SCOTLAND’S councils should adopt a joint motto — Pay More, Get Less, Get Fined.
They might as well embrace this creeping reality, because we’re all living through it.
Councils must bin the rush to fine us all and focus on vital services[/caption]
Maybe they could print it on the top of those rocketing council tax bills?
We are all paying more — much more — for dwindling bin collections, roads and pavements to be neglected, and services like libraries to be shut or have their hours cut.
Then there’s the rush to shore up revenue and generally crush the spirit of citizens by dishing out fixed penalties like confetti.
There have long been fines for parking incursions, of course. But now we have them for straying into bus lanes, entering low emission zones, dropping litter, and mounting kerbs under new pavement parking laws.
In Aberdeen, as this newspaper reports today, they’ve brought in private wardens to pounce on pensioners who accidentally drop bits of paper.
But after those record-breaking council tax rises which kick in next month, there’s even more rubbish news — pun fully intended.
Because an army of snoopers are about to be deployed across Scotland to poke around in your bins, on behalf of Holyrood ministers.
And if they deem you have committed a recycling-related breach — which they will, even if to pay their own wages — you can be fined for that too.
In their infinite wisdom, this is one of the things the Scottish Parliament has deemed to be a priority for councils.
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This, at a time when the urban realm is crumbling, and town halls are so skint they are having to cut teachers and whack up council tax by an average of 9.6 per cent.
SNP ministers have decreed that what we need is more council officers, hired specifically to rake around in your wheelie bins and check you are following a dizzying array of ever-changing recycling rules.
Never mind throwing every last penny at educating our children.
The command from on high is to hire enforcement officers to go around warning people a crisp packet or drinks can has been found in the wrong bin.
If a wayward citizen is impertinent enough to keep putting the wrong things in the wrong places, they shall be issued with a fixed penalty.
I’ve looked into this bin snooper scheme, and unsurprisingly it means hiring more staff to help further boost our disproportionately high public sector employment rate.
Buried in a “financial memorandum” for the Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024 are estimates of costs.
From these, it can be calculated that at least 72 enforcement officers will be needed for bin-raking duties, with a wage bill of about £2.9million.
A further 32 “administrators” for the scheme — one in each council area — adds another £1.8million. The level of fines remains to be set. Ministers will decide on that in the coming months, before the regime kicks in, but a figure of £100 has already been mentioned in Scottish Government documents.
It’s clear councils are going to have to issue a load of fines simply to pay for the scheme.
Laughably, the Scottish Government says on one hand that penalties “would be for persistent and deliberate lack of compliance, and a last resort”.
But on the other hand, they say that “the cost of local authority enforcement action would be partially or fully recovered through revenue from the Fixed Penalty Notices”.
In short, bin snoopers NEED to issue fines to pay their own wages. And given the dire state of council finances, there’s a clear incentive for authorities to issue even more to bolster flagging town hall finances.
Councils and governments need to put the brakes on this scheme, at least before they get their own house in order.
There remains a mind-boggling muddle of bin rules across Scotland’s 32 local authorities, despite government admitting this needs simplified. In some areas, householders are faced with up to eight different containers depending on the kind of rubbish.
MSPs dropping like flies
IT’S not just Nicola Sturgeon and Michael Matheson quitting Holyrood.
SNP Cabinet Ministers are dropping like flies ahead of the next election in 2026.
Finance Secretary Shona Robison, Transport Secretary Fiona Hyslop and Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon are going too — and there may be more to come.
Do they know something the rest of us don’t? When the going gets tough, it’s normal to see ruling party bigwigs stepping down instead of getting stuffed. Just look at the Tories last year.
However, the latest polls show the SNP are set to return to power after Labour’s woes.
All these SNP resignations are making me wonder. Might they think that Scottish Labour’s poll slump is only a blip?
Because jumping off the gravy train when it’s chugging along nicely is almost unheard of.
The first step should be to sort this out and standardise rules, before coming for householders with the threat of fines for putting the wrong object in the wrong bin.
At the moment, it’s not clear if councils even know what they’re doing — never mind the public.
My house in Glasgow was issued with a new grey bin last summer, for plastics and cans.
Previously cans went in the blue bin, but no more. If you put your can in your blue bin now, expect a warning tag to be placed on your bin with a ticking off.
But when I key in my address to the council website to find out when the grey bin is collected, it apparently doesn’t exist.
Some months I think the council doesn’t know about this phantom bin either, given it sits unemptied and overflowing.
The council is already placing those warning tags on bins ahead of the fines kicking in. Right now, the ultimate sanction is for a bin to be removed.
But soon, fixed penalties can be issued too.
When you see the condition of places such as Glasgow, you have to question whether the hectoring of householders who are being forced to pay more and more for an increasingly dire service is really the way to go about things.
The appalling state of the city is down to factors like years of under-investment and complacency from those in power.
It’s definitely not because of residents’ confusion over what items should be put in what bin.
