It is my opinion that the KCC and TDC actions in the last few years are drectly responsible for an increase in the amount of fly tipping in the area.

Picture, if you will, a basic steam engine. On this engine there is the steam chamber from which the drive is powered under pressure. If you decrease the size of the opening that the steam has to pass through to power the drive less steam can pass through at any given time but there is still the same amount trying to do so. The result is more pressure.

If the pressure in the steam chamber becomes to great it starts to break and might even explode. If we a re luck steam forces it's way out of the system where-ever it can.

That steam chamber is the community and the steam is the rubbish that must be collected.

Now I am not suggesting that the council is responsible for the actions of criminals. Their actions are their own and they should be caught and suitably dealt with. However the cost of catching fly tippers is not going to be cheap. Yet it is our local government that have created the problem while seeking to "save the environment" and cut costs.

Furthermore the councils have been fining people that "over fill" their bins. This has created a situation where the system has "too much steam" and must vent it.

In doing so they have reduced the rate of rubbish collection to a level that many find unacceptably low and created a niche market where people are willing to pay others to take away the rubbish the council are refusing to take. So already we have a two tier rubbish collection system dependant largely on how much you are willing to pay.

A household faced with more rubbish than the council will take are forced to find ways not only of cutting down on rubbish generated (very hard with the way supermarkets package food) but of getting rid of the extra.

It is here that the councils have created a niche black market where the criminal operator is easily able to make substantial money by charging a low fee for rubbish removal on a "ask no questions" basis. The criminals are preying on the desperation of otherwise law abiding people and the relative inability of authorities to catch them dumping the rubbish else where.

Even if there is "some risk" to the people paying for rubbish removal of a large fine this is still far preferable to the certainty of a medium fine for having even a little more rubbish than the bin can hold.

Surely it is cheaper to run more collections than to try and catch the growing number of "freelance bin men"?


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