| |
We are not rubbish snoopers
• AS the Islington councillor responsible for rubbish collection, I want to refute the notion that Islington Council has been rummaging through people’s dustbins (Rubbish snoops cause outrage, August 8).
In fact, we only looked at the mingled rubbish of 1,000 households.
No one knew where the specific items of rubbish originated, and may I assure your readers that we neither know nor care what they personally are throwing away.
One of the council’s most basic functions is taking away the rubbish, and in Islington we want to do this efficiently.
We want to get the best value for money for the council taxpayer.
To do this, we investigated a pile of unsorted trash, to see what kind of material the council is dealing with.
As a Liberal Democrat council we are staunchly against prying into the private business of residents.
But the idea that the council was snooping must have struck a chord with people because after a decade of Labour in power, government has become far too intrusive.
One of the reasons I became a Liberal Democrat was because I too think that public officials and the state are getting far too nosy, intrusive, and involved in our personal business.
The current Labour government collects innocent people’s DNA, wants to force us to carry ID cards, and wants to put every man, woman and child in this country on an immense Big Brother-style database.
I find this all profoundly worrying. The Liberal Democrats nationally are the only political party steadfastly against this salami-slicing of our freedoms and personal privacy, and here in Islington, so far as refuse collection is concerned, will remain so under my watch.
CLLR GREG FOXSMITH
Executive Member for Transport and the Environment
|
 |
|
| |
| |
| |
| |
