£1,000 Fine For Using Wrong Bin: Families Face New Crackdown Over Household Waste

Householders could be fined up to £1,000 if they fail to comply with complex new rules on refuse sorting.
Food scraps, tea bags and vegetable peelings thrown into the wrong dustbin could land them with hefty penalties under government plans to be unveiled today.
Families could end up with five different bins and receptacles - including compulsory slop buckets for food waste - and be forced to sift through rubbish for anything that can be recycled, reused or converted into electricity.

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Drivers Who Leave Engines Running to Clear Screens Face Fines Under ‘Idling Offence’ Rules

Motorists who leave their cars running on frosty mornings to warm up the engine and clear the windscreen could face being fined under anti-pollution rules this winter.
Drivers are being told that leaving a car idling for more than a couple of minutes wastes fuel, and they could be served with on-the-spot fines of up to £40.'

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Grandfather Arrested at Dawn and Held in a Police Cell For Six Hours For Swearing Once at Council Official

A grandfather was arrested at dawn and held in a police cell for six hours for using a single swear-word in front of a council official.
Thomas Catcheside, 67, had his fingerprints and DNA taken, before being issued with an £80 fixed-penalty notice.
His arrest followed a dispute with a council official about 'dangerously slippery' communal stairs in his block of flats in Cambridge.'

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Stamp Duty, Watches, Breakfast in Cannes: How Council Chiefs Spend Your Money

First it was MPs, then BBC executives - and now the sometimes comic, sometimes extravagant expenses of council chief executives have been revealed.

A Mail on Sunday investigation based on Freedom Of Information Act requests has laid bare the claims of more than 100 chief executives over the past four years.

The results reveal claims on council taxpayers of some £622,058.57. Apart from lavish meals, luxury hotel stays and millions of miles of petrol claims, the executives have been reimbursed for such delights as noodles, a sports watch, membership of a club 140 miles away and stamp duty.

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Town Halls Hire Citizen Snoopers as Young as SEVEN to Spy on Neighbours and Report Wrongs

Children as young as seven are being recruited by councils to act as 'citizen snoopers', the Daily Mail can reveal.
The 'environment volunteers' will report on litter louts, noisy neighbours - and even families putting their rubbish out on the wrong day.
There are currently almost 9,000 people signed up to the schemes. More are likely to be recruited in the coming months.
Controversially, some councils are running 'junior' schemes which are recruiting children.

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Councils To Privatise Care and Education

Local services face a new wave of privatisation across England as a Conservative council leads moves to put contracts worth billions of pounds out to private tender.

Essex County Council is one of a growing number of authorities, mainly Tory-led, that intend to outsource all or most of their services to save funds, including schools management, social care, roads and libraries.

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No need to pay council tax then is there!!!!

Councils to be Given Power to Snoop on Calls and Emails

Towns halls, along with police, security services and other public bodies will be able to view "communications" details of any one suspected of crime.
But critics fear the move will simply pave the way for authorities to spy on millions of citizens and taxpayers.
The power is contained in a new statutory order quietly laid before parliament yesterday.

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Council House Tenants Offered £30,000 Bribes to Move Out

Council tenants are being offered £30,000 bribes or cottages by the sea to vacate their homes for credit crunch victims as Britain faces a critical social housing shortage.

Millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being spent encouraging people in social housing to move to the private sector — either as home-buyers or tenants. Those in larger council homes are also being offered cash payments of up to £3,000 per bedroom if they agree to downsize to a smaller social house or apartment.

Tens of thousands of people have taken up the offers but councils plan to push schemes more aggressively in another unexpected consequence of the recession.

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Martin Narey: The Barnardos Chief Who Wants To Take Your Children Into Care

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Martin Narey said that social workers should remove more, not fewer, children from their natural parents.

He admitted many professionals would regard his views as "heresy", and criticised the prevailing philosophy of social services departments which, he claimed, sought to keep families together wherever possible.

Mr Narey also said that once the decision had been made to take a child away from their family, there should be greater use of residential care – formerly known as children's homes – as an alternative to placing challenging children with a succession of foster families.

He said: "The emphasis is – too much in my view – on fixing families."

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Martin Narey is ex head of our illustrious prison service and also pimps himself out on the After dinner speaking circuit.

This man should not be let near any childrens organisation let alone the chief of Barnardos. and when he states that more kids should be put in childrens homes - Barnardos Childrens homes presumably!

£140 a Year of YOUR Council Tax Goes to Pay Council Pensions!

The extra money is to bail out pension schemes for local government workers, which have been criticised as “gold-plated” and over-generous.

An investigation by this newspaper raised renewed criticism of the “final salary” pensions offered to council employees. Such pensions have been almost eradicated in the private sector.

The slump in share prices caused by the recession has hit pension fund investments hard and added to the scale of the problem.

Council chiefs admit that the situation was made worse when some local authorities took “pension holidays”, withholding contributions to their funds when the markets were strong.

In a Sunday Telegraph survey of local authorities across England, Scotland and Wales, 136 authorities covering 60 per cent of the population reported a total pension deficit of more than £21 billion.

Adjusting to reflect the national picture, the total size of the town hall pensions black hole is about £35 billion.

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MPs Denied Vote On Bin Tax

THE GOVERNMENT has quietly adopted powers enabling it to introduce national pay-as-you-throw rubbish taxes of up to £100 without a vote in parliament.

The move, which was confirmed this weekend by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), will allow councils across the country to impose extra charges on householders who leave out too much non-recyclable waste.

The fact that ministers have adopted powers to impose the taxes on millions of households without a vote in the Commons will shock MPs. They always believed they would be able to veto the unpopular move following trials in five pilot areas.

