Rubbish

It's conference season so we have another initiative, this time Eric Pickles proposing to reward councils financially who return back to weekly collections:

Town halls are to be shamed into bringing back weekly bin collections, it was revealed yesterday.

In a victory for householders, ministers unveiled a £250million fund to restore them.

Laughably, Pickles then says this:

‘Labour’s solution was to bully councils into fortnightly collections. My view is this goes beyond bins – it’s about a question of trust between politicians and the public.

A question of trust? If Pickles really meant that he would have said something like this instead:

Because of the EU landfill Directive and its subsequent targets to reduce landfill, councils have altered their waste collections accordingly. In order to return back to weekly collections the Government will pay the councils' EU fines if their exceed their landfill allocation (currently £150 per tonne over). Don't ask me where this money will come from, I don't know.

Effectively this coalition government has increased our contribution to EU by £250m. Meanwhile, 1000 Royal Navy personnel will be made redundant today.