"Council" Tip policy?

[MJ]

On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 21:04:50 -0000, Gary Cavie

He has no legal standing in declaring this.

MJ

[MJ]

About 20 years ago, before tips were 'commercialised' rubbish was just dumped on the ground at our tip. It used to be a weekend event for many here to sort through it all and pick out the good stuff. It was amazing to see the amount of good and valuable items discarded. While watching these people once I noticed an old photo album. It was full of family photos from the 20s and 30s. I still have it.

Now ours too is run by jobsworths. The skips have steps up the side which you have to carry everything up. I took a double bed there, and asked one of the employed drones where he would like me to put it. He pointed up the steps. So I hauled the bed out and put it next to the skip. I said that I don't pay nearly £700 a year in council tax (this was before Labour got in) to cripple myself by humping this up their steps. At that I left.

MJ

[Terry]

Maybe a case of; "But guvner; we knows them fellers! They was ere afore."????? PS. BTW do they have to show a 'dumping permit' in the windscreen?

[Mike Mitchell]

Don't talk to me about road mending and council tax! On the street where I live potholes regularly appear, are filled in, then as regularly as ever, return. What happens? Is there a magic road gremlin which appears during the night and eats away at the freshly mended hole? Nah! Nothing that complicated. It's great British workmanship. This is how it works. The council routinely (about once every six months) inspects certain roads and updates a list of potholes. Back at Mission Control, aka the warm and comfy council offices, Mr Jobsworth contracts a road mending crew to pop along and do the necessary. Once there, said diggers (no, not Australians, they'd probably do a proper job) tip some asphalt into the hole, tamp it down with something flat, usually their heads, but failing that, a broom or something similar. Then they bugger off. Within days (literally sometimes) the edges of the hole have started to crumble while the road gremlin looks on in amazement from the pavement, thinking he could never eat fast enough to keep up with such lackadaisical scamping. But Mr Jobsworth in 1 Council Chambers ticks a little box on his list, saying "job done, increase council tax by 537 per cent" and goes back to sleep for another six months.

MM

[Mike Mitchell]

Nearly 700 quid! I should be so lucky! I'm paying £826 a year for a three bedroom ex-council semi, and that includes 25% discount for single-person occupancy. Next year it will rise again well above inflation no matter what that tit Raynsford says.

MM

[Terry]

Interesting comment; and since someone has now raised the topic! I haven't lived in Britain for nearly 50 years and have visited UK rarely/briefly, but will comment. It doesn't seem to be as much of a problem here (this part of Canada anyway). In general, no matter where one is, people dealing with each other, one to one, are pretty civil and helpful. Here there does seem to be more respect for people doing those ordinary jobs; whether it is the chap with his high visibility jacket standing out in the dust and chaos of the municipal dump, surrounded by millions of seagulls and enduring the ever-present wind here and the exhaust of many trucks and cars coming and going. Very cold in winter, hot and malodorous in summer; not an enviable job! But necessary to inculcate some order (someone was killed by a loader backing up, some years back) into what can be a very dangerous situation. The friendly toot on the horn or the wave of a hand for the person (man or woman) holding the 'SLOW/STOP' sign at road work sites. It's not THEIR fault!!!! Also for example a polite response to a security guard does much to disarm most. I even experimented (for devilment) on one occasion, being loud and demanding to, as they say "Get someone's goat"! :-) at Canada Customs. Possibly not a good spot but as I said 'The divil was in me'. And demanding "Where are all the luggage carts", for a flight that comes in daily at the same time from London, is not a serious crime AFIK? Maybe in Canada we are not very aggressive although as a country we 'seem' to be doing fairly well economically and socially? Also I would lay most 'problems' at levels of management that have designed the policies or operate whatever process one is dealing with. I'm sure our family alone could write a book about stupid 'policies/procedures' that don't work and are not in either a company's or the customers interest! (I have spent most of my career as a manager btw!). Dealing with 'real' people a good policy is 'To Ask'. And then try to do whatever the 'jobsworth' (An insulting term IMHO, which possibly betrays our attitude that leads to what we perceive as surliness and officiousness?) indicates should be done; unless it is patently ridiculous/impossible. I am an almost 70 d-i-yer; we have a once/twice yearly summer/autumn 'clean-up' for couple of weeks, in our community. Open till 9.00 PM so people can haul stuff after work. A lot of people will take a friend or family member with them to unload or will cooperate with a neighbour. However, if one arrives alone and have materials that are obviously heavy/large one of the individuals on duty will come over voluntarily, indicate where it should go and will either help or do it for you! Quite quickly you get to know 'Jack' or 'Bruce'...'Mike' etc. and they will tell you how long the clean up will be in effect, whether it's been busy or slow etc., that a 'good' time to come to avoid delays is "such and such". Only takes a minute and shows respect and recognition for someone trying to do a good job. By the same token one will try not to come to the tip area at the last minute before closing; they want to get home too! One problem is possibly that local staff are often not empowered to make changes or reasonable decisions; or if they make them, are then penalized when they advise or it becomes known. So the worker becomes an human automaton? Oddly, the worst case of 'officiousness' I have encountered during the last ten years or so was with of all organizations, Air Canada! And it was locally, in Canada! At locations such as Heathrow, Air Canada, security, in fact all workers/staff/agents were fine! So be 'nice' out there. Terry.

