Plea for bottle deposit

AS A regular litter picker around Haydon Wick, I am always staggered

at the number of plastic bottles that line the roadways and footpaths up here.

The move from glass to plastic has created a tsunami of plastic litter. For example I was cleaning the cycleway/footpath on Thamesdown Drive last week and counted 27 plastic bottles between the Torun Way junction and Queen Elizabeth Drive.

While the overwhelming majority are tossed from car windows, I’m pretty sure that just a few of the health fanatics constantly cycling and jogging up and down Thamesdown Drive, contribute to some of the empties.

The other incredible thing is that quite often they remain part or wholly full of the contents.

In the UK we consume 35.8 million plastic bottles… yes 35.8 million every day. Of these less than half are recycled.

When we introduced a charge for carrier bags, six billion bags dropped out of circulation which was an 80 per cent reduction, just nine months into the scheme.

You and I will have seen people coming out of supermarkets balancing large amounts of shopping in their arms (or on their heads!) simply to avoid 5p bag charge. Charging works.

This was such a successful scheme, why don’t we repeat the concept with a plastic bottle deposit charge?

Research estimates suggest we could double the number of plastic bottles recycled by adding a deposit charge to each sale.

The material these bottles employ is known as PET. It’s easy to recycle and has a relatively high value and by keeping empties separate from other curb side recycling, the plastic will remain uncontaminated and thus attract a premium price from companies making new bottles.

This is not new. There is such a scheme operating in Norway which has the world’s most effective deposit return system for plastic drinks bottles. There they are hitting a 96 per cent returns rate by adopting a standard charge for 500ml bottles of one Norwegian kroner (about 10p) with larger plastic bottles carrying a 2.5 kroner (about 25p) deposit.

Consumers have the deposit refunded when they return empties and unclaimed deposits on bottles help fund the system, with the balance made up by drinks manufacturers.

With a scheme like this not only would consumers be encouraged to return plastic bottles, but any that were then discarded would be a valuable source of pocket money for most young lads in the area.

It would also make my task easier, improve the environment and give us time to focus down on glass, tins, baby wipes and an epidemic of Macdonald and Costa drinking vessels!

JOHN STOOKE

Haydon End, Swindon

Bring in parks charge

IN ORDER to alleviate some financial pressure, Swindon Borough Council has decided to introduce an additional new and costly tier of administration in the form of parishes to those areas within the borough that previously were free of such encumbrances.

Central Swindon South is one such new parish. Details of the particular responsibilities will be to pay for the area and maintenance of the open spaces and parks within the parish.

This will mean care and maintenance of at least Queens Park, The Town Gardens, The Lawns, Faringdon Road Park, and Coate Water.

These wonderful park swill be open to all residents from across the Borough of Swindon - even though costs will be borne only by residents of the new Central Swindon South Parish.

This cost of care and maintenance forms part of the new financial precept, or new additional cost, being charged to residents of the new parish and contributes to a higher than average rate increase than that of other parishes. Is this fair?

I would like to see any unfairness rectified. And, with tongue firmly in cheek, propose that residents living outside of Central Swindon South Parish should be asked in future to contribute a small admission charge towards care and maintenance whenever they wish to make use of these facilities.

Residents of Central Swindon South Parish would of course be exempt from this charge as they are already being charged, irrespective of whether or not they actually use the parks.

This would help to alleviate the unfairness described above, as well as to help raise much needed funds for ongoing care and maintenance. Simples?

NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED

Figures don’t add up

COUNCIL tax bills are hitting residents mats with a huge unpleasant

surprise for many.

Residents of what was Roundway Parish Council are being hit with an increase of about 200 per cent for their parish/town council contribution, and more than 150 per cent for the Wiltshire social care levy.

Unfortunately, the bills sent are significantly misleading in presenting these as 3.5 per cent and three per cent increases due to not comparing residents’ bills correctly.

