Not A Surrender, Just A Retreat To Regroup…

Controversial plans to impose £50 "pay as you throw" bin taxes on millions of families have been shelved after not a single council volunteered to run trials.

Because they are already aware just how unpopular they are, and don’t need another one of NuLab’s barmy EU-directed schemes to make them even more unpopular when an election is on the horizon…

Bin taxes were part of the Government's waste strategy, unveiled by Tony Blair in early 2007, to encourage households to recycle at least 40 per cent of their rubbish by 2010, rising to 50 per cent by 2020.

After Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister, the scheme was downgraded a pilot project among five local authorities, with the prospect of an England-wide roll-out set back until 2012/13.

Under the plans local authorities were being offered the chance to give rebates to households producing the least waste or impose penalties of up to £50 on those who failed to recycle.

The trials would have begun in April, just as millions of households are battling with soaring bills in one of the worst recessions since the 1930s.

But the Department for the Environment, Fisheries and Rural Affairs said today that not one of 388 councils had volunteered to trial the taxes.

Even pigs at trough can sense the way the wind is blowing....

A spokesman said that the plans would not now be implemented, although the legislation was still in place if a council wanted to bring forward bin tax plans "in the future".

In other words, after the next election, when the parasites are safely ensconced back in their council seats….

Caroline Spelman, shadow Local Government secretary, said: "Bin taxes are now dead in the water. This is a major snub for Gordon Brown and his ministers.

"The bin tax laws should now be repealed and taken off the statute book. These unpopular new taxes would harm the environment by fuelling fly-tipping and backyard burning, and hike tax bills for struggling families."

Yeah, Caroline, they should be. But I can’t see Call-Me-Dave throwing his envirolooney credentials out to drive it forward. Can you?

Ahead of the planned new bin taxes, the Government had quietly brought in new rules which abolish a law that made it a statutory duty of local authorities to collect household waste.

The change, first revealed by The Daily Telegraph in the summer, was brought in as an amendment to the Environmental Act 1990, and quietly became law on 29 November.
The new law states explicitly: "A waste collection authority is not obliged to collect household waste that is placed for collection in contravention of a requirement under this section.".

Thus setting the scene for the next government to carry on where this current one finally left off.

Just wait and see….