Town hall bureaucrats could soon dictate what homeowners grow in their gardens. The measure is one of 52 ways to cut household waste suggested in a report commissioned by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Restrictions on fast-growing plants, trees and flowers could be brought in by "including gardens in building regulations" it said.
I really am stumped for words. Almost. Is there no end to the interference in every aspect of our lives these tinpot dictators are proposing? And to think, our taxes are paying for civil servants to dream up such nonsense. If they haven't found a way to curb the growth of Leylandi, do they really think they can tell responsible citizens what they are allowed to grow in their own gardens? Perhaps the batural next step is to put a CCTV cameria in every garden. Don't laugh. A few years ago we would have laughted at suggestions that microchips would be fitted in wheelie bins.
46 comments:
Is it worth trying to work out our worst nightmare as to what they will do next so we know what we need to combat. I believe the next Conservative government must be about freedom.
What!!!!
What else have they got to do? They've been slowly handing over their responsibilities to Brussels. They're probably bored.
We'll all be told to grow our own veg soon. Or be taxed be square yard of garden that is not grass.
How long until we get ration books!!?
If it's a battle between the gardeners of Britain and NuLab I know who I'd have my money on.
And not much point on relying on the Tories, ljuk. Apart from David Davies, when was the last time you heard Cameron or any other Tory for that matter talking about freedom?
Iain I stopped laughing about these types of issues a long time ago.
But you miss the point if you just think its just about the actions of a few tin pot jobs worths.
This is the relatively thin end of a very large and incredibly nasty wedge.
All designed to deliberately step by step get us used to the idea of complete and utter enslavement to the system. Its not micro chipped bins you should be concerned about, its micro chipped people that should make you soil your nickers.
What should also concern us all and especially yourself is whether Cameron intends to do anything to reverse our truly horrific Orwellian situation.
I for one have virtually given up hope. Cameron is as much of a willing captive of the Bilderberg group and others, as the rest of the leaders of the western world.
I will continue to assist in his election, but I can assure you that my patience is as thin as ice, and melting fast.
Atlas
What we really need is a trained, highly committed force of 8 year old paid council enforcement officers to monitor how many giant hollyhocks people have planted in their gardens and immediately inform central government through high-speed broadband links. I believe this is the right policy to make Britain a fairer and more contented society.
"Is there no end to the interference in every aspect of our lives these tinpot dictators are proposing?"
No.
Doubt Cameron's Tories will be much better though.
Too late!
It's another import from the (erstwhile) Land of the Brave and the Home of the SUV.
My daughter and son-in-law, residents of the Great State of Noo Joisey, talk of a late-evening call from the lawn police if one is slow with the mower, or tardy in signing up, as is the general practice, the Latino illegals in the garden-care squad.
As soon as they publish the list of banned plants, I'm going to wander around the grounds of the council offices with a pocketful of seeds.
There's a hole in my pocket.
I'm sorry this post isn't on Devil's Kitchen! Then I could say what I really think about it!!
What, in the name of whatever God one believes in, is the point of this utterly useless government. How many more insane ideas can they possibly legislate for? We are already the most controlled, most photographed, least free nation in the Western world.
They want to, if they don't already, monitor what we eat, what we throw away, where we drive, who we speak to, what we say; they want to store all our personal details, height, weight, colour, genetic pre-dispositions, DNA profiles etc. etc. etc.
WE SHOULD ALL BE VERY VERY SCARED.
Ian you have hit the nail on the head. This year the Government has decided that leaf litter needs to be measured. Local Councils will have to declare how many streets fall below their [government] approved standards of leaf litter.
Now this Labour Government has certainly proved that "that that is measured must be managed". Undoubtedly some authorities will seek to reduce the amount of leaf litter that is generated by removing trees or not planting them, neither action is one that I recommend or approve of! However given the record of this Government I have not doubt that they will soon introduce targets that means that gardens will have to conform.
Get your nail clippers sharpened for garden use!
But what is the point in believing that the Builderburg group is running everything and we have no hope? Surely it's better to have hope and try rather than defeatist?
Bureaucracy is the last refuge of the scoundrel
I think this calls for the full definition of your new word.
bat·u·ral (băch'ər-əl, băch'rəl)
Expected and accepted by people who are batty.
Oh and for Christ's sake spare us from this Bilderberg crap
All sorts of laws apply to 'agricultural' land as opposed to domestic curtilage. Many old farms, converted into one or more residential homes, retain covenants prohibiting certain plantings, especially conifers. Even rockeries can be a no-no!
Yeah, man. It's just like 1984.
This is how fascism starts...
Why is everyone surprised? It's been clear for a few years that Labour just don't like us and think we're a bunch of kids.
Labour's response when this is published to universal disapproval is that we are all Tory activists and they will step up the vitriol on Cameron.
A Government so out of touch and out of control I haven't witnessed since the James Callaghan one of 1979 ... but this is worse, Brown's lot actually believe their own lies from their own spin doctors.
The next GE could be a stunningly funny day.
Yep. An entire nation of Tory activists. :)
Say it again - time for the revolution. Unfortunately, democracy for the people has been hijacked and turned against them.
