When does weekly mean fortnightly?
Written by Mark Pack on 3rd September 2007 – 7:07 pmWhat the Conservatives said in Guildford before the local elections:
Guildford Conservatives have pledged to keep weekly refuse collection.
And I think you can guess what they’ve decided to do now the elections are over, can’t you? Yup, here it is in all its glory:
Fortnightly waste collections waiting in the wings
AROUND 1,800 Guildford households having all recyclable rubbish – including leftover food – collected weekly from their doorsteps will have the rest of their waste picked up fortnightly.
Posted in Opposition watch
3rd September 2007 at 9:46 pm
The pledge you quoted has plenty of wriggle room in it.
Before the election: some waste collected weekly (including food waste), some fortnightly.
During the election: “We’ll keep weekly refuse collection” say Tories.
After the election: some waste collected weekly (including food waste), some fortnightly.
Pledge kept or pledge broken?
3rd September 2007 at 10:08 pm
That sounds like a weekly collection to me! It does make sense to collect all recyclables, including food waste, weekly. That should just leave packaging for fortnightly collections, and that might encourage people to think more carefully about how things are over packaged these days.
But the really odd thing about this story is that just up the road in Kingston the Tories are energetically opposing exactly the same schedule that they have introduced in Guildford. Of course, the fact that we are trialling it in a ward that they lost to us last year may have something to do with that.
3rd September 2007 at 10:17 pm
I think you’ll find it’s broken if you read our literature.
4th September 2007 at 12:24 am
I think the electoral backlash will depend on whether those who don’t want food collected fortnightly can put it in the weekly bin.
4th September 2007 at 8:42 am
Just out of interest Mark can you explain why around a dozen Lib Dem authorities organise THEIR bin collections on a fortnightly basis? Along with a similar number of Labour authorities and quite a few more (about 40) Conservative authorities? And even more NOCs with Lib-Con parties to the fore? (about 70)
Seems to me Guildford ought to be an area where this scheme could work assuming the right detailed workings. This would either save local people money or allow extensions in other services. Guildford is after all rather like a number of the Lib Dem councils where this fortnightly thing is practiced.
Here in Manchester there are no plans to change any collection to fortnightly.
But this did not stop Libdemologists pretending this was planned and persisting in recycling (do you see what I’ve done there?) this big fib for weeks on end.
With the only authority in the city region that ever tried (and shabbily failed and u-turned on) this change hilariously being a Lib domain. Ha ha ha.
Manchester Lib Dems also lowered the tone by printing a glorious graphic of a humungous rat with a Labour rosette on it.
Comments please?
4th September 2007 at 8:54 am
I have no problem with authorites running fortnightly collections, however winning an election saying you won’t, and then changing your mind afterwards hmmmm
4th September 2007 at 10:16 am
As a councillor myself in Guildford, I should also point out that next door in Waverley the Tories ran their entire campaign on the fortnightly collections introduced by the Lib Dem council - yet they get elected and refuse to go back to weekly.
Shouldn’t be surprised really. Tory promises are empty promises.
4th September 2007 at 1:07 pm
Same old Tories. Same old lies.
4th September 2007 at 5:32 pm
I agree with Chris Paul on this. OK, there are local circumstances which may mean that fortnightly collections are not the answer, but any Council introducing such a scheme needs to be sensitive to problems down to an individual level if it is to work smoothly. Basically, though, Liberal Democrats should be supporting these sorts of schemes, not playing politics when other parties introduce them. Leave the plague of rats and MRSA scares to the Daily Mail and its morons: the four horsemen of the apocalypse do not come trailing in the wake of the dustcart.
5th September 2007 at 3:24 pm
No 9:
The “plague of rats” scenario comes into play when people forget to put their rubbish out on the right day. Fortnightly collection would therefore increase the risk to public health only slightly. But “slightly” is more than “not at all”.
Unless, of course, one lives in a block of flats with a communal bin store that is replenished on a continual basis. There are quite a few residential blocks in Guildford, but hardly any at all in Waverley.
Rubbish collection is easier to undertake in Manchester, where doors are close together, than in somewhere like Guildford or Waverley, where we have streets such as White Lane and Echo Pit Road, not to mention the villages of Shamley Green and Dunsfold.
The public needs to be educated to store their refuse in sealed bags as soon as the kitchen bin is full.
There are surely far more pressing and intractable problems requiring the attention of politicians!
5th September 2007 at 4:29 pm
This isn’t a discussion about whether fortnightly collections are right for Guildford or not. The whole point of the article was to highlight the fact the Tories ardently campaigned against the Lib Dems in Guildford comparing them to the Lib Dems in a completely different borough, pledging themselves they would keep weekly waste collections (the pledge is even still on the Guildford Tories website!), then once they have won the borough with 26 seats to 22, they then introduce the very thing they scaremongered the Lib Dems would introduce.
20th January 2008 at 7:39 pm
I have always voted conservative, however i find a lot of politics leaves a bad taste in ones mouth. I am considering changing my vote to Liberal.I do not wish to be told by politicians what i want to hear..I wish to be told the truth!Recent personal issues i have had with the local council leave me amazed at the untruth , and devious influence by the conservatives in my area. I would like to talk to a local Liberal in my area to maybe get into politics in a small way in preperation for the future when i retire. My village (shamley green GU50uh) seems to be run by the conservative “club”, and many of the locals recognise this. We do not have a democratic society in this village in my view.The voice of the few seem to outway the voice of the many.Am i really living in England !