Great Britain: 'Envirocrime' snoops paid £30,000 just to check your rubbish

The Daily Mail (U.K.) ^ | April 21, 2007 | DANIEL BOFFEY

[Stoat]

'Envirocrime' snoops paid £30,000 just to check your rubbish

By DANIEL BOFFEY - More by this author » Last updated at 22:21pm on 21st April 2007

A council is paying plain-clothes snoopers £30,000 a year to track down homeowners who put their rubbish out at the wrong time of the week or in the wrong place.

The 'envirocrime' officers are employed to enforce environmental regulations and have the power to fine residents who 'offend'.

Ealing Council in West London is spending nearly £150,000 on recruiting and employing four new enforcement patrollers to add to its 23-strong team that already monitors 'waste disposal' regulations.

The same council attracted controversy last month when it was revealed it had drawn up plans to use hidden CCTV to catch fly-tippers.

Of more than a dozen councils levying fines since the introduction of legislation a year ago enabling local authorities to pursue residents, Ealing charges what it calls 'envirocriminals' the most, with a £110 penalty notice.

 

More....
 

• Council tax snoops call on the spies in the skies
• This stealth tax on our dustbins

Now, the revelation that £35,500 is being spent on each 'envirocrime' officer in Ealing will enrage both low-paid public-sector workers and those who believe councils are taking a heavy-handed approach to rubbish collection.

Neil Dhot, head of communications at Ealing Council, refused to say how much of the £142,000 spent on the officers was made up of their wages, claiming recruitment costs were included in the sum.

Yet a newly qualified nurse is paid just £19,166, a midwife £31,004 and an Army lieutenant £27,762.

Christine Melsom, founder of IsItfair, which campaigns for council-tax reform, said: "They are being heavy-handed. We are living in a world where everything we do is watched and regulated. George Orwell has arrived. If you go to work early it is difficult to get it right with the rubbish."

Fixed penalties totalling more than £185,000 have been issued this year nationally to people who put their rubbish out for binmen too early.

According to facts released under the Freedom Of Information Act, Birmingham issued the most with 592 penalty notices for envirocrimes in the past 12 months, Kensington and Chelsea 365 and Cardiff 264. Ealing issued just 11 - but its charge was the highest, equal with Medway.

A spokesman for Ealing Council said the officers were not just focused on homeowners but were employed 'to monitor and enforce legislation affecting the borough's streets, including fly-tipping, waste disposal, illegal street trading, graffiti and various Highways Act offences."

He added: "We aim to educate residents before the last resort of issuing fines. If people do not act on warnings we have the power to issue penalty notices. The fine is £110 but if it is paid within ten days it will be reduced to £60."

[Stoat]

Please say a prayer for our dear British Friends, whose Government has brought so much evil down upon them.  They have turned over their rights of effective self-defense to the Government, and as a result violent crime is skyrocketing.  Immigration is out of control, with the result being a growing Islamofascist element in their communities.  And now, they will be heavily fined if they put their trash out at the wrong time or at a slightly incorrect location.  Their streets are being patrolled by breathtakingly overpaid snoops who would have made Himmler proud in their dedication to the micromanagement of what seems to be virtually every aspect of life.

Hopefully the people will one day set things right, as they deserve far better than this.

 

Please also see:

 

U.K. The 250,000 families with a spy in the bins (Test of trash cans that weigh your garbage)

UK invaded by crime mobs (New, lax EU border regulations blamed)

UK Elderly woman forced to drag herself up steps into her own home (Medics refused to help)

UK Now council bans the use of 'political correctness' at work (The phrase, not the policies)

UK Residents banned from evicting sex-mad badgers (protected animals destroying property)

UK Road tax doubles to curb ‘gas guzzlers’ (£400 tax to be slapped on 4x4s)

Great Britain Axe killer escapes jail

Great Britain Fury at Churchill statue (Former PM and beloved hero is in a straightjacket)

and it goes on and on and on.  Socialism and all of the evils associated with it are corrupting Great Britain in every way.

[Stoat]

Some additional perspective is provided by clicking on the “Comments” link at the Daily Mail page, where you can see the blind rage that this story and other policies like it are evoking in the public.

How much abuse can good, hardworking and decent people stand?

[Gorzaloon]

My family, though good Wiltshire people, shot them from behind trees and stonewalls for less than this.

[Stoat]

My family, though good Wiltshire people, shot them from behind trees and stonewalls for less than this.

News items like this, which pop up almost every other day, cause me to wonder how long it will be before there is a massive violent upheaval, with the decent people pitted against these modern-day Gauleiters in their petty fiefdoms.  Since the people have been disarmed, it will be pitchforks, clubs, cricket bats and fists against machine guns....but people are being pushed so very far I don't see this as such a farfetched possibility.

[John Will]

you’re assuming there wouldn’t be a massive black market sale of arms to the revolt.

[ExtremeUnction]

A council is paying plain-clothes snoopers £30,000 a year to track down homeowners who put their rubbish out at the wrong time of the week or in the wrong place.

When I toss something that is not suppose to go in the trash, I just put in my neighbor's trash can. Fairly simple solution, folks.

