Showing posts with label politicians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politicians. Show all posts

Monday, September 22, 2008

Garbage in the UK: Politicians Torture Brits Over Garbage



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Britain In The Bin
Garbage Nannies Take Over



The Nannies of Britain are never short of ideas to torture the public.

No matter how small the stature of office, politicians and their minions in the United Kingdom share a uniform desire to prove that each of them is the most trite, meddling imbecile in the land. Apparently the prestige of this distinction outweighs all else, because British politicians and public servants--if they be such--seem to conduct themselves with absolutely no discernment whatsoever.

Discernment being a trait only made worse by their bovine determination.

Cases in point.

'Thieves' stealing wheelie bins from backgardens turn out to be COUNCIL snoops searching for illegal dustbins

"When wheelie bins began to go missing from outside their homes, residents wondered whether they should call the police.

But when the thieves were unmasked, their identities proved to be something a shock.

The two men responsible were council officers assigned to secretly snoop in back gardens.

They were employed to find out which residents were using extra 'unauthorised' wheelie bins to dispose of their rubbish – and took those bins away if they considered them to be unlawful....The warden, working for Blackburn with Darwen Council in Lancashire, even used ladders to peer over garden walls on to lawns and back yards while the occupants were out. If they saw any homes with two bins for non-recyclable waste they took one away without informing the resident."


In that instant the garbage police were caught with the goods by an alert homeowner. But the story goes on to point out:

"The move is the latest draconian rubbish collection measure.

Earlier this year the Daily Mail revealed that Tory-run Plymouth Council wants families to name somebody to be in charge of their rubbish.That individual would then face £100 fines and a criminal record if rubbish goes in the wrong wheelie bins, or the bins are put out too soon or in the wrong place."

Volunteers?

If so inclined to be garbage warden for your household, read on.


Father of four taken to court and fined ... because he overfilled his wheelie-bin by just four inches

With his rubbish collected only once a fortnight, Gareth Corkhill's wheelie bin was so full the lid wouldn't shut.

And for that, the father of four finds himself with a criminal record.

Magistrates convicted the 26-year-old bus driver after hearing evidence that the lid was four inches ajar, which is against rules to stop bins overflowing.




ABOVE:
Four inches too far: Gareth Corkhill with wife Claire and son Josh


"He was ordered to pay £210 - a week's wages - after he declined to pay an on-the-spot fine imposed by the local council's bin police, who visited him wearing stab-proof vests and carrying photographic evidence of his crime."

Hmmm.

$100 per inch. And the Council thoughtfully collects only once every 20 days. Seems fair...... to the lunatics that run the asylum once known as Great Britain.

But rampant garbage crime is a unisex offense.


Mother fined £400 for leaving wheelie bin in wrong place

A young mother has been ordered to pay nearly £400 for leaving her wheelie bin in the wrong place.Holly Dutton, 26, failed to pay a £100 fixed penalty notice issued when she left the bin in an alley behind her house in Horwich, near Bolton.

Magistrates have increased the fine to £130 and added £215 in costs, plus a £15 surcharge towards a fund for victims of crime."



Not much sympathy from the man in the silly wig, there.

BTW, the fine for shoplifting in Britain is 80 Pounds.

But Big Brother does not stop at merely a searching a homeowner's backyard or tape measuring the gap of a bin cover ( instead of merely closing the same). No, these
dimwitted demagogues have gone high tech to entrap rubbish scofflaws.

Residents revolt against wheelie-bin spies

A huge revolt against wheelie-bin spy bugs is sweeping Britain, with thousands of defiant households removing the electronic devices and either dumping them or posting them back to their local town hall.The protesters are ignoring threats of prosecution for criminal damage in their anger at having their rubbish secretly monitored by council chiefs.

One of the biggest shows of defiance has been in Bournemouth, where councillors estimate that 25,000 bugs - one-third of the total - have been unscrewed.

