The Millibeast is planning to introduce a “pay as you throw” scheme in England to encourage recycling.

He is due to publish his “England Waste Strategy” because he fears that England is falling behind the rest of Europe on recycling.

The urge to force us to recycle as much as possible isn’t an environmental one, it is because the weak British government allows itself to be dictated to by the European Federation which fines us billions of pounds for missing their recycling targets.

Charging for the amount of rubbish we throw away will result in more fly-tipping.  Of those that do pay, the poorest families and large households will be the ones that will be hit the hardest.  Budget goods contain more packaging to make what is being sold more appealing to the buyer.  If you buy an expensive packet of some meat product it will likely be wrapped in the minimal amount of plastic.  Buy the budget equivalent and it’ll be wrapped up in all sorts of exciting packaging to convince you that something with that amount of fancy packaging isn’t just a lump of offal and animal bones pressed into a mysterious shape.

Observant readers will note the emphasis on the word England in the first two paragraphs.  These proposals, of course, don’t apply to Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.  As far as I know they don’t do things any differently to England when it comes to recycling but only the English are being singled out for punishment.

If our neighbours continue to underperform on recycling and bring down the UK average below the minimum required to escape the EU fines who will pay the fines?  The Scottish or Welsh taxpayer?  Of course not – only one nation pays more money into the UK Treasury than it spends – the English taxpayer will pay to have their bins emptied, extra depending on how much rubbish they throw away and then they’ll pay the EU fines for not hitting targets.