[The Natural Philosopher]

To an extent yes, they flourish under over managed, over legislated centralised socialist or communist type goverments.

Essentially if your job is not productive, but is geared to making sure that everybody obeys a boring pedantic set of regulations dreamed up by someone miles away in between coffee break and shagging the secretary over lunch..fr the purposes of seeming to be 'doing something' that some orther lobby group has deemed a Good and Desirable Thing, and if furthermore, you aren't going to get sacked for being abusive, obstructive and pedantic, then such people naturally gravtitate to fill those positions.

Its Out tones way of reducing unemployment. Intrdduce a million little wasy to stop people doing sensible things, on flimsy excuses, and employ the dregs of society to see it happens. Under the Tories, they would all be out of work, nicking stuff, selling smack on street corners, but hopefully harming the economy slightly less.

Frankly, the best cost benefit would be to put them all on NHS heroin, which would

(a) keep them off the streets (b) boost Afghanistans economy (c) make them too woozy and uncomplaining to worry about the complete lack of housing, trasnport, education etc. etc.

I think Kaiser Plunkett is getting around to this.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Or more precisly, the non-workers engaged on standing around idly whilst such schemes are NOT implemented beyond cones, at huge expense..

[Terry]

Safety and then liability! A scavenger was killed here a few years ago by a tractor backing up. Terry.

[Huge]

£826! I should be so lucky! I'm paying £1850.

For which I get, er, nothing. No street lighting (no street), no education (no kids), no libraries (shut when I can get there)...

[Gary Cavie]

But don't you get the satisfaction when you see all other road vehicles=20 forced to make a 2 mile detour to allow busses to have a 50yd stretch of=20 bus lane, and can think - 'I paid for that!'

(See Colchester Queen Street for details)

[Alan]

In message , Gary Cavie wrote

Yep good ol' Essex. The road narrowing to accommodate wider bus pick-up spaces and mini (50 yard) bus lanes in Southend-on-Sea have not only slowed down us 'ordinary' motorists but also the busses that are now struck in the resulting traffic jams. Back-street residents now wonder why rat-runs have become _so_ popular.

[MJ]

I said that was before Labour got their hands on it. It's nearly £1100 now.

MJ

[PoP]

I remember Southampton well. Trying to get into Southampton in the rush hour down The Avenue, or out again in the evening. And that was

25 years ago.....heaven knows what it must be like today - I've been down there in the last year or two (during the day) and The Avenue doesn't seem to have changed a bit!

Also the Millbrook going to Bournemouth and the west - loads more industrial units, hotels and so on than there were back then. I used to work at Mullards Semiconductors in Millbrook.

PoP

[Andrew Mawson]

Pop,

We must have approximately overlapped at Mullards - I think I left in 1972. Used to work in EOD (the hush hush east end bay of the factory working on infra-red devices for spy satellites) We used to say if the Russians found out what we were doing it would have put them back years !

Andrew Mawson

[Huge]

Ditto. I anticipate it being over £2K.

[Steve Firth]

Anticipate? I should be so lucky.

Of course I do have the pleasure of paying for all those facilities that I can't use and the courses that I can never attend. And I luxuriate in paying the wages of the mindless jobsworths in planning.

[Huge]

YMYA.

[Sam Nelson]

It's all `me, me, me, me' with you, isn't it?

[Steve Firth]

It appears so. Mind you we do have one street light in the village - only for about three miles in any direction so I reckon my 2.3K per annum is paying for something. Even if I don't want it.

I pay the entire Parish Council budget myself each year with a few quid over for a tip. So what of the other 200 ish dollops of council tax I wonder?