Astonishingly, Bournemouth Council is considering replacing all the 'vandalised' bins at a cost of up to £600,000.The bugs, whose existence was revealed by The Mail on Sunday two weeks ago, are about the size of a 1p piece.

They contain a microchip that enables councils to record the weight of rubbish collected - and to impose fines if the Government brings in laws to punish people who don't recycle enough."






ABOVE: British Pitchforks carefully locked away from the hand of peasants.

The politicians of this nation of beaten sheep were not intimidated.

"But Kennet Council leader Chris Humphries said: "These bins belong to the council. They don't belong to the people who hold them. They are interfering with a bin that belongs to somebody else."

A council spokesman added: "Residents are not authorised to remove these numeric chips. The question as to whether the chips' removal constitutes criminal damage is a detailed legal issue."

One is left in wonderment of the sheer hopelessness of the situation. The citizens of this shipwreck of a country actually vote for these imbeciles.

Why? Because they have been led to believe that only the State can make decisions. Individual responsibility, the thought that welfare may not be available has become a fear greater than life itself.


Now dustmen won't take your rubbish away if wheelie bin is too heavy to pull with two fingers

"Binmen have put two fingers up to common sense by issuing an astonishing warning to council-tax payers.'If we can't pull your wheelie bin using just two fingers it is too heavy - and won't be emptied.'Bins that need three or more fingers, they claim, constitute a health and safety risk as they could fall from the lorry while being emptied."

The edict from binmen is the latest salvo in a continuing battle between householders and bureaucracy.It comes only days after the Daily Mail reported how widowed pensioner June Kay, 79, had been told to drag a 360-litre wheelie bin more than half a mile down a steep hill if she wanted it emptied.The two-finger policy was discovered by Katie Shergold in the historic market town of Warminster, Wiltshire.





ABOVE: Shergold couldn't believe it when she heard the barmy rule.

She watched in disbelief as binmen stuck a 'too heavy to move' sticker on her bin of grass cuttings, just 6ft from their lorry. Yet 5ft 4in Mrs Shergold, 26, had wheeled the bin round to the front of her house without any difficulty."


When a country is in the throes of cultural collapse, apparently small things give comfort. Like bedeviling your fellow citizens and celebrating insignificant bureaucratic accomplishment

Google has over 150,000 articles on Britain's efforts to stem the flow of garbage. The Daily Mail has over a hundred stories of the abuse perpetrated in this war. No doubt these fools have convinced themselves they are saving the planet from Global Warming or similar nonsense. The planet would be far better if the Brits shit-canned these politicians instead.

Kill the rot before it spreads.


by pat
Images:
* earthnet
* daily mail

Minimum distance between bins

Sources
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1057622/Thieves-stealing-wheelie-bins-gardens-turn-COUNCIL-snoops-searching-illegal-dustbins.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-561037/Father-taken-court-fined---overfilled-wheelie-bin-just-inches.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-497418/Mother-fined-400-leaving-wheelie-bin-wrong-place.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-404399/Residents-revolt-wheelie-bin-spies.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1024714/Now-dustmen-wont-rubbish-away-wheelie-bin-heavy-pull-fingers.html



Thursday, July 31, 2008

Minimum Wage Hike: Who Does it Really Benefit?

America Takes A Pay Cut
Red Planet Cartoons



Red Planet Cartoons takes a look at the increase in minimum wage in their latest.

From The Wall Street Journal: Bad Law, Worse Timing.

Most are not family heads making the minimum wage full-time all year. They are young single adults, teenagers living at home or spouses providing a second income. The average family income of a minimum-wage earner is $44,636, and 42% of these workers live with a parent or other relative. Only 15% of employees making the minimum wage are single earners with dependents. “A minimum wage increase today is a middle-class family entitlement,” says EPI Executive Director Rick Berman, “because that’s who’s working at the minimum wage in second and third jobs.”

