Garbage

No one seems interested in the groovy video I posted yesterday. I'll leave it just a bit longer before I comment. I still think it's pretty amazing.

I'm alarmed about new proposals being tossed about today that would mean people are charged for rubbish collection on a "pay as you throw" basis. Currently we all pay an average of something like £140 to have our household waste collected. This seems expensive to me, but I don't know the cost breakdown. It has been suggested that extra charges, per bag of rubbish collected, be levied on each household. The first thing that should strike you here is the word "extra" in that last sentence. No "extra" rubbish is to be collected, but an "extra" charge is being suggested. The mroe cynical among you will already be tub-thumping and shout "stealth tax".

It doesn't stop there of course. The current administration seems to be determined to monitor what we throw away using sensor "chips" in our bins. I find this insidious beyond belief. No one needs to know exactly what I throw away to charge me for it. It could simply be weighed. Why do we have to go for a more elabourate and expensive option? Incidentally, if anyone puts a microchip in my bin it will be disabled. Oh, and I can almost hear the pro-surveillance lobby yelling at me, "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to worry about". To these people I say this, "please send me naked pictures of yourself for this web page", or is that something you would rather keep private?

Even if I wasn't worried about the privacy and the expense issue here, I would still have concerns. It seems to me that people with young children would be considerably disadvantaged for instance. I can see fly tipping problems as people attempt to save a few quid, and of course there would be the refusniks, namely me, disabling the chips in their bins.

It seems that there has been a landmark political event in Cambridge. A transgender mayor has been sworn in. The new mayor is currently female, but has been male in the past. She's also been married and fathered two children. All this I find bizarre. I genuinely don't mean that to be insulting. I really don't care about the gender issue. What I find more bizarre is that the partner of the new mayor is also a woman that was once a man. I'm finding it difficult to define this person. Is she a homosexual male, a lesbian female, a heterosexual male, or a heterosexual female? I think we need a new category completely.

And finally, I just read to day that they caught a serial rapist and murderer that was living in my street. I hate this town.