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Waste Watch

A council spent £25,500 on lunches for just 85 staff members taking part in a course on leadership skills.

Croydon Council paid a total of £306,000 for the workers to take part in the nine-day in-house training scheme. Of that sum, the budget for staff lunches was £300 a head – equivalent to £33.33 for each of the nine lunches. By comparison, a three-course fixed-price lunch at The Grill restaurant at London's Dorchester hotel costs £27.50.

The council would not say what food and drink was served, but Pam Parkes, divisional director of human resources, said: "I don't think it is expensive. Most people expect when they go on a course to have a tea or coffee. Tea is not cheap, we do not grow tea, we have to buy it. It does cost someone to make the lunches."

She added: "We strongly believe this is a cost-effective investment that will pay off in terms of expertise and savings in the medium to long term."

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Common Purpose course?

'Super-Councils' Given Power to Impose Road Taxes

Congestion charges and workplace parking fees could be imposed by unelected quangos under proposed laws.

The small print of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill, which is currently going through Parliament, gives sweeping power to new organisations to control transport policy, including the power to levy taxes, the Conservatives said last night.

They have accused the Government of trying to impose road pricing "via the back door".

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The Government will stop at nothing to get your money and impose the surveillance state it so desperately wants.

Councils Splurge £1m on Junkets

THE resort is best known for hosting Hollywood stars, but last March the high rollers in Cannes were of an altogether different ilk.

Among the luxury yachts in the harbour was Powder-monkey, a 100ft vessel with five en-suite cabins used by council officials from Nottingham attending Mipim, one of the world’s biggest property conventions. The 10-man delegation, led by Michael Frater, chief executive of Nottingham city council, had splashed out £20,000 of public money in order to entertain potential investors.

Moored nearby was Sunliner X, an even bigger yacht boasting four state rooms, which had been rented by delegates from Liverpool. The city council and local quangos had spent almost £150,000 on sending staff to the French Riviera, ostensibly to drum up trade over three days
.
The trips are among a long list of overseas junkets uncovered by The Sunday Times on which councils have lavished more than £1m of taxpayers’ money over the past two years.

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Town Hall Bosses Advise on Pay Rises For . . . Town Hall Bosses

TOWN HALL bosses are operating a private consultancy that has helped to increase their pay by more than 30% in four years.

Solace Enterprises, a recruitment company, is paid fees of about £20,000 by local councils to headhunt chief executives and recommend salary levels.

Its advice has contributed to burgeoning pay packets for chief executives, many of whom are now paid more than £150,000 a year. The company is wholly owned by the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers (Solace), which represents town hall bosses. The company’s directors include a number of serving chief executives.

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Tories Plan Purge of Town Hall ‘Fat Cats’

Hundreds of town halls would no longer pay six-figure salaries to chief executives under Conservative plans for the biggest shake-up of councils for a generation, The Times can reveal.
Dozens of council chiefs who earn more than Cabinet ministers would lose their jobs as clusters of councils merged their frontline services and backroom operations to provide better value for money.

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300 Victims of Abuse to Sue Councils For Neglect

Hundreds of children who suffered neglect or abuse at the hands of their parents have been given the green light to sue councils for damages that could total millions of pounds.

Between 200 and 300 cases where councils failed to take children promptly into care are being prepared after a landmark legal ruling, The Times has learnt. The delays in removing children stretch from weeks and months to years in some cases.

This month the Court of Appeal upheld a ruling that Doncaster council must pay compensation to a man who suffered 12 years of abuse by his parents.

The case established for the first time that local authorities are liable for abuse suffered by children if they fail to remove them from harm. The ruling could force hundreds of councils to settle similar claims.

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This now gives Carte Blanche to councils to steal your children. Problem Reaction Solution

Councils Dumping Recyclables In Landfills

Up to 200,000 tonnes of recyclable waste was dumped last year with some councils failing to recycle over 10 per cent of glass, paper, plastic and other materials left out by conscientious homeowners.
The amount dumped this year is expected to rise sharply as councils struggle to sell recyclable waste during the economic downturn.
The disclosure will anger millions of British families, many of whom are being forced to sort their waste into five different waste bins - including new "food slop" containers - to allow it to be recycled.

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Bin Banisher's Reward: £30,000 Bonus For Waste Watchdog Who Helped Abolish Weekly Collection

The boss of the controversial organisation behind the abolition of weekly rubbish collections received a bonus of £30,000 last year.

Liz Goodwin, the chief executive of WRAP, was rewarded for spreading the doctrine of compulsory recycling.

The payment took the value of her pay and perks to more than £200,000 – outstripping the Prime Minister’s salary of £189,994.

WRAP, which cost the taxpayer nearly £80million last year, has become an increasingly controversial body over the past five years.

It was the quango that pressed councils to abandon weekly rubbish collections and replace them with fortnightly bin pick-ups, with households compelled to followcomplicated recycling rules.
WRAP advised councils to introduce fortnightly collections during winter, so no one would notice the smells until it was too late to protest, and to avoid bringing them in at election times, to prevent voters having a say.

Its activities allowed ministers at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which pays for WRAP, to imply that the introduction of fortnightly collections had nothing to do with them.

The high levels of pay, bonuses and pensions for WRAP bosses provoked criticism from MPs and pressure groups.

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Councils To Be Banned From Using Anti-terror Powers To Snoop On People Who Overfill Bins Or Drop Litter

The Government is planning action to stop local councils using surveillance powers designed for terrorism and serious crime to deal with trivial offences like dog-fouling, a Home Office minister said today.
Vernon Coaker admitted that council snooping on people who overfill bins or drop litter was undermining public support for the anti-terror law, and promised action 'in the near future'.

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