Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Lib Dem Cynical Claim of the Week
On their website this month the Lib Dems are making great things of their recycling initiative to put 50 "Dual Use" bins on the streets of MK.http://www.miltonkeynes.libdems.org.uk/news/265.html?PHPSESSID=6c43c43ab0723ded5d8d63cb3c42e88f They are quoted as saying Official figures for 2005/06 show that the Milton Keynes recycling rate was 31.5% of the total of household waste collected. That figure is set to rise to 36% over the next year. . Intersting. The actual stastistic is of 115,000 tonnes of household waste generated last year 31.6% was recycled or composted. In other words a significant proportion of that 31.6% comes from the green bins that contain organic (garden) waste. The rest goes straight to landfill.
It's unfortunate for the Lib Dems that I attended the same presentation from the officers of MKC that they did last month, and I have the actual figures in front of me!
What the lib Dems haven't told you on their website are the damning facts that highlight their policy-paralysis before the May elections.
Firstly, Municipal Waste (that is household and corporate combined) is growing on average by 2.5% every 4 years, but the annual population growth has been only 0.6% over the same period. In other words the amount of waste produced is growing far faster than the growth in population, and it will nearly double by 2020. While the Council is aiming to increase the amount of waste going for recycling to 36% next year it will never catch up with the growth of waste. In fact it's predicted that in 2008/9 we will exceed our landfill allowances. here's where it gets painful (i.e. costly). If we exceed our landfill allowances (set by Government) then we get fined as an authority £150 per tonne. If the growth in our waste contniues at the current rates by 2020 it will be costing us £8,000,000 a year in fines at today's prices.
What exactly are the Lib Dems doing about it? Well the answer is, until after the next election practically nothing!
There are some thorny issues to be grasped. First of all we need to encourage recycling so that we send less away to landfill and reduce the potential fine burden on the finances of the Council Tax Payers. Secondly we need to invest in the infrastructure needed to handle waste, and that means some sort of waste handling facility. There has been a lot of work done (much of it excellent too!) by the team at MKC responsible for Environmental Services centred around joint working with other authorities to investigate various forms of waste handling. It remains to be seen if any decisions will be taken this side of May given that the Lib Dems don't want to loose seats to contentious issues. I think we need to grasp them, and here's how:
Firstly I think the green bin scheme ought to be extended and, if finances allow, be provided free of charge.
Secondly I think that recycling is something that should happen in the home and not be relegated to a meagre 50 bins around the city. I believe we ought to prvide small bins so households can segregate paper waste, alluminium, and plastics and that those containers are put out with the bins every other week. Segregating recyclable waste in a centralised facility is expensive. It may take some time to change the behaviour of people to naturally think about segregating their own waste, but it will happen over time. It can even be encouraged through schemes to reduce Council Tax to households that recycle, a tactic that has been used in the US (successfully) for years.
Thirdly we need to invest in decent waste management facilities. Inicineration is the safest way of dealing with the problem (landfil can produce methane and CO2, the worst of the "Greenhouse Gases" as it decomposes) which can be burned off through the incineration process. The technology has progressed in leaps and bounds in recent years so that it is clean and the exhaust gases filtered to remove any smell. More importantly the heat generated can be fed into a Combined Heat and POwer (CHP) system that can help generate electricity and send it back into the national grid (negating the need for Wind Farms!) .
All of this needs to be fully scoped and investigated, funding needs to be found, and political will invested. Of course with an election comnig up you can bet that the Lib Dems will talk much and do little until after your votes are cast. What they will do though is shamelessly trump a drop in the ocean inititive like as if they have solved all of the world's problems at once.
Remember the Lib Dem Mantra:
Be wicked. Act shamelessly. Stir endlessly.
It's unfortunate for the Lib Dems that I attended the same presentation from the officers of MKC that they did last month, and I have the actual figures in front of me!
What the lib Dems haven't told you on their website are the damning facts that highlight their policy-paralysis before the May elections.
Firstly, Municipal Waste (that is household and corporate combined) is growing on average by 2.5% every 4 years, but the annual population growth has been only 0.6% over the same period. In other words the amount of waste produced is growing far faster than the growth in population, and it will nearly double by 2020. While the Council is aiming to increase the amount of waste going for recycling to 36% next year it will never catch up with the growth of waste. In fact it's predicted that in 2008/9 we will exceed our landfill allowances. here's where it gets painful (i.e. costly). If we exceed our landfill allowances (set by Government) then we get fined as an authority £150 per tonne. If the growth in our waste contniues at the current rates by 2020 it will be costing us £8,000,000 a year in fines at today's prices.
What exactly are the Lib Dems doing about it? Well the answer is, until after the next election practically nothing!
There are some thorny issues to be grasped. First of all we need to encourage recycling so that we send less away to landfill and reduce the potential fine burden on the finances of the Council Tax Payers. Secondly we need to invest in the infrastructure needed to handle waste, and that means some sort of waste handling facility. There has been a lot of work done (much of it excellent too!) by the team at MKC responsible for Environmental Services centred around joint working with other authorities to investigate various forms of waste handling. It remains to be seen if any decisions will be taken this side of May given that the Lib Dems don't want to loose seats to contentious issues. I think we need to grasp them, and here's how:
Firstly I think the green bin scheme ought to be extended and, if finances allow, be provided free of charge.