As stated on www.onecouncilfordevizes.org.uk “Yes, it will cost more money, but we hope that you will agree that the alternative impact on our town would be unthinkable.”

But no indication was given of the scale of the increase. New development has been significant in Roundway Parish and more is planned and this just looks like an attempt by Devizes Town to capture this increased income. Having voted for it how much will councillors’ allowances be increasing?

The level of increases for these residents do not align with Parliamentary requirement for a local referendum if the social care levy is increased by more than five per cent.

Unfortunately there is no threshold for parish or town council charges, so only part of this could potentially be challenged.

ref: http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN05682

http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN05682/SN05682.pdf

Figures based on a band E property.

BRIAN APPLEBY

Via email

Crime does pay

IS IT any wonder that people in this country have had enough of politicians?

With the news over the past week that the man who took pleasure in robbing the disabled of the UK of £1,560 a year in disability benefits, and at the same time being cheered on by all Tory MPs, is now taking a £650,000 salary from global hedge fund group Blackrock for which he ‘works’, if that is what he does, four days a month, the equivalent of £13,542 a day.

He is also making £786,450 in private speeches, £120,000 for a year’s work with McCain Institute project, plus his salary of £74,962 as MP of Totton.

So the man in question, the former Chancellor Gideon George Osborne, who has helped make homelessness, and poverty the norm in the UK, and widen the gap between the rich and the poor, is now a multi- multi-millionaire.

Who says crime doesn’t pay?

MARK WEBB

Old Town, Swindon

Get rid of Lords

WHEN are we finally going to bite the bullet and do away once and for all with this wasteful section in Westminster Known as the House of Lords?

This membership is full of hasbeens, wannabes and totally useless no hopers.

We, the public voted in a Government to rule and govern this country. All of which were duly elected.

But this so called upper house, full of these nonentities believe that they have the right to deny the wishes of the majority of the public. Moreover they have the effrontery to believe that they also have the right to tell the Government what it can and cannot do.

It was much better before it was altered by Labour to allow them to try and have a large majority in the House of Lords which they couldn’t get in Government.

Hereditary Lords really didn’t have an axe to grind, unlike these who occupy this ancient House today.

It should be dismantled and put to some constructive use and furthermore it would save the country £300 a day each time one of these so called Lords signs in and then leaves after just 10 minutes in the House.

Enough, we have had enough of them. Get them behind us you wastrels.

DAVID COLLINS

Blake Crescent, Swindon

Rich take the wealth

STEVE Halden writes I criticised him for wanting to encourage wealth creation.

I didn’t. I criticised him for supporting politics which subordinate wealth creation entirely to the interests of the very rich.

Incidentally, I don’t believe Steve’s ABCs of economics come close to explaining the absurdities of the system, however repetitively he shares.

Had you told people before the 19th century that it was possible to have crises of over production they would have thought you mad and covered you in leeches.

Yet through much of the 20th century we saw food destroyed, and farmers paid not to produce, just to keep up prices and boost profits while millions starved.

Champions of the market system have today found many more imaginative ways to starve people.

The market system, generalised commodity production where profit is king, exists solely for the benefit of a tiny but rich minority.

Mountains of cash, representing wealth produced by workers, sit in corporate bank accounts.

It could be put to use for the common good but isn’t because of the priorities of the rich.

This system has itself become a barrier to wealth creation and its crises frequently destroy large amounts of wealth.

PETER SMITH

Woodside Avenue, Swindon

Where are pollsters?

THE Prime Minister has problems with NHS corridor queues. Plus welfare cuts against the disabled. Also the police and prisons are in a mess.

Yet Theresa May is still said to be popular by the opinion pollsters.

Could it be that dim pollsters are doing interviews outside Conservative clubs?

She is good on television, but so what? It doesn’t put food into the mouths of struggling families. Nor do her “classless society” statements ring true.

Mrs May is a prisoner of Conservative Party history.

MAX NOTTINGHAM

St Faith’s Street, Lincoln