Latest Green fascism - compulsory recycling

GMTV has reported that Barnet Council - North London - has made it illegal to put glass bottles, tins, jars, paper and magazines in the rubbish instead of recycling, with £1000 fines. Harrow and Bromley are about to do the same.

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Quite how this works is beyond me. Contaminated paper isn't worth recycling, because once you get rid of the fat or other fluids the fibre has degraded too much. I wonder if some decent investigative reporting would discover how much recycled material is dumped.

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People feel good about recycling, because what you don't want is going to be used again and that is rational. Indeed it is, recycling isn't new. The car industry has been recycling the metal from car bodies for decades, so has the aviation industry for planes.

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However, this approach by councils is simply fascist. Who gives a damn what you do with your rubbish as long as you aren't dumping it on someone else's land without their permission. The answer to concerns about waste involves two steps (New Zealand is part way along this path already):

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1. Charge for rubbish collection. In NZ this is done with council rubbish bags that cost enough to pay for the collection. Rubbish collection could then be operately privately, and revenue generated by the number of bags collected. The incentive to produce less rubbish comes from paying for the cost of collection (if it is free, as it is in the UK, it doesn't matter), the privately run rubbish collectors are incentivised to keep the cost down and collect frequently - making the local environment more pleasant. If landfill space is scarce, then let the private sector find more and charge for using it.

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2. Run recycling commercially. Recycling is not good per se - it depends on whether it is more economic to recycle than to source materials as new. Remember paper is a renewable resource, and glass comes from sand - hardly that scarce! For both it is whether it is cheaper to pick it up, transport it and refine it from paper and glass to fresh materials, than to source it directly. Metals are the same, it may or may not be cheaper to recycle aluminium, tin and steel, depending on the price. If it costs more to pick up, store and reuse, then it doesn't matter if it is rubbish. You could reuse all your clothes again and again too.

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and don't give me arguments about externalities. The externality is that land is used for rubbish dumping - as long as it is privately owned and there is no resulting trespass of pollutants from that land onto neighbouring properties, it is not a problem. The world is not running out of resources.

To hate America is to hate mankind

Hat tip to Julian Pistorius for pointing out this Daily Telegraph article, also pointed out by Samizdata.

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"To dislike a country as diverse as America is misanthropic: America, more than any other state, contains the full range of humanity between its coasts. What binds its people together is an ideal encoded in America's DNA. Conceived in a popular uprising against autocratic government, the United States has a natural sympathy with self-rule, personal freedom and representative government. To this day, it is guided by the Jeffersonian ideal that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect."

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Yes the US is inconsistent with this, but it still is light years ahead of the brutal brainless autocracies of North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Cuba and China. Stereotyping the USA is like stereotyping humanity - it is as diverse - but the difference between the USA and so many other countries is that somewhere in the USA, that diversity is embraced. Remember it is Europe that has been the source of the two greatest totalitarian tyrannies of the 20th century - Marxism-Leninism and Nazism.

