Recycling - Taxation by another name

For some years here in Derby we have dutifully been recycling our waste, with one of our bins being a brown bin for garden waste and food leftovers.

Derby City Council have now had a rethink on the process and in a leaflet that was delivered with our new larger blue bins (more below) they dropped in a small section about the brown bin collection.

They tell us that next year they will charge for collection of the brown bin.  Of course they blame the government, to quote the leaflet

'This is because of government cuts to our budget which means we have no choice but to stop providing some services for free. This will allow us to protect other services such as children's centres, care homes and libraries'

I have two objections to the above statement:

Firstly they were not providing the service for free, waste collection is part of what I pay my council tax for.  I won't see a reduction in the council tax but an additional charge for a service I have already paid for!

Secondly they are still cutting the services they claim this charge is to protect - work that one out.

It gets better however.  If I don't want to pay the charge I can opt out of having my bin collected - I am sure the administrative costs there will not be trivial, and if say 50% of households do so across the city then it is likely there will be no cost savings as the bin wagons and their crews will still be needed for the other 50%.  Furthermore I am told that if I don't want my bin collecting I can put the waste I presently recycle in with the non recyclable waste so it can go to landfill - where is the sense in that?

There also seems to be a retrograde step with the blue bins.  To date we have had a small blue bin for plastics, glass and cans.  This has now been replaced with a larger bin into which we can also add the paper and card previously collected in a blue bag and orange bag respectively.  I hope this is because it is more cost effective to sort it at the depot but nothing has been said.  Is there some other reason?  Is it being recycled at all?

This also leaves us with our old small blue bin.  These are to be collected in or we can do a bit of 'Blue Peter' and turn them into composing bins!  I trust if collected in they will be recycled but once again I have my doubts.

There appears to be no coherent approach to recycling - but a very clear plan to extract yet more money from the captive taxpayer!

Unfair VAT on e-books

For some time now I have been a keen e-book reader, and am very happy with my Kindle.  I probably have less than one hundred books on it so far but the amount of shelf space that even that number would take up is considerable.

So far so good.

My problem is with the tax treatment of e-books.

If I buy books in the more traditional hardback or paperback format I am not charged any VAT.  If however I buy e-books then I am charged VAT.  Why?  I don't understand the difference because at the end of the day the content is the same, possibly even less as some e-books are without some of the pictures you get in the print version.

This seems to me to be counter productive.  E-books do not require trees to be chopped down to make paper, do not require vast warehouses to store, no fuel guzzling trucks to distribute and no shelf space at retailers.

All in all this should actually be reason for the government to offer an incentive as they are more environmentally friendly.  So why then are we charged VAT to buy them?  The only reason I can see is greed - yet another way to extract money from Joe Public for the government coffers.

I will be writing to my MP and the government.  I am not hopeful for a change of policy however!