Repeated studies have shown that minimum-wage increases are more likely to slow job creation than reduce poverty. A large share of the costs of these mandates are borne by the same low-income families the wage hike is supposed to help. Employers inevitably pass wage increases onto consumers as higher prices for goods and services, which erodes the spending power of all consumers but especially the poor. Employers also respond by hiring fewer unskilled workers, a disproportionate number of whom are teenagers and minorities.


Why would politicians vote for a minimum wage increase when it's been demonstrated, time-and-again that it hurts the very people it's supposed to help?

It's the ultimate liberal politician's wet dream.

It allows the liberal to proclaim that (s)he's helping the poor. It also fulfills the political need of "doing something"--whether that "something" is beneficial or not. Finally, it allows the liberal to feel good about themselves for being such a fine, outstanding person.

The facts be damned.

As a personal note: eons ago, while managing a fast food restaurant, the minimum wage was increased. That raised labor costs as well. Labor costs at our store were fixed as a percentage of sales the store did. The usual amount of money we had to work with for labor costs at that time, was roughly (if memory serves), $280 per week.

Though the minimum wage went up, the budget for labor costs did not. If the labor costs budget increased, then our prices had to increase, also. The upshot: we had to let one of our eight workers go and cut the hours of two others.

That is the real-life consequences of a rise in the minimum wage.

Red Planet also includes supporting links, for reference and convenience.

Raising the minimum wage: who does it really help?

Ask the politicians.

by Mondoreb
Source: America Takes a Pay Cut

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Beltway Elites and the Ordinary Americans They Rule

Life Outside the Beltway



Washington elites, pontificating pundits and media types would be very surprised to know: There is life outside the beltway. Millions of largely invisible, average Americans live there. And these Americans are living lives totally alien to the thousands of so-called experts and talking heads who claim to represent them.

For instance: These Americans, (I'll call them 'we' Americans, as I belong to their ranks), aren't waiting breathlessly for the latest word on high from Hillary. We really don't care what she says, having learned long ago that much of what comes out of her mouth is designed for political expediency, not conveying truths.

We're also not marveling over the new media messiah, Obama. We've been around awhile and we know what all the experts don't, namely, that a 15 minute flash in the pan does not a president make. As far as we're concerned, the job of running this, the greatest country in the world, requires more than being able to give a good speech. And even though some of us wear checkered shirts and have been known to drink beer on occasion doesn't mean we don't know the difference between socialism and capitalism.

Instead of spending all our time dissecting the nuance and context of the latest sound bite du jour, we have better things to do. Like earning a living, spending time with family or just plain having fun.

We have lives that are not dependant on political fortunes or government largesse. We live in the real world. A world, unlike the inside of the D.C. beltway, where hard work and merit are appreciated and rewarded. A world where a man's word is still his bond and Christian values still mean something. A world where acquiring power and money mean less than earning an honest living and the respect of our neighbors.

The latest polls mean less than zero to us. We know that in politics, 24 hours can be a lifetime and there are many lifetimes to go before we cast our votes in November.

We 'invisible' Americans know when we're being patronized and we have enough common sense to take with a grain of salt any pronouncements claiming to be 'for our own good.' We know best how to run our lives, not some yahoo who's only accomplishment was fooling enough of the populace to get elected to a position of political power.

To most of us in flyover country, political correctness is the hallmark of a herd animal - one who follows the group and lets others do his thinking for him. One who is more concerned with group status than doing what he thinks is right. You know who I mean: the guys and gals that appear on TV, gravely giving us peons the benefit of their vast knowledge. The ones who claim the 'truth' is relative yet insist that their version is the only acceptable truth.

The difference between those that inhabit the rarified real-estate inside-the-beltway and us average Americans is, we are held accountable for the decisions we make. And when we endorse or promote a cause or an idea, we do it with our own money, not the taxpayers'. And we do it quietly, for the right reasons, knowing that the virtue is in the doing, not the talking about it.

Here in the heartland, we all practice capitalism without shame and we don't apologize for making a profit. A lot of us still lower our voices to a whisper when discussing race, but we're working on that.