Secondly I think that recycling is something that should happen in the home and not be relegated to a meagre 50 bins around the city. I believe we ought to prvide small bins so households can segregate paper waste, alluminium, and plastics and that those containers are put out with the bins every other week. Segregating recyclable waste in a centralised facility is expensive. It may take some time to change the behaviour of people to naturally think about segregating their own waste, but it will happen over time. It can even be encouraged through schemes to reduce Council Tax to households that recycle, a tactic that has been used in the US (successfully) for years.
Thirdly we need to invest in decent waste management facilities. Inicineration is the safest way of dealing with the problem (landfil can produce methane and CO2, the worst of the "Greenhouse Gases" as it decomposes) which can be burned off through the incineration process. The technology has progressed in leaps and bounds in recent years so that it is clean and the exhaust gases filtered to remove any smell. More importantly the heat generated can be fed into a Combined Heat and POwer (CHP) system that can help generate electricity and send it back into the national grid (negating the need for Wind Farms!) .
All of this needs to be fully scoped and investigated, funding needs to be found, and political will invested. Of course with an election comnig up you can bet that the Lib Dems will talk much and do little until after your votes are cast. What they will do though is shamelessly trump a drop in the ocean inititive like as if they have solved all of the world's problems at once.
Remember the Lib Dem Mantra:
Be wicked. Act shamelessly. Stir endlessly.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Listening to "Dave" yesterday I couldn't help thinking he hit the nail squarely on the head in a couple of key areas:
1. If we are to restore the concept of "society" we need to focus on restoring discipline in the classroom (in other words handing power back to the teachers and away from unruly pupils who have more rights than those who teach them) and to curb the excesses of the entertainment industry who fool our children into believeing that mysogeny, violence, and dissorder are the way forward to earning "respect";
2. We need to hand control for managing problems over to those closest to delivery and away from centralised planners, quango-ists, and the clip-board monitors of state who's sole purpose in life is to set targets and monitor them;
3. To restore civic decision making to holders of civic office so that local issues are tackled head on by those with the local roots and knowledge.
I want to stay away from arguments on taxation for now because there are 9 years os systemic incompetance that needs to be turned around. Only once we have restored structure to Governance and order to chaos can we look at public expenditure and how to reduce it. David cameron's speech yesterday highlighted just this systematic, endemic, structural issue of waste, incompetence, and failure:
"Think of any issue - not just crime - and then think of Labour's response. This Government's way of doing things - the old way of doing things - is so familiar, and so depressing.
Ministers hold a summit.
They announce an eye-catching initiative.
A five-year plan.
Gordon Brown generously finds the money for it.
The money gets a headline, but no-one knows what to do with it.
So they create a unit in the Cabinet Office.
A task force is set up.
Regional co-ordinators are appointed.
Gordon Brown sets them targets - after all, it is his money.
Pilot schemes are launched.
The pilot schemes are rolled out across the country.
They are evaluated.
Then revised, re-organised and re-launched.
And then finally, once the reality dawns that the only people to benefit are the lawyers, accountants and consultants of Labour's quango army...
...with a pathetic whimper - but no hint of an apology - the whole thing is just abandoned.
We've seen too much of this in the past nine years.
Headline after headline but absolutely no follow-through. It is a story of ignorance, incompetence, arrogance. A story of wasted billions - and disappointed millions. Somewhere out there, there is a place where Blair and Brown will never go. It's dark. It's depressing. It's haunted by the failures of nine years of centralisation, gimmick and spin.
It is the graveyard of initiatives, where you'll find the e-University that died a death,the drugs czar that came and went...
...the Individual Learning Accounts that collapsed in fraud and waste, the tax credits that were paid and reclaimed...
...the Connexions service that flopped, the Strategic Health Authorities that were dropped...
...the marching of yobs to the hole in the wall; the night courts that never happened at all.
And still they keep coming, those hubristic monuments to big government, the living dead that walk the well-trodden path from Downing Street and the Treasury to New Labour's graveyard of initiatives.
The NHS computer: delayed, disorganised, a £20 billion shambles.
Forced police mergers: the direct opposite of the community policing we need.
And then the perfect example.
ID cards.
When a half-way competent government would be protecting our security by controlling our borders these Labour ministers are pressing ahead with their vast white elephant, their plastic poll tax, twenty Millennium Domes rolled into one giant catastrophe in the making."
At the local level again, I think he was right. We need to improve our planning laws to allow local government to ensure that our estates are not best suited to muggers, thieves, and burglars by ensuring that urban design is thought out as well as laid out. Infrastructure must come before expansion. There's little point expanding areas like Milton Keynes without the infrastructure to supoprt it. We need to invest in urban regeneration that also enforces stricter standards to ensure that our housing of the future is energy efficient to reduce the impact on the "carbon footprint". But it goes much further, our local services, our local plan, must be taylored to our needs by local politicians free from central dictat. David Cameron was right when he said that:
"And just as people will no longer accept second best in public services, we know that in their communities they are fed up with squalor and poverty and crim and they look to their leaders to sort things out.