Pitchfork time!
Many of these kinds of interfering policies are being implemented by Tory run councils, so what is your solution?
the solution is to stop paying taxes until they fuck off and leave us all alone....
if one person stops making payment, they go to jail. if millions refuse to pay taxes until government grows up or goes away or both, they cannot enforce their stupid mind-numbing bloody laws.
it's like dealing with terrorists. cut off their money and they waste away.
someone needs to start a new tax-withholding party, committed to non-payment of tax except where government decisions are taken with full democratic accountability.
it will be like the suffragette movement. a few will go to jail. some will die. but in the end democracy must win.
who will kick off this new party - the tax withholding alliance? their slogan is ready from one made earlier - no taxation without representation.
Tapestry at manchester airport.
Watch ITV Tonight Programme "Rubbish Service" aired last night and it'll put all the sanctimonious urging by Council Re-Cycling Officers in perspective.
You carefully re-cycle your rubbish and then some councils agents ship it 5000 miles and dump it in India, The programme found invoices with people's names on in UK and tracked them back and discovered surprise surprise that they had re-cycled them as required by their local councils. There is tons and tons of the stuff,
An initially smug LGA spokesman put up to parrot the party line etc responsibility of residents to recycle; carrot and stick approach and was rendered speechless by the bag of sample rubbish brought back to UK.
Instead of measuring grass some local councils would do better to monitor what happens to their so called re-cycled rubbish before pontificating to us !!!!
Thinking about it, this could be good!
The way I see it, every one of these insane lefty limp wristed demands are just driving another nail into their coffin!
The left know they are finished & will probably never get into power EVER again, so, this must be a last ditch attempt to wind us up before we bury those waste of space lefty dictators, LOL!
Left hands and right hands ...
It is a delicious irony that in response to the requirement to incorporate 'renewables' in new development that Biomass CHP plants will be taking off in a big way; limited only in the longer term by the volume of biomass available for fuel. With 3G bioethanol techniques that can also use tree prunings and grass cuttings as a feedstock rather than grain now coming on line, the demand for biomass is becoming greater than ever.
So just how long before we'll all be required to grow more fast-growing vegetation in our gardens, and each produce a wheelie-bin a fortnight of biomass for the council to pellet and power their district CHP plants with?
And there's actually no need to reduce household waste, anyway. It's an artificial requirement from the EU. Here in the UK we dig more holes in the ground each year through quarrying than we have waste to fill them up with. Just by disregarding the EU waste directives we can reduce council tax, get rid of the bin police, bring back weekly collections and afford to 'lose' the thousands of waste strategy consultants that come up with arrant nonsense such as DEFRA's.
I can just imagine the New Labour garden plod locking up Blue Peter viewers for sewing giant sunflower seeds. Or raiding the local Garden show and seizing heaviest marrows
In the words of the Supreme Leader:
'David Cameron's Conservatives may be willing to let people fend for themselves - I will not let this happen.'
This is what happens if you employ too many civil servants and local government officers. They find things to do. A cull of 20% would bring a huge improvement in public administration.
"Is there no end to the interference in every aspect of our lives these tinpot dictators are proposing?"
The identities of these tinpot dictators should be ascertained. Then these people should be arrested and executed as the twats and threat to the species that they are.
Will the tories do that? No.
Will the tories do anything much different to nulab? No.
Are the tories just as useless as nulab? Yes.
Apparently No 10 has tried to kick this idea into the long grass. But wouldn't that be illegal?
Ironically it's to save the planet by preventing householders from growing plants that need watering.
Haven't these twats noticed that it hasn't stopped raining the whole summer?
ps what's the betting that the awful Cooper will shortly be insisting that GIPs (Garden information Packs) be necessary for future house sales, irrespective of whether you have a garden or not......
Given this and the previous blog about the smoking "consultation" perhaps we should start growing tobacco in our gardens.
The only way to deal with this nonsense is by the Tories taking a hatchet to public spending. A very large proportion of council officials and bureaucrats have no worthwhile job and can easily be cut with no effect on essential and useful services. The Tories need to show some balls on this. Second, they need to state very clearly that they believe that public servants are there to serve the public not boss them around, will oppose the creation of new powers for officials to boss us around and remove some of the existing ones. Third amend RIPA to ensure that it can only be used to investigate offences which carry a minimum prison term, say, a year. This would stop investigation of such matters as whether we've put the right rubbish in the right bin. The number of authorities who have access to our emails, homes etc should be radically reduced i.e. to the police. Fourth, they need to make clear that they expect Tory councils to abide by a public service ethos and that staff and councillors who adopt a bossy-Stasi style approach to the public have no place in the Tory universe. Where councils abuse their powers, the relevant council tax payer should be entitled to a rebate on his bill. Finally, whenever we face any of these sorts of so-called "penalties" we should simply challenge them legally: I doubt that the council will have the evidence they claim (an 8-year old's "evidence" is not admissible for instance). Essentially, the Tories need to say - and show this by their actions - that the state needs to get off people's backs. The fact that the Tories do not appear to understand the public's anger about this sort of behaviour and that while it is directed at Labour now - because they are in power - it will be directed at the Tories as well when they are in power is depressing. DC needs to understand that if he does not deal with this his government will be just as hated as Labour is. Nor will we give him 11 years to get to that state.
