“Bristol City Council still plans to introduce “pay-as-you-throw” rubbish collections – and residents could end up having to buy bags for their waste,” thunders today’s Evening Cancer.
Who’d’ve thunk it?
Er, anyone who read The Bristol Blogger nine months ago for starters!
In recognition of this, The Bristol Blogger – in a little recycling initiative of our own – will spend the time between now and next February reprinting all its own stories all over again and call it news.
The leader of Bristol City Council and her inner cabal of thieving thugs should be removed as soon as possible. Over the next few years we will see more of these money making measures supposedly based on environmental needs but with little evidence to back up their actual implementation. This scheme seems designed just to make more money for the Council, with no real benefit for the environment. This will hit the less well off as always, it’s eco slavery – keeping the poor down with petty taxes that whittle away at their money whilst making money for crackpot councils to implement their loony schemes. Incinerator in Avonmouth anyone?
Agreed. BCC have long realised that they can do (and more importantly, charge) pretty much anything they want under the guise of that magical umbrella of a gravy train, the environment.
Whichever stance you take on climate change, etc etc, we can all agree that it’s fairly safe to say that the council doesn’t REALLY give a toss about the environment at all – it’s all just about the cash (same as Central Government).
How do they propose to deal with the huge increase in flytipping this will no doubt generate? And I’m assuming we’d see no reduction in council tax?
Personally I’m disappointed we’re not getting the “bin chips” – there’s surely a way of hacking them…
I just looked at your blog from nine months ago – and to be perfectly frank I think you are overstating your credentials. At best a lucky guess that you predict the city council will bring in payment for bin bags. And at worst a case of let’s have a go at the local paper again.
‘Pay per throw’ type systems have been a topic of discussion for some time now. As far as I recall it became a hotter topic of discussion, at least in my political circles, from about 2006 on, perhaps before.
I’ve also received this cheery leaflet through my door:
http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ccm/content/Transport-Streets/Parking/rps-bristol-residents-parking-scheme/rps-bristol-residents-parking-scheme-information-booklet.en
Which is telling me how they’re planning on charing me to park outside my own house – since I live in a shared house where 3 of us dare to own cars, the collective charge will be £620 per year for 3 cars, although from the wording, we wouldn’t get 3 permits granted anyway.
And what do they plan to do on days when City are playing at home?
Next they’ll be charging me to take a shit in my own house.
So you don’t pay water rates then? 😉
Not to the council I shouldn’t think 😀
Both schemes, parking and pay as you throw are but the latest products off the production line of Stealth Taxes that this Labour Govt and their servile wretches in Bristol City Council are trying to impose on us.
I’ll be buggered if I’m paying to park outside my own home, or indeed be limited by those bastards at BCC as to how many visitors I can have per year (100 £1 permits – yeah I have to pay for then too).
Liar Bradshaw claims that this isn’t a money-grabbing exercise. Of course Mark, and Mugabe is a democrat.
Just damn well improve our public transport to an acceptable level. Then just maybe, you can come back to us with your parking schemes and CONgestion taxes.
Until then, kindly FUCK OFF.
I didnt get a consultation leaflet though I live in montpelierr. Having read it through the URL (thanks Dave) I wouldnt mind if the money was only to be used to finance the parking scheme – parking is really hard round here due to commuters and a local ebay trader keeping large numbers of vehicles in the street. And there’s only one car in my household. The rule that shared houses are treated as one household is wrong.
The wording says the money raised will be used to adminster the scheme but it doesn’t say it will only, exclusively, be used for that purpose and it nshould be clarified – Why should we pay to subsidise a park and ride for the south glos village people.
The council’s own planning documents state this ‘revenue neutral’ scheme will generate £1m a year. Story here.
As for Bradshaw’s claims that the aim is not to make money. Who told him that? The same advisors that assured him (and supplied the sketches) that they could get a twenty foot wide guided bus route on a twelve foot wide cycle path?
Mr Bradshaw, don’t you think it’s about time you read your own department’s reports before you open your mouth?
Quite simply, if BCC introduce a Residents Parking Zone where I live (Bedminster), I’ll move. I will NOT have some unelected bureaucrat in the council deciding on a whim whether I’m “permitted” with my other housemates to even own a car (because if I can’t park it anywhere near my house then I may as well not bother) , or trying to limit the number of visitors I’m “permitted” to have, the f**king communists.
And the idea of this “consultation” is a complete farce as well, I can guarantee that they won’t be asking us what we want (as a proper consultation should be), they’ll either tell us what we’re going to have, or they’ll take the EU’s stance with the Irish vote and keep asking us until they get the answer they want to hear! People have been canvassed before about parking zones, and each time the answer has been a resounding no!
Steve: I believe a phased consultation is planned whereby they’ll “consult” different areas at different times. An interesting point is that my parents live JUST outside the proposed parking zone – will they be consulted? After all, any commuters wanting to avoid the zone will park as close as they can, which means my parent’s street will just become a huge car park.
This just hasn’t been thought through.
And as for having the sheer temerity to state that it’s not a money making excercise – what, do they think that if they say that we’ll just believe them? Aside from the points made by BB et al above, if the scheme was going to be completely revenue neutral, the council would not be persuing it as there’s nothing in it for them!
There are two interesting points to note about all of this:
1) The complete and utter lack of information provided on how this scheme will be enforced. Surely all of this has been planned – why can’t they tell us? Will it be strategically-placed CCTV cameras, or will we have parking wardens roaming every residental street?
2) Note how on the map, not only is there an inner and outer zone marked, but crucially all the major routes into the city are marked as well, despite this not really having any kind of relevance. I’d put money on the fact that BCC have just unwittingly revealed their congestion charge plans to us.
These two points tie in together as I believe the only way they can enforce this scheme is by CCTV, which could also be used for congestion charge monitoring. There’s surely no possible way of patrolling every street within the parking zone….is there?
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When are they going to start collecting plastic bottles? You should see the piles of bags outside our Asda (Whitchurch). Surely plastic is a big issue? They don’t seem to mind collecting Christmas trees once a year, but I find they look very fetching when placed (with an old shed or broken sofa) on the bit of green heading to Bishopsworth from the Hartcliffe roundabout.