The angry thread

[NeMo]

So which one do you think they went for? Yes, an annual charge which had 5.8% of the vote. Not only that but they raised it to £40. There's a lot of unhappy people around here. Not so much that the charge is there but more that they asked us and then ignored us!

From my reading of the Wiltshire website, this is an optional charge. You pay £40 and you get your garden waste collected. Don't want to pay? Dispose of garden waste yourself. So you aren't being forced into it. It's not as if municipal waste collection is "free" anyway; one way or another you pay for it, and it's expensive to do, and given the lack of landfill, it's only going to get more expensive in the future. At least the council are being clear about the cost and providing a full fortnightly service.

The big problem with consulting the public is that most people are ignorant about most issues. Individuals may have opinions about all sorts of things, but that doesn't mean they actually understand foreign policy, banking, criminal justice, risk management, etc.

I find it's a lot easier to accept political decisions if you challenge your "knee jerk" reaction to something by going away and doing some research about it. In this case, yes, Wiltshire seemed to be doing something crazy, but on reflection, their choice was logical, if not necessarily the one you or I might have chosen. Feel better now? I hope so!

Cheers, NeMo

[Trainfish]

I know it's optional but for a lot of people it's also necessary, we don't all have postage stamp sized 'modern' gardens. Previous years it has been provided by the council through the council tax which is of course directly related to the value of your property. Now the council tax goes up and there's an extra charge for this service. My main gripe is as I said above, why ask people for their opinions if you're simply going to ignore them? Why couldn't there be a lesser charge and suspend the service during the winter months when people don't need it. Why now are they going to bother driving diesel thirsty trucks up and down residential roads to pick up a bin every 30 houses or so. To me that's a big waste of money in November, December, January, February and March. Also the recycling centres will only be open from if I remember 9am to 4pm if they're open at all which means bigger queues than before to get in and a lot more pollution which I thought was something we were trying to reduce.
I appreciate your views and believe me I have heard them all before. I have also done a lot of research into it so hopefully don't come under your classification of ignorant.

[NeMo]

I know it's optional but for a lot of people it's also necessary, we don't all have postage stamp sized 'modern' gardens.

Which means that if you charge everyone the same amount of collecting "green" waste, those of us with small gardens (mine is about 5 m across and 7 m long) or those with no gardens at all end up subsidising those lucky enough to have large gardens with lawns and trees. You only have two options really: Charge everyone the same amount, so some people are winners and some people losers; or else charge everyone according to their usage, allowing those with a small garden or no garden to opt out. You can't make everyone happy with either option.

My main gripe is as I said above, why ask people for their opinions if you're simply going to ignore them?

Largely because just because something is unpopular doesn't make it wrong. Local government is incredibly difficult to do perfectly. Lots of expensive demands that people notice quickly: schools, waste collection, roads, old folks' homes, that sort of thing. National government benefits from distance. How many of us are directly affected by changes in foreign policy? Or economic tweaks? Or civil service reforms? But if your local school is underfunded, you pretty quickly hear people talk about it. (The NHS, I accept, is different, and a national structure people do interact with directly.)

Why couldn't there be a lesser charge and suspend the service during the winter months when people don't need it.

Probably because it would save you money but not the council. You'd be asking them to hire bin men to collect waste 9 months of the year, and pay for machinery like rubbish trucks that operate for 9 months of the year. What happens to the men and machinery the rest of the time? You're then asking them to administer charges at different rates. How would you do that? Size of the garden? Number of trees? Whether they have lawns or not? Whether they have a compost heap? By the weight of the green bins? Much easier (and cheaper) for the council to simply charge a fixed rate and let people opt out if they want.

Why now are they going to bother driving diesel thirsty trucks up and down residential roads to pick up a bin every 30 houses or so. To me that's a big waste of money in November, December, January, February and March.

Don't disagree. For what it's worth, here in Dacorum Borough, there are no green garden waste collections during winter, just the landfill and recycling collections. So yes, it can be done. But for whatever reason, in Wiltshire they decided otherwise. Perhaps find out? Freedom of information act is very useful here!

I appreciate your views and believe me I have heard them all before. I have also done a lot of research into it so hopefully don't come under your classification of ignorant.

