Tagging Rubbish

The Secretary of Talking about the Environment, David Miliband, has expressed an interest in "variable waste charging where the polluter is made to pay". To this end, identification chips are being installed in the lips of rubbish bins so that the contents can be scanned as they are tipped into the dust cart. Some dust carts are able to link the information from the lips of the bins to the amount of rubbish collected from each disposability fulfilment service user.

A spokesbeing for the Department of Environmental Footling and Rubbish Alertness (Defra) said that local authorities have not been ordered to place our rubbish under electronic surveillance. This may well be true; Tony Blair has, after all, been out of the country for a while. However, Defra has paid councils five million pounds to conduct forty pilot schemes "to help the UK meet tough European landfill reduction targets". Apparently landfill reduction is yet another imposition from Brussels, and is not a genuine priority here on the mainland.

Simon Davies of Privacy International has complained that the tags will "inevitably be used to boost revenue". This strikes me as rather unfair. The Government has shown no interest at all in using computer technology to collect revenue. From the privatisation of essential services through the Surveillance Makes You Free ID card project to the efficientiation of the NHS, the Government is much more interested in using revenue to collect computer technology. Indeed, so dedicated are they to the wonders of IT that it seems a distinctly secondary matter whether the systems work or not. Given the Government's known priorities and previous record, Simon Davies should be grateful to know that at least some of his tax money is ending up, very nearly harmlessly, in the dustbin.