Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Something else, Jim, that I admit I have only just thought of.

What other area of your life would you allow this intrusion to happen in? Does agreeing with the ends justify the means? I'm very against all the various intrusions that we have been subjected to under Blair, and all the other stuff that we will have subjected on to us (id cards etc). Does that fact that this intrusion will be for the good mean we should accept it?

At the moment, if it's only a trial, why are the bugs necessary at all? If the lorries are weighing the bins, they could just do their statistics on the numbers without pinning down the bins to particular addresses. It does seem unnecessarily big-brotherish to stick bugs in people's bins without telling them.

And later, when you've informed them you're going to do it.. well that sounds great if you don't have to pay as much as the people downstairs that put out 5 bin bags every week. BUUT how do you stop people just dumping rubbish at the side of the road and not putting it in their bin? You wouldn't even need to sneak to a field or a layby. You could just put your bin bag randomly in the street.

It will lead to fly tipping, and using other peoples bins for heavy stuff. I see street warfare!!!!!!

The house address printed on the outside with a machine readable bar code might have been simpler and less apparently "sneaky".

Ah well if it works in other places it'll probably work here. Perhaps people are generally more responsible than I give them credit for.

I'm certainly not against the idea*, I just think it would be Polite to tell people you're monitoring them. Otherwise people might turn against the thing you're doing for no other reason (oops - which seems to be the feeling that might be happening here?).

Here at work at the moment it's a cliche but the management are planning lots of changes but not telling us the details, and then asking 'will that be alright then?' - understandably we feel in the dark and aggravated, and are resisting it all. It's the same kind of thing. A bit of openness goes a long way. After all it's for the common good in the end innit.

Hmmmm.

If I'm misreading you, pooley, then please say so and I'll completely apologise. But you give the impression of having made up your mind that the chipping of bins is A Bad Thing based on some sort of gut feeling, and are now casting around for any and all rationalisations for what is essentially an irrational reaction.

The reason I feel this is because you don't appear capable of acknowledging anything I say. I respond to each of your objections with (I believe) a well-reasoned response. Rather than saying "Good point, