| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Cllr Mahfouz, where are your targets? | |
| Posted by: | Tony Sleep | |
| Date/Time: | 14/11/11 03:12:00 |
| And the response was .... silence, as with a number of other questions in the thread. Look, I think Cllr. Mahfouz has made it all quite clear, or at least as clear as he hopes he can get away with. Reviewing his statements in this thread, it seems clear that the policy driving this is fiscal, not environmental. In fact he was quite overt about this, stating that the £40 charge for green waste collection was necessary else close all leisure centres, turn off all street lights etc I find it hard to believe Ealing's green waste collection costs anything like as much as either of those. So it seems that what we have here is a soft target for raising revenue, and probably only a fraction of the additional revenue will go toward the recycling service. If it was intended to result in improved recycling I am sure the Council would be only too pleased to loudly tell us. Instead of which there is silence. Without the costings that I asked for here 11 Nov, it's hard to escape the conclusion that, like certain other Council activities such as parking regulation, we are seeing recycling become a cash cow for a strapped bureaucracy. And then it makes perfect sense that recycling targets are no longer relevant, because all that matters is how much cash can be extracted under duress from residents with rotting greenery to get rid of. The real question then is : how much is the funding allocation for waste management and recycling being cut, from April? Because I think we can be pretty sure that £40 for green waste collection is a lot more than green waste collection costs. Those who pay it will end up further subsidising services they have already paid for once, in Council Tax. All conjecture, but until someone uses the FOI to try and extract some actual facts from the Council, what we're being spun reeks of horse manure. |