Boris is now fairly notorious in the thinking world for the WEZ consultation, which was, possibly deliberately, split into two sections which produced different answers. The one Boris went with was an entirely unscientific write-in campaign orchestrated mainly by Tory boroughs including the Thatcherite ultras at Hammersmith and Fulham, whose well-fed leader previously helped Boris’s ludicrous ‘Forensic Audit Panel’ find damning evidence of nothing much at all. Clearly men to be reckoned with in the consultation area.
LBHF recently conducted a consultation of their own around whether public garden waste collections should be maintained. Over the border in the sunny uplands of Hounslow we’re going all new-fangled on recycling with a collection of different coloured bags including a sturdy garden waste bag, so you might expect popular support for garden waste collection to be reflected up the road in Hammersmith. You’d be right – in the online consultation 43% supported the current scheme, 15% supported stopping it. Obviously such an overwhelming verdict could meet only one response from the consultation experts at Town Hall – they ignored it, and scrapped the scheme anyway to save a few pence on the council tax.
Their pathetic excuses run along the lines of ‘it’s really environmentally unfriendly to drag all the waste to Essex to compost it’. This rather ignores the fact that Richmond council have a great big recycling centre a couple of miles from Hammersmith, not to mention Kew Gardens being another mile or so further away. They’re not the only borough in London with this issue, and others seem to be making a go of it. The thought occurs that it might be a subtle plan to get everyone to dump it all in Richmond or Wandsworth, so they get the costs and LBHF get the tax cuts. Dear me, I am cynical tonight.
Anyway, surely Green Boris would jump at the chance to mulch down the garden waste of LBHF and spread it on his Dig For Victory roof gardens? How about some joined up thinking, guys? As a consultation respondent said, before being ignored:
“This looks to me like a cost-cutting initiative dressed up with dubious arguments about fairness. There are plenty of council services used by a minority. I suspect this is one that is not a statutory requirement to provide, so it is being attacked,” commented one respondent.
Local democracy – dontchaloveit?
Tags: balls · consultation · greenwash · lbhf1 Comment
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LBH&F have a series of faux-billboards around Hammersmith roundabout saying things like “COUNCIL TAX SET TO FALL 3%!” – who fancies pasting over them with “MASSIVE SERVICE CUTS!”?