How about CCTV cameras in every single person's bedroom to make sure they are practicing safe sex? An alarm could go off if they are not...
The cost of treating STDs on the NHS would more than justify any downside in this plan wouldn't it? Video highlights could also be sold for medical charities. Are you against helping the NHS or what?
You'd have thought they'd encourage us to grow more vegetation to offset deforestation and so on. Plants = carbon sinks!
Just another step towards destroying privacy as a concept - like the smoking at home thing (which they'll so transparently say that if you've got kids then they need to inspect to make sure you're not exposing them to 2nd hand smoke!).
My fear over all of this, including the smoking ban, is what is so huge that the government need all these stupidly pathetic ideas to get us all wound up about, so that whatever it is that is so huge, is kept secret from us!
I believe we are being duped and this is all a huge conspiracy to get something goint, or whatever, so that by the time we do know about it it will already be a fait accompli!
Very scarey prospect I know, but if it isn't this, then perhaps The House of Commons should be renamed London Psychiatric Hospital for the Grandly Disillusioned?
I thought you had better things to do with this blog than regurgitate tendentious misrepresentations from the Evening Standard. Are you not meant to be some sort of insider?
You know what depresses me most about this kind of State-imposed micro-management ? It's the fact that there is nothing on the horizon which promises to put a stop to it. And I include in that analysis the prospect of a Conservative government.
If I just saw these as the last desperate throes of a dying administration, and if I thought that we had an Opooistion that beleived, in its heart and soul, that this kind of nonsense has not only to stop but to be reversed, then I could kind of put up with it.
But I look at David Cameron and I ask myself "Has he got the will, the appetite, the sheer bloody determination and the ability to change the ethos of government, to sack people if necessary, to take on the EU, to give back to our people the rights that we used to have and to push back the frontiers of the political State in the same way that Mrs Thatcher repleed the economic State of the 1980s ? And I only see one answer, which is "no".
which is why I think, even if the conservatives do win the next electon, we'll still be telling ourselves not to laugh about this kind of thing - and much worse - in ten years time.
Time for a revolution? The only thing in this God-forsaken country that people are prepared to stand up and demonstrate for is the alleged sacking of Kevin Keegan. Says it all really. We're doomed. And all the political blogs in the country won't change anything.
"Is there no end to the interference in every aspect of our lives these tinpot dictators are proposing?"
No. Literally.
The prime purpose of government is to pay government employees & let them empire build. As a society we are richer than ever in history & can thus afford ever more parasitism. The stage at which government spending was needed for real welfare solutions is long over & an ever greater amount of government spending is going into regulating the productive part of the economy out of existence (we have 200,000 Health & Safety enforcers which partly explains why building projects like Crossrail, the Dome & the new Forth Bridge cost 13 times the actual building costs), repealing the laws of physics (windmills subsidies) & nannyism (smoking ban, chips in your bin to make sure you aren't using it & this).
So long as governement is permitted more money it has to use it for something.
"Shaun said...
You'd have thought they'd encourage us to grow more vegetation to offset deforestation and so on. Plants = carbon sinks!
Just another step towards destroying privacy as a concept - like the smoking at home thing (which they'll so transparently say that if you've got kids then they need to inspect to make sure you're not exposing them to 2nd hand smoke!)."
I think you have got it one. Now the snoopers can sse you lounging in your sofa enjoying a fat cuban, glass of red wine while the young'uns play some x-rated game on their xbox. Saves them getting out of the taxpayer funded snoop-mobile and getting wet peering through the shrubbery.
This is the new phase in the class war, however some lower class people have gardens so it might backfire.
Civil disobedience. Ignore it en masse. Like the nonsense about bins on the wrong day, bin lids not fully shut etc. A handful of dissenters can be punished, but a few thousand or a few hundred thousand cannot, and the system will collapse.
A bit tangential but Panorama was about Western capitalists intervening in the deforrestation of the Amazon by paying farmers NOT to log and cultivate land.
Notwhithstanding the obvious problems involving corruption in South America, there is the issue of foodstuffs and timber becoming even rarer thus driving up the price through simple supply and demand mechanisms.
This would mean that the Brazilian farmers would demand more and more funding to stay out of ever more lucrative markets - the cost would be astronomical and huge amounts of money syphoned off in scams.
Canopy Capital was the British firm involved in this idea.
What the bloody hell this has to do with the English country garden I don't know, but I had to say it somewhere in public.
Can't someone just pay me to preserve my nettles and dandelions ?
If some council jobsworth retard tells me what to plant in MY garden he/she/it will find out that I am planting THEM.
TTFN
MJN
Reports on this mornings BBC states that councils want to limit paved over front gardens because they make flash floods more likely.
So on the one hand we will have limits on grass and plants in gardens and then we won't be allowed to pave over them either. Madness!!
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