Does this sound like a typical government move?

@TheOneyouwerewarnedabout England and Australia are both surrounded by the ocean. They should do some job creation and build some desalination plants and water pipelines.

@Diotrephes we have desals. Expensive eyesores..
need the government to just get out our lives.. all they do is starve farmers for the benefit of international trade/imports..

@TheOneyouwerewarnedabout yes, you do have 270 desalination plants. But maybe you need at least 2,700 around the coast.

@TangledUpInBlue you get fined if there is a drought?

@FreeSpirit1 if you’re caught using water unnecessarily, yes.

@FreeSpirit1 Not for there being a drought, no. We can't help that!

The fine is for wasting water, such as by irrigating lawns, when we have been told not to do so due to shortage.

@wildbill83 I see. Thankyou.

Our county council wanted to introduce a sort of time-booking system for its skip yards, allegedly becuase it "works" elsewhere in the country. I don't know if it will happen now, as it had to think again following considerable public opposition based on it being inconvenient and just not necessary.

It also raised similar fears of people living near the county boundary using the other county's facilities, but that's not very likely, nor would really make much difference.

There are rules to stop the facilities, free for private users, being abused by tradespeople. They have to dispose of trade waste properly but it does cost them money due to the larger volumes in total.

@ArishMell it was a hugely unpopular move here (and pretty much guaranteed that our county commissioners won't get re-elected); all this burucratic nonsense will just push people into doing what they did years ago... dumping trash over the side of roads/mountains.

As if it wasn't bad enough to basically double everyone's taxes to maintain landfill, now they want to tax us again for a stupid permit

If they want to tax someone, they oughta tax all the millionaire tourists/summer renters that don't pay property taxes...

@wildbill83 The possibility of increased fly-tipping (as we call the same offence) was another reason for the opposition here.

By no means all our waste goes to landfill. There is one big skip for such refuse but otherwise it's cardboard in one of its own, scrap metals in another, glass and timber in their own areas.... Garden cuttings form a huge part of the household waste, and that is composted. (So is food waste, collected separately.) I think some of the compost is used for the public gardens, the rest sold but I don't know where or how.


These facilities, the regular refuse collections from homes, and all local council-run services generally. are paid for from taxes, of course, but by a mixture of county "Council Tax" levvied by average property value bands, and subsidies via central Government - though these have been reduced over the years. The more valuable your house, the higher the Council Tax.


Ordinary tourists, wealthy or not, are not seen as a problem here in that way, and I live in the South-West of England, which sees huge numbers of tourists, especially in Summer. They keep a lot of businesses alive, and they contribute generally via the normal Value Added Tax on purchases and locally by an indirect share of the Council Tax on the accommodation they use.

What IS a problem is areas like this, is the buying of many houses to be holiday-lets or (in some ways worse) second-homes. This both reduces the number of homes available for local people to buy, and raises the prices of all generally, above many locals' budgets. To answer this, County Councils can charge specially high Council Taxes payable by the owner. If the home is used for holiday accommodation, the renter obviously pays a share of that. Some counties levvy twice the normal Council Tax for that home.

@ArishMell Sure it is. To place restrictions at both ends? Government just does ludicrous things because they can. They can't have it both ways.

@uncalled4 Oh, yes - sorry,. I see what you mean. That pair of mutually-exclusive rules is bonkers but I suspect cock-up rather than conspiracy.

@ArishMell could be.