Words still have meanings and we know that relabelling a donkey as a princess doesn't make that ass a princess. We know a rose is still a rose, even if a self-annointed expert says it isn't. We really don't need or want all the inside-the-beltway experts telling us how to raise our own kids, what kind of car to buy, or how to celebrate diversity.

Mostly, we'd just like to be left alone by all the do-gooders who's main talents are manufacturing crisis' in order to save us from them. We'd sure appreciate it if you'd limit your mischief making to inside the beltway and leave us all alone. We can live our lives just fine without your help.


by Nancy Morgan

Nancy Morgan is a columnist and a news editor for RightBias.com
She lives in South Carolina, where she writes "Culture Watch" weekly.

Article may be reprinted with attribution. Bio available on request.


images:
* fabricspray.com
* myslewski

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Montana's Bakken Oil Find: Good News, Bad News

HUGE Oil Field in Montana is Good News for Consumers
--Which Makes it Unpalatable for the Mainstream Media



While Jeroen van der Veer, Shell’s chief executive, fears for the future of oil supplies after 2015--maybe he's confusing Shell's oil supply with the rest of the world's--Newsmax has just released information on the HUGE oil discovery in Montana: the Williston Basin or "Bakken" field.

About 470 miles outside the state capitol of Helena - in a place called Richland County, Montana - more millionaires are being created per capita than anywhere else in America.

It's the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska's Prudhoe Bay and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable... at $107 a barrel, Montana is looking at a resource base worth more than $5.3 trillion.

* "When I first briefed legislators on this, you could practically see their jaws hit the floor. They had no idea." says Terry Johnson, the Montana Legislature's financial analyst.

* "This sizeable find is now the highest-producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years," reports The Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

It's a formation known as the Williston Basin, but is more commonly referred to as the "Bakken." And it stretches from Northern Montana, through North Dakota and into Canada.

For years, U.S. oil exploration has been considered a dead end. Even the "Big Oil" companies gave up searching for major oil wells decades ago. However, a recent technological breakthrough has opened up the Bakken's massive reserves... and we now have access of up to 500 billion barrels.

And because this is light, sweet oil, those billions of barrels will cost Americans just $16 PER BARREL!

That's enough crude to fully fuel the American economy for 41 years straight.

As one can see from the map below, before the 'Bakken' discovery, the U.S. was still a major oil producer--it is just a major consumer, also.



The relative MSM coverage of the 'Bakken' find is another example of the topsy-turvy media reporting to which the USA--and most of the rest of the world--has grown accustomed.

Politicians, most of who have seldom been involved in anything economically-productive, are looked to as providing answers to complex questions. As Thomas Sowell has said:
Let's face it. Supply and demand will never replace "need" and "greed" in political discussions of economic issues.

Talking about the "need" for more affordable housing or more affordable medical care is what will get politicians more votes this election year.

Voters don't want to hear about impersonal things like supply and demand. They want to hear about how their political heroes will stop the villains from "gouging" them or "exploiting" them with high prices.

Moral melodrama is where it's at, politically.

Moral melodrama, indeed.

Politicians in general--and Democrats, in particular--find little that is "sexy" in talking about supply and demand. How much easier to switch the subject: to "Big Oil Villains".

It has always been thus: politicians TALK about hard questions, hard problems and hard solutions, while their ACTIONS scream "easy". We've come to expect this: their desk plaques might read "Senator" and "Congressman" when you see them on C-SPAN, but for most, a simple "Politician" label would be more accurate.

Careful followers of the economic debates that occupy today's politicians understand this and sigh. But it's seemingly above the heads of most MSM reporters, Bill O'Reilly and Democrat Congressional members.



The 'Bakken' field is economic good news for the U.S.A. and for American consumers.

That's reason enough to provoke little excitement among the Mainstream Media and campaigning politicians.

by Mondoreb
Sources:
* Shell chief fears oil shortage in seven years
* Too "Complex"?: Part II
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