Ah, please don't confuse being ignorant about something specific with being classed as an ignorant person. What I mean is that we're all expert at some things but ignorant of others. I know nothing at all about how banks work or what goes on in "the City". It's a mystery to me. On the other hand, I know a lot more about education and science because those are the fields I've worked in. So while I get cross about banker's bonuses and the role the City played in the current debt crisis, I can't pretend to have anything other than an opinion about this. But when some City boy tells me about how teachers are lazy and schools need to buck up their ideas, then he's the ignorant one, not me.

Make sense?

Cheers, NeMo

[railsquid]

Out of curiosity, what is "garden waste" here? Something that can't reasonably be composted? If so, what?

[Sprintex]

Garden waste = grass cuttings, dead bits of plants, leaves, etc.


Paul

[daveg]

Large quantities of grass cuttings are a pain to compost on their own and can often turn to a horrid sludge if not handled correctly. Councils will (often) have facilities to mix the cuttings with vast amounts of other stuff such as leaves and other green bits from parks, etc.

Larger cuttings from trees and hedges that folk can shred - that sort of thing.

HTH railsquid.

Dave G

[railsquid]

Aha... Got a teensy garden here which produces a surprising amount of "waste" for its size (but not much in the way of grass cuttings - my wife literally cuts the scrap of lawn with a pair of scissors) and it composts down surprisingly well, even on my ad-hoc compost heap.

[Trainfish]

I appreciate your thoughts neMo and believe me, I have been through most of what you say on a local website with others (not Fakebook by the way). I won't get into a long winded response but here are a couple of responses.
No, don't charge everyone the same. If your house is worth more than one across the road then it's likely although not definitely going to have a bigger garden, hence there's more waste. You also know what the council tax is when you move there and if it includes garden waste collection (mine did when I moved here) and choose whether to move there or not.
I believe the council should never have asked for peoples' opinions if they weren't going to act on them.
Bin men for the other months of the year could be deployed elsewhere. Roadside litterpicking for a start. Put the trucks in a garage like I put my mower in the shed.
I understand your 'ignorant' comment better now, thanks for expanding on it.

As a final note, I have indeed been in touch with the council and even ran my own poll on the Streetlife website. Unfortunately it's not a massively used site and it would be difficult to use it as an argument against the decision with just 21 votes but the results are almost exactly the same as the council's survey. They have responded but it took a couple of emails for them to admit to the results which are tucked away on the council site. My nect email will ask for justification of the decision and why they asked the public in the first place as it seems they had already made up their mind. As I think I have intimated, I don't expect something for nothing and will need to either have 2 bins (2x £40) emptied or use the recycling centre in the summer. I will also ask for 25 'bin empties' for my £40 rather than 25 collections. The biggest gripe is as I said the way they have gone about it, it could have been handled a lot better.
Anyway, I said this wasn't going to be a long response but it's starting to look that way. Sorry all.

Large quantities of grass cuttings are a pain to compost on their own and can often turn to a horrid sludge if not handled correctly. Councils will (often) have facilities to mix the cuttings with vast amounts of other stuff such as leaves and other green bits from parks, etc.

Larger cuttings from trees and hedges that folk can shred - that sort of thing.

HTH railsquid.

Dave G

You're right Dave. As of today I have 1.5 bins full of grass topped up with hedge cuttings. There's no way I can compost that sort of amount each fortnight but I have tried in the past!

[DELETED]

My mortgage protection insurance claim got turned down after 6 weeks procrastinating (they're so late with paperwork, I had to phone for the 5/6th time to find that out).  Don't care now, it's 6 months of trying to speak to Halifax / BoS with no customer care or help at all.  I'm going for blood now, not because it was turned down, but because they won't speak to me about my policy because it's obsolete and not offered any more   Totally  situation, I have apparently been paying for something nobody will speak to me about and aside from my rejection there's a very formal complaint going in regarding aftercare.

