The aptly-named Minister for Waste was on the telly this morning defending fortnightly bin collections amid warnings of a “peasants revolt” over proposals to fine people who don’t recycle enough (in England only, obviously).

The Minister (her name escapes me and she doesn’t merit a mention on Google) said that the introduction of fortnightly collections has been successful in some local authorities with recycling rates going up as soon as they were introduced. Presumably these local authorities introduced fortnightly collections in the same manner as my local authority did – introducing fortnightly collections and recycling collections at the same time. How can these be considered a success when there is no benchmark to measure against?

There is a suggestion for weekly food waste collections to counter the problems with vermin and maggots (which the British government says doesn’t exist of course) but this is up to the local authority to arrange and council taxpayers to fund.

There is an easy solution to the problem of us not recycling enough. We have to recycle more and more because Federal Europe is fining us millions of pounds for not hitting their arbitrary targets. How about taking the French approach and not paying? Or even better, let’s leave the European Federation completely and we won’t have to worry about hitting targets set by unelected foreign bureaucrats.