit the Bring Centre. "We recycle all our plastic liquid detergent, shampoo and shower gel bottles. They can all go to the centre once you clean them. Most of the plastics are recyclable. In the supermarket, we look for the symbol on them."

Glass is also washed, along with milk cartons and tetra paks, and sorted into separate bags. "We never buy packaged vegetables or moulded plastic like you'd see under fruit and we're looking in to not buying pre-packed meat too."

They also make an effort to buy the largest sizes in food stuffs. "We always buy two litre bottles of drinks instead of one and we buy in bigger bulk. The plastic liner inside cornflakes is not recyclable so if you buy one large box of cornflakes you're going to have less plastic than if you bought two of them. We noticed, too, that when we were in Switzerland people were unpacking stuff after they went through the checkout and leaving the boxes behind. There was a counter area for people to do that. I think we should start it here."

They've already begun unpacking products in furniture shops. "We bought a headboard and took the corrugated cardboard off and left that in the shop. They have to take that back off you if you don't want it."

A monthly visit to the bring centre either in Dunsink or Grangegorman ensures that the Gouldings' shed doesn't get too full.

They would not be happy if Fingal County Council had a fixed charge for bin collection or if the charge was incorporated into general taxation. "I would be raging if this goes and we go to a billing system. Sometimes you have to force people to do the right thing. I think this is the fairest way and it gives people an incentive."

For those who are taking a tentative step toward recycling and are already using the green bin, the Gouldings recommend plastic bottles and tetra paks as the next step. "People could start with those - wash them and then squash them down and every month or so take them to the Bring Centre. That would reduce the bulk in the bin, particularly the milk containers - you get through a lot of those with a family. If you stop binning them you'll be amazed how much bin space you save."

dathi1

Besides fairy stories from Independent Newspapers hacks on the late late.....Howick from the Herald felt so powerless about the 20% rise every six months in Bray that he had to plead with Cullen to do something about it.
Now FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME what do we do about uncontrolled waste costs and uncountable county managers? Is it back to the old "your local councillor is responsible and you can elect him out if you want" crap?? cos he's not....as is the case in point in Wicklow.

Originally posted by dathi1
Besides fairy stories from Independent Newspapers hacks on the late late.....Howick from the Herald felt so powerless about the 20% rise every six months in Bray that he had to plead with Cullen to do something about it.
Now FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME what do we do about uncontrolled waste costs and uncountable county managers? Is it back to the old "your local councillor is responsible and you can elect him out if you want" crap?? cos he's not....as is the case in point in Wicklow.

Sounds more like a wider political agenda there Daíthi1, perhaps you should talk to Joe Higgins, he may be able to advise you on that

your dismissal of the Independent article as a fairy story is telling-enough said :rolleyes:

mm

dathi1

Sounds more like a wider political agenda there Daíthi1, perhaps you should talk to Joe Higgins, he may be able to advise you on that

absolutely not..and its more central to the point...as for Joe Higgns..well I have to admire his style in a sea of quislings but he wouldn't be to keen on my Nationalist political leanings.

Originally posted by dathi1
.and its more central to the point..

I'd have thought a family in the indo example only having to spend an average of €60 a year on waste disposal costs would be an example for everyone and the way to go.
Yet there are people protesting in Fingal against that system too??
It exposes the political hoo haw perfectly from what I can see of the loudest of the bin charge protesters.

I'd spend a lot more than that on a good saturday night out

Sparks

Originally posted by ReefBreak
So the Bin Tax isn't really the problem? It's the system of government that's the problem. Fine, you can help change the system by voting for someone else the next time.

*lol*
*falls off seat*
Reef, are you trying to compete with Cork?

- "I'd like to see a different system"
- "Sure. Just take part in the old system. That'll bring about a total change in the system, because no politician has ever acted in a self-interested way. Except for Joe Higgins of course."

But until it changes, you're compelled to pay your waste disposal charges like everyone else.

You mean like 20% of everyone else.

Sparks

Originally posted by Man your dismissal of the Independent article as a fairy story is telling-enough said :rolleyes:

See there are two main problems with the article Man, and one with the source.

The source is the exceptional newspaper that published an front-page editorial condemning Berlusconi because of his demands for a certain carravagio to be returned, let's not forget

And the article shows a similar love for confirmed facts:

Whatever happens, landfill as a way of getting rid of huge quantities of waste has run out of time, especially in the Dublin region. The new TV ad depicting an impending waste Armageddon may seem alarmist. But unless Dubliners start changing their attitude to waste and changing their behaviour, even that appalling vista could become the reality we face.

This totally ignores the government's own figures which show that those dubliners are responsible for 15% of the problem, and that of that 15%, a large proportion is down to waste that they had seperated out for recycling and which was then dumped to landfill because of a lack of recycling plants. And this mistake is propogated throughout the article. Hell, two thirds of the article is about how a wonderful family do their part to reduce the waste problem - and then it ignores completely the hard cold fact that all that effort is completely wasted because the "recycled" waste goes to landfill anyway.

Which is why many so many families in the Fingal area support the bin tag system.

This ignores the Fingal council's own figures that show 80% of the people in Fingal have not paid the bin tax.

See, this is why I don't bother to buy the independent anymore. The only thing it's actually independent of is the truth of the matter.

ReefBreak

This ignores the Fingal council's own figures that show 80% of the people in Fingal have not paid the bin tax.

Quit quoting this figure Sparks - because it's obviously not true.