I was away visiting my mother this weekend and she had allot of grief with her £2,000 pound G-Plan sofa last year from Sterling Furniture and we got a replacement under warranty in November which we were delighted with.  As I was visiting this weekend she showed me where the replacement has started to split at the seams now and she's been worried sick about going in again to raise a problem.  So I made sure we went in today to Sterling Furniture shop and logged a new claim.  We know from the first claim and advice from the shop the way G-Plan works they just won't accept any problems after manufacture so to be fair it's Sterling Furniture which are taking the brunt.  Absolutely not accepting seams bursting after just 5 months

After going to the Sterling shop we went for lunch in the local Knondyke garden centre before I headed back home to Inverness.  Cheap and cheerful, we go all the time for something quick and simple.  Baked potato for me which was served raw and I returned it for a new cooked one which was fine.  Then my Mum got half way through her mushroom omelet and spotted a dead fly in it!  -she got refunded.

ONE OF THOSE DAYS   Thing is for me it's like every day and never seems to end :'(

[DELETED]

..Forgot, yesterday I went to swap my winter wheels off the Elgrand for my "summer wheels".  Mother lives on a hill so went down the bottom to flat ground, dug the jack out -half an hour later  me can I get the jack high enough to get any wheel off the ground?  So I bailed out after an hour of trying and went to the local tyre centre I use (always good service on a Sunday) and paid them to swap the wheels over.  Problem is last time I had drums fitted a different garage must have used an air gun on the studs so I now have a shafted wheel nut (requires a full replacement of nuts) and this tyre centre re-balanced the summer wheels, but they're awful above 63mph on the 4h drive home today so I've got to find another local outlet to get them re-balanced under warranty or pay to get them done properly again at the local tyre centre to me:'(

[daveg]

Blimey RST!

Hope the next couple of days drastically improve.

Good luck with the bank and furniture problems. I have a strong dislike for the Halifax who tried to take my home away after employment problems some 20 odd years ago. They didn't get it!

All the best.

Dave G

[Oldun]

Re the posting on collections of household rubbish, recycling & garden/food waste.

You must be living in the wrong areas 

I live in the Medway area of Kent and the collections are as follows:

Recycling, General rubbish & Garden/Food waste are all collected weekly.

In the brown bin you can put:

Grass and hedge clippings
Garden prunings and weeds
Small branches (no more than 5cm across)
Dead plants
Shredded paper that cannot be secured in the blue reusable bags can be placed inside the brown wheelie bin.
Food-soiled cardboard like pizza boxes can also be placed inside the brown bin.

With a phone call you can have:

Bulky/Large items collected upto 3 times in any 12 month period for free.

Free collection of Electrical waste (battery or Plug supplied power) on Tuesdays or Fridays
any time of the year.

The local free sites are I'm afraid the same as other sites, vehicle type and height restrictions unless
you phone in advance to arrange entry and of course, no foot traffic 

Roger

[Tdm]

I am off to the U.K. next week and was hoping to pick up to bring back with me 3 locomotives I had sent for repair to Bob at B.R.Lines. Bob had repaired them and posted them to my son's at Chester as I had requested.

However my son has just emailed me to say there had been a delivery today whilst he was at work, and the postman had left an unable to deliver card as it was a recorded delivery item. When he went to the Post Office in Chester to pick it up they said they had lost it and  they couldn't find it! 

What is happening to the postal service in the U.K., I should have had it sent to Tenerife as I would most likely have had it before I fly next Monday. As it was recorded delivery if they are unable to find it at all, hopefully I will be entitled to the value of the contents, although I am not sure of exactly what you can claim for.

The package contained a Farish Deltic D1, a Farish EWS liveried Class 37/4, and a Farish (old model) Class 31 in Network Rail colours, plus some replacement driveshafts for a Farish Class 55.

When I retired as a Computer Manager in 1994, I worked as a rural postman for 5 years in North Wales, and never lost a delivery, although I did on occassions whilst still learning the job put some letters in the wrong letter box.

Might have to write a strong letter of complaint to Chester Delivery Office, and claim compensation.

[Malc]

Usually they say to wait 24 hours to collect items as they are still on the van doing its rounds. Probably why they couldn't find it.

[Newportnobby]

I think (and hope) Malc is right. Usually it states on the card when the earliest collection from the sorting office can be made.