Labour's response has been a massive expansion of central government into
local communities. The centralised Neighbourhood Renewal Unit, the insensitive Pathfinder programme, prescriptive top-down schemes for regeneration. You can see why Labour have done it. But the unintended consequence is to stifle the very spirit of community self improvementthat they are responding to.
Our response, based on our philosophy of social responsibility, is to trust local leaders, not undermine them. So we will hand power and control to local councils and local people who have
the solutions to poverty, to crime, to urban decay in their hands. We trust in your knowledge and commitment. So in a Conservative Britain, civic responsibility will provide the answer to
improving the quality of life in the communities left behind."
Yes, yes, and yes again!
1. If we are to restore the concept of "society" we need to focus on restoring discipline in the classroom (in other words handing power back to the teachers and away from unruly pupils who have more rights than those who teach them) and to curb the excesses of the entertainment industry who fool our children into believeing that mysogeny, violence, and dissorder are the way forward to earning "respect";
2. We need to hand control for managing problems over to those closest to delivery and away from centralised planners, quango-ists, and the clip-board monitors of state who's sole purpose in life is to set targets and monitor them;
3. To restore civic decision making to holders of civic office so that local issues are tackled head on by those with the local roots and knowledge.
I want to stay away from arguments on taxation for now because there are 9 years os systemic incompetance that needs to be turned around. Only once we have restored structure to Governance and order to chaos can we look at public expenditure and how to reduce it. David cameron's speech yesterday highlighted just this systematic, endemic, structural issue of waste, incompetence, and failure:
"Think of any issue - not just crime - and then think of Labour's response. This Government's way of doing things - the old way of doing things - is so familiar, and so depressing.
Ministers hold a summit.
They announce an eye-catching initiative.
A five-year plan.
Gordon Brown generously finds the money for it.
The money gets a headline, but no-one knows what to do with it.
So they create a unit in the Cabinet Office.
A task force is set up.
Regional co-ordinators are appointed.
Gordon Brown sets them targets - after all, it is his money.
Pilot schemes are launched.
The pilot schemes are rolled out across the country.
They are evaluated.
Then revised, re-organised and re-launched.
And then finally, once the reality dawns that the only people to benefit are the lawyers, accountants and consultants of Labour's quango army...
...with a pathetic whimper - but no hint of an apology - the whole thing is just abandoned.
We've seen too much of this in the past nine years.
Headline after headline but absolutely no follow-through. It is a story of ignorance, incompetence, arrogance. A story of wasted billions - and disappointed millions. Somewhere out there, there is a place where Blair and Brown will never go. It's dark. It's depressing. It's haunted by the failures of nine years of centralisation, gimmick and spin.
It is the graveyard of initiatives, where you'll find the e-University that died a death,the drugs czar that came and went...
...the Individual Learning Accounts that collapsed in fraud and waste, the tax credits that were paid and reclaimed...
...the Connexions service that flopped, the Strategic Health Authorities that were dropped...
...the marching of yobs to the hole in the wall; the night courts that never happened at all.
And still they keep coming, those hubristic monuments to big government, the living dead that walk the well-trodden path from Downing Street and the Treasury to New Labour's graveyard of initiatives.
The NHS computer: delayed, disorganised, a £20 billion shambles.
Forced police mergers: the direct opposite of the community policing we need.
And then the perfect example.
ID cards.
When a half-way competent government would be protecting our security by controlling our borders these Labour ministers are pressing ahead with their vast white elephant, their plastic poll tax, twenty Millennium Domes rolled into one giant catastrophe in the making."
At the local level again, I think he was right. We need to improve our planning laws to allow local government to ensure that our estates are not best suited to muggers, thieves, and burglars by ensuring that urban design is thought out as well as laid out. Infrastructure must come before expansion. There's little point expanding areas like Milton Keynes without the infrastructure to supoprt it. We need to invest in urban regeneration that also enforces stricter standards to ensure that our housing of the future is energy efficient to reduce the impact on the "carbon footprint". But it goes much further, our local services, our local plan, must be taylored to our needs by local politicians free from central dictat. David Cameron was right when he said that:
"And just as people will no longer accept second best in public services, we know that in their communities they are fed up with squalor and poverty and crim and they look to their leaders to sort things out.
Labour's response has been a massive expansion of central government into
local communities. The centralised Neighbourhood Renewal Unit, the insensitive Pathfinder programme, prescriptive top-down schemes for regeneration. You can see why Labour have done it. But the unintended consequence is to stifle the very spirit of community self improvementthat they are responding to.
Our response, based on our philosophy of social responsibility, is to trust local leaders, not undermine them. So we will hand power and control to local councils and local people who have
the solutions to poverty, to crime, to urban decay in their hands. We trust in your knowledge and commitment. So in a Conservative Britain, civic responsibility will provide the answer to
improving the quality of life in the communities left behind."
Yes, yes, and yes again!