England mad over World cup loss

Well the English World Cup dream is well and truly over. England played pretty much like it has for the whole World Cup, in which it has always just sneaked through due to the incompetence of the other side in most cases. This time, Mickey Rooney lost his temper and got red carded, then it was extra time and finally penalty shootout. However, in the first half I went to the supermarket – it was wonderful, virtually empty. The only other people there were a tiny handful of well dressed Europeans (note British is not European, for good and bad reasons – they are different, very different). It was the right thing to do, when I got back home it was nil all still and so I did some housework while it was on. The penalty shootout was good to watch without volume on though. When England got one, I could hear cheers from several directions. When it missed, there were “ohhhhhhhhh”s , when Portugal got one there were “nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo”s and when Portugal finally won it was a painful extended series of moans.
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At that point, it is reported that the M2 motorway was seen to be strewn with discarded England flags from cars, when drivers heard on the radio that it was over.
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The Sunday newspapers reported it as national tragedy – the Express headline being “End of the World”. The madness continued with the England team flying back home yesterday (you’d think men who were dedicated to the game would want to hang around to watch the semi finals and finals, but no they go home to sulk like babies) and both BBC News 24, Sky News and Sky Sports News channels interrupting regular broadcasts for continuous coverage of their BA plane sitting at the airport waiting for them – then they arrive – plane takes off. Then after an hour or so, plane lands at Stansted, plane sits on tarmac for ages, some of them get out, into cars and drive off. I switched channels and came back later to see news, and the plane was in Manchester!
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How fucking boring!! Seriously! Does anyone really give a flying fuck if you watch their plane – you know a BA Airbus A320 they chartered, like dozens that fly every day – and watch them get on and off it, into cars with their WAGS (wives and girlfriends). On 3 channels? With running commentary about what is going on and what is going to happen, repeated again and again.
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The real World Cup news was Brazil being defeated by France, and it was beautiful. The football superpower and several times champion, showed that it couldn’t hack it – it has played Croatia, Australia, Japan and Ghana, and only against Ghana and Japan did it really show what it had. So England will get over it, Brazil will be crying for the rest of the year. This is because Brazil has nothing else that it has pride for internationally. It is known for crime and environmental degradation, football is symbolically the only known path of social mobility for young men. Maybe Brazil will figure out that it needs a better totem to worship?

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Meanwhile, roll on the semi-finals, and may Germany defeat Italy.

Ticketing for revenue or safety?

Several rightwing bloggers (DPF and New Zeal) have reported the NZ Herald story about Police having to meet productivity targets – which could include ticketing for the sake of it. This is a typical talkback radio issue and one that annoys many because it appears the cops are being bloody minded.
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This sort of thing pisses off Ministers no end. Transport Minister Annette King isn’t amused, and I know that previous Transport Ministers, Labour and National have also been furious with reports like this. Ministers have denied it, and it has certainly not been policy of any Labour transport Ministers under this government, or recent National ones. In other words, this is NOT a political driver for money (it is pittance regardless and the Police don’t get the money as a kickback). The Police are funded for safety enforcement from the National Land Transport Programme by Land Transport NZ – it comes from your road taxes, and the targets the Police are meant to achieve are about reducing crashes in areas and on roads that have poor safety records. This isn’t about revenue collection (and the National Land Transport Fund does not receive fine revenue). Unfortunately, there is no competition for this. Nobody else has the powers to undertake the Police traffic enforcement work, although in the UK the trend has been for the Highways Agency to have its own unit to cope with non-enforcement activity that the Police often do, like directing traffic. I am sure more of this could happen in NZ too.
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NZ First is calling for a dedicated traffic enforcement unit, which has some merits, although we’ve been down that path before where someone would drive like a maniac past some cops and nothing would be done about it.

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No reason why the Police couldn’t also have a contract purely to catch dangerous drivers when they are observed, with a separate Transit contracted highway safety police for day to day activities. The answer to the Police is not a simple one, but it should be the responsibility of the road owner to contract.

New Jersey state government shutdown

The state of New Jersey isn’t working anymore – well that’s not true, the state government isn’t (except to protect people from crime and keep mental patients locked up). You see the governor and the legislature can’t agree on a budget, and that has meant that no money is now legally available to pay state government employees, state parks are closed as are historical monuments, and even road building projects are halted. It’s not even a partisan difference, both the governor and the legislature are democrats. Fortunately police, prisons and state mental hospitals can still operate, but that’s about it.
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Even privately owned casinos are being ordered shut down by Wednesday because they require by law state monitoring. Why they couldn’t remain open and gamblers warned that there are no state monitors and they gamble at their own risk (!) is beyond me.
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It’s a perfect example of how much COULD operate properly if it wasn’t run by the state. Road building, for example, should be about the road owner and its contractors, and the money would come directly from road users. Parks and monuments could be privately run, charging entry fees or with sponsorship and donations.
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The main point in dispute is that the Governor wants to raise the state sales tax by 1% point, the legislature doesn’t agree. No guesses as to what side I’d be on!

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This sort of thing happens in the US regularly, and is amusing. "Non essential" government services get shut down first, which makes you wonder why they are performed by government at all?