[Stoat]

you’re assuming there wouldn’t be a massive black market sale of arms to the revolt.

Let's hope that Capitalism will indeed come to the aid of this noble backlash against Socialism   :-)

[Gorzaloon]

News items like this, which pop up almost every other day, cause me to wonder how long it will be before there is a massive violent upheaval, with the decent people pitted against these modern-day Gauleiters in their petty fiefdoms.

Why do you think their Government subsidizes the Barley Crop?

"`Ave a pint or two!-Forget about it."

[britemp]

‘Please say a prayer for our dear British Friends, whose Government has brought so much evil down upon them.’

That’s what happens when you vote Labour. Or Democrat.

‘They have turned over their rights of effective self-defense to the Government’

We have? Tell that to my two shotguns and my SMLE .303 sat next to me as I type!

‘and as a result violent crime is skyrocketing.’

Nope, it’s dropping and is still quite a bit lower than the US and much lower than parts of the US that have the same population density as the UK.

‘Immigration is out of control, with the result being a growing Islamofascist element in their communities’

Legal immigration in the UK is much lower per capita than the US and illegal immigration is far, far lower than the US. The US has allowed more muslim immigrants into the US in the past decade than the UK has since 1950. The UK now has more Polish catholic immigrants than Muslim.

‘And now, they will be heavily fined if they put their trash out at the wrong time or at a slightly incorrect location. Their streets are being patrolled by breathtakingly overpaid snoops who would have made Himmler proud in their dedication to the micromanagement of what seems to be virtually every aspect of life.’

All of this evil has been wrought on the British public by Bush’s best friend, Blair and his socialist labour party, which is why they will be looking for new jobs a long time before your new democrat govt will. What we are coming to the end of, you are about to reap.

You don’t want to take what you read in the British tabloids too seriously you know! :D

[Popocatapetl]

The obvious solution is to have a “Trash Day”, on a windy day, out of sight, but upwind, of CCTV cameras.

First raid the garbage bins of wealthy and connected members of the town, then spill their garbage where it will be very obvious to everyone, and will be blown blocks away from where it was dropped.

Simplicity itself, and a profound statement against government oppression.

[fzx12345]

“Enivrocrime”? They’re not even trying to spin it anymore. Straight out of _1984_.

[SmoothTalker]

The UK really is going to hell in a handbasket. A very PC state that is surrendering too much to those who want to turn it into a sharia state. They also have huge tendencies towards Big Brother (cameras, invasive technology, folks in your trash, etc). Within fifty years that once proud nation will likely be dead.

[Stoat]

“Enivrocrime”? They’re not even trying to spin it anymore. Straight out of _1984_.

And it's not just the 'tabloid British press' that some choose to rail against (while the factual substance of the 'tabloid' articles I've posted have been reported in other 'mainstream' BritPress outlets, although usually much later than the superquick tabs).

Here we have the very same Ealing Council that's the subject of this article using the same term in another trash-related 'envirocrime'

Fly-tippers get court fines after Council envirocrime enforcement

“Enivrocrime”? They’re not even trying to spin it anymore. Straight out of _1984_.

[Stoat]

The obvious solution is to have a “Trash Day”, on a windy day, out of sight, but upwind, of CCTV cameras.

First raid the garbage bins of wealthy and connected members of the town, then spill their garbage where it will be very obvious to everyone, and will be blown blocks away from where it was dropped.

Simplicity itself, and a profound statement against government oppression.

A fun idea, but I'm guessing that anyone caught in such an act would be crucified on the altar of the Religion of Environmentalism, in an effort to make an example to any similarly like-minded folks..

Just as here in the USA violent criminals are all too often set free from jails due to 'overcrowding' while you can rest assured that tax cheats of any sort will ALWAYS have a cell available for them, so also UK trash law violators will likely be treated VERY harshly.

Look at the fines imposed by this same Ealing Council in the matter of an 'envirocrime'

Fly-tippers get court fines after Council envirocrime enforcement

 

The obvious solution is to have a “Trash Day”, on a windy day, out of sight, but upwind, of CCTV cameras.

First raid the garbage bins of wealthy and connected members of the town, then spill their garbage where it will be very obvious to everyone, and will be blown blocks away from where it was dropped.

Simplicity itself, and a profound statement against government oppression.

[Popocatapetl]

You use their police-state mentality against them. That is why I suggested raiding the garbage of the wealthy and connected. The police will look for fingerprints, DNA and written information *in* the garbage, and will foolishly accuse the wealthy and connected of having done it.

Picking on the “little people” is how such thugs survive. When it is turned on the wealthy and connected, the first thing they will try to do is evade it. Right then is when pictures of incriminating documents from their garbage are posted anonymously, demanding that the wealthy and connected be fined.

Once they start to turn on each other, it quickly breaks into factionalism, internal bickering and power struggle. The original event is lost in the in-fighting.

The same with CCTV cameras. Have one pointed at an upstairs room of someone wealthy and powerful for eight hours, then run it continuously as a “live” feed on the Internet, again anonymously. The wealthy and powerful will go nuts trying to find the camera that is no longer there, and will become very paranoid.