Bin tax-Who really benefits?

national | bin tax / household tax / water tax | opinion/analysis Friday February 24, 2006 02:16 by jim travers - his own jimtravers at eircom dot net

Bin tax- big brother dictatorship

Why do people constantly criticise those who see the reasons why we as citizens should not pay for what our political leaders impose upon us?

Its a strange old country we live in, where people who are crucified by direct and indirect taxes now find forgiveness in a government or state that imposes further taxes upon its citizens in the name of environmental protection, environmental duty or progress. The state in all its splendour squanders and wastes public money in the name of progress and on behalf of the people. Our elected councillors and politicial representatives are engulfed in scandals,brown envelope deals and bribes that make the the workings of the General childs play when it comes to robbing ordinary hardworking people who are being constantly asked to contribute more to the state and take less for themselves. Let us not forget that the General robbed from the rich and the banking establishment while our political representatives squander public money in bucket loads and conscrew plans and laws that drew more financial gains from people who are asked to become more productive in order to protect jobs and secure their economic progress.

Taxing people beyond their ability to pay, as they try to maintain a reasonable modern lifestyle is a recipy for economic decline and a catalyist for social unrest. Our young people are unable to step onto the housing ladder because of crippling morgage repayments, when they do they are crippled with indirect taxes,local government taxes and state taxes. The bin tax campaign is not about refusing to pay for a service of waste removal and disposal, it is about the truth behind the demand for payment for a service that does not exist, is designed by local authorities purely to secure financial gains and has no logical reasoning in local authorities belief that their charges are in the protection of the environment.

Let us look at our average bin contents and begin to seperate the contents of that bin. Now if you are a committed environmental protection supporter, you would expect your local authority to provide you with all the assistance necessary in achieving your objectives by becoming environmentally friendly. You would expect your local authority to embrace your efforts and encourage you to future achievements. But no, the local authorities will have nothing to do with your environmental efforts until you pay them their Judas money so that their hunger for revenue is prioritised over their lecturing to us all about the environment. If we seperate all our waste( produced by manufacturers) and deposit all that waste in bring centres, we find our main problem with waste disposal evolves around our ability to dispose of food waste. Local authorities know householders have a huge problem with this aspect of waste disposal and for their part they impose their dictatorship attitude of pay up or else. If you take the Ballymount Civic amenity Centre for example, their waste disposal charges has progressively increased over the few years they have been in operation. They are now at a stage where they refuse walk in disposal of waste, charge you by car load, trailer load or estate cat load. In other words they promote the opposite to what local authorities are telling us to become by imposing financial restriction on our ability to become environmentally concious, purely for the sake of profit. Let us also not forget that the vast majority of the waste we deposit in Ballymount Civiv Amenity Centre and is taken away in their waste collection trucks goes directly into landfill, therefore you are being asked to pay for a service that provide precicely the opposite to what you are being asked to pay for.

The Irish government is widely known for delaying EU Directives on a wide variety of issues purely because the cost of implimenting the Directives have not been worked out so that the consumer is the one (government thinking) who is required to pay for the upholding of the Directive.If you look at the white goods Directive for example, this Directive was stalled and delayed because government seen a problem with making the manufacturer directly reposnible for the disposal and recycling of their products. We now have a situation where we are now being told that on purchasing a product we must also pay a recycling charge that will be include in the purchase price of the goods. This is in total contravention of the white goods Directive which states that the consumer should not be directly charged for the recycling or disposal of the purchased goods.This does not mean that the manufacturer cannot include a recycling/disposal charge in the purchase price of his products, what it does mean is that the consumer should not be directly obliged to pay for that process by listing that process and a charge associated with that process. You give the local authorities 80 Euro for the privlidge of placing a sticker on your bin so that by you purchasing a bin tag the bin collectors will empty out your bin. In other words the local authority gets a payment that can be increased at will by the local authority each year and the private commercial company gets its bin tag fee which in turn can be increased as each year passes. And this corruption is in the name of environmental awareness and responsibility. Those who pay their bin charges should be thankful that there are still people within our society who are prepared to say to the political establishment that "enough is enough" and are prepared to fight for a belief, that those who do pay their charges and who are afraid or have been coerced into paying the charges due to threats of intimidation by local authorities.

The provision of clean water, proper human waste disposal, shelter, education, health and security is the responsibility of the state. We must not forget that we, as citizens of this country are the owners of the state and that the state is not individual and a seperate entity that feeds on its citizens at the expense of its people. We seem to live in a country where the state is constantly attempting to restrict and inhibit the progress, stability and contentment of its people by demanding more but giving less. Our political representatives can instigate projects and ideas that involve the use of public money only to find those projects or ideas costing more than what was anticipated or at worst the scrapping of a project or idea. The classic example of this is the electronic voting system where politicians wrote-off the total cost of a defunct project that is now costing the taxpayer millions of Euro each year just to keep the hardware in storage.

The basic needs our people are now being taxed out of existance and will, in time result in hardship, social decline and economic deprevation by people we elect to look after our security and future interests. Local authorities are increasingly becoming enormous revenue gathering machine that are constantly being ungraded and expanded in order to meet their hunger for further financing.

Anybody with the smallest amount of brain cells would see that once one tax system is accepted by the public then local authorities will find other methods of imposing local authority taxes on the general public. We really must ask the question, DO LOCAL AUTHORITIES REALLY WORK PURELY IN THE INTEREST OF ALL THE PEOPLE?

I personally seperate all my waste and deposit that waste in the relevant bring centres. I bring my food waste to Ballymount and for that privlidge I am forced to pay 10 Euro for bringing one bag into the centre in my car. The local authority (South Dublin County Council) employed a debt collection company who threatened me with having my credit rating damaged while at the same time thye council was sending me letters inplying that if they (South Dublin County Council) were not collecting my waste, I therefore must be dumping it illegally.

So really what is all this about. Is it about protecting the environment or is it about making money?

Are our political leaders speaking with one tongue ( at meetings saying the bin tax is wrong) and then saying publically with a different tongue when the situation warrants the need to change colours. Politicians and councillors say that they disagree with idea of bin taxes but the same paracites voted, abstained or just were not present when crucial votes were cast that paved the way for the current rising taxes.