Tax is rubbish

Oh dear, I expect groans at that title. Rubbish tax, easy topic, quick blog. Gordon Brown wants to impose a 'pay as you throw' tax on rubbish in England. Simple policy, I don't need to explain in great detail.

This is not actually the angle I want to come at this story from, but suddenly I feel compelled to actually discuss my opinion on the issue. As with all of these issues, we can split the discussion up into two. Political considerations and practical considerations. Politically, this is suicide. All it will do is wind people up. On a practical level, I am unsure. It is a gross violation of civil liberties (a computer chip inside every bin, cataloguing exactly what we throw away, even Orwell wouldn't have thought of that), however Labour don't seem too fussed about such things, so I guess this is no surprise. On a practical level, I think more credit does need to be given to the motives behind this. We do face a massive problem with how much some households throw away, with bins full every week. This rubbish does not just disappear, it goes somewhere, and causes massive damage to the earth. It is a big problem, and this is a brave attempt to deal with it, but it is not the way to go. How should we go? Well, I honestly don't know. I don't like to criticise without offering constructive alternatives, but in this case, I can't help it.

What I actually want to talk about is local democracy. This tax will be collected by local councils, whether they agree with the policy or not. It is wrong, just wrong. Local councils shouldn't be forced to do this, they should concentrate on executing the wishes of democratically elected councillors. This is the problem with local democracy at the moment, we treat councils like agents of central government, with the democratically elected councillors dealt with as an after thought. These are people who have a mandate to execute, they are not employees of some nameless Quango. Lets treat them with a bit of respect, and let them do the job they have been elected to do.