It's Foxtrot Oscar time - by Richard... Sunday, February 20, 2011

It's Foxtrot Oscar time - by Richard... Sunday, February 20, 2011

Millions of households face an inflation-busting rise in water bills this week, with some increasing by up to 8.5 percent, or so we are told. Well, I haven't paid my water bill for two years, and don't intend to start now. A local monopoly, top-loading its charges with unnecessary regulatory costs – on the back of EU legislation – riven with inefficiency and unable even to guarantee the water supply, is not one which naturally invites sympathy.

All I actually want them to do is come to my door, as an honest trader would have to do, look me in the eye and tell me they're worth the money they want me to pay them. They don't do that. Instead, they inflate the charges and send in the debt collectors.

Well folks, it's Foxtrot Oscar time. You know it makes sense.

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Surrender of the euroslime - by Richard...

A spokesman for the British Armed Forces Federation, said: "The Conservatives made a lot of noise before the election about how they would treat the Armed Forces if they got into government but so far all this talk has proved hollow".

Of course, it was the British Armed Forces Federation – amongst others – that was flying the flag about how hard done-by the armed forces were under Labour. But now we get one defence source saying: "When Britain withdraws from Afghanistan in 2015, the Treasury will be knocking on the door of the MoD with a very big hammer – there will be a substantial reduction in troops numbers leaving an Army with a strength of circa 80,000".

Then we get told: "We will be moving into an era of sharing capabilities with our European allies. The days of being able to do everything are long gone."

And there it is ... the Euroweenies are taking over. Euroslime Dave and his European Army are on the march, with Liam Fox out in front. The Euroslime have abandoned the idea of an independent nation, with our own foreign and defence policy. Now we have to get it back - once we've got rid of the slime.

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Even our rubbish is rubbish - by Richard...

Refuse disposal is one of those issues which I find seriously depressing – on several levels. On a professional level, trained and qualified in the arcane ways of managing Britain's waste, I find it offensive that our effective and economic systems have been destroyed, to be replaced by a shambolic mess.

At a second level, my status as a taxpayer kicks in, where it becomes doubly offensive to see the waste shambles set to cost us an additional £10 billion in set up and infrastructure costs, plus an additional £8bn a year to run, all for absolutely no gain – in fact, quite the reverse, a worse system. It is difficult to know what is more offensive – that it is to cost more, or that we get a worse system for the extra money.

The third is the political level. This is one hundred percent EU law, adopted by a docile, compliant British government, while MPs sit on their hands and look the other direction. The money adds up, and in twelve years comes to well over £100bn.

Here, the pig ignorance is as offensive as anything. Slated as an environmental measure, the genesis of the current policy is, in fact, anything but. It starts in the '70s as a Single Market measure, eliminating the trading advantage the UK enjoyed by virtue of being able to dispose of waste in what we used to call controlled tips – compared to our sodden neighbours whose Rhineland territories would not allow the cheaper option.

So it is that we get a Booker lament today, under the heading of "Britain's system of rubbish collection is a marvel of waste and mess" online, and different in print.

I hadn't seen the headlines until they went up, and I might have put my oar in had I seen them. This is not about bins or collection, but waste disposal, an altogether different issue. We have a chronically bad law in the EU Landfill Directive, which is so shambolic that even our current generation of useless bureaucrats can't seem to deal with it.

So says Booker, we once had a refuse disposal system admired across the world, which made landfilling a public benefit, not something to be looked on as almost as evil as smoking. He then asks: "So why do our bureaucrats appear to misuse an EU directive, to create an unholy shambles which so signally fails to realise the benefits claimed for it?"

And that's the fourth level at which depression sets in. The question will not be answered. The issues will not be addressed, and the policy will go rolling on, as the system gets worse, more expensive and, to use that bullsquit word, unsustainable.

But it's a good analogue for a political system that's gone off the rails. When even our rubbish is rubbish, you know that we have not far to go before we reach rock bottom. Instead of doing something about it, we get witless politicians pratting about with things like double summer time, things that they should leave well alone. They should concentrate on issues that matter and need changing. That they do not tells you all you need to know.

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They can't jail us all - by Richard... Saturday, February 19, 2011

The Matt cartoon has its man calling on people to take to the streets for a Day of Apathy. This is about voting reform. Matt, as so often, has captured the mood – more so that the phalanx of political commentators and reporters that the Failygraph employs. Another panegyric from the oleaginous Oborne about Euroslime Dave and murder will be done.

But, I suspect, it is not apathy that keeps us off the streets but powerlessness, the inability to get atpeople like this and rip their throats out.

No matter how much Phil Dolan, 54, thinks that he deserved £569,000 of taxpayers' money in salary, pension and redundancy payments after leaving his post as chief executive of South Somerset district council – and he clearly thinks he is "worth it" – no local authority official, ever, should be paid this much.

That he is now acting as a consultant for other local authorities, and that there are two other executives at South Somerset district council who also benefited from the extraordinary system of payments is just adding insult to injury.

These people, I suspect, are so out of touch that they do not realise how much they are hated. Or how much the system they represent is hated. And, as services are cut back to pay for this larceny, and the officials come round with their hands out for still more money, the murmur of rebellion grows. If a few people refused to pay – as I do every year until they send in the bailiffs – they just pick us off, one by one.

But, as they throw thieves and murders out of prison to make room for the next batch of refuseniks, they may find this year there is not enough room for all of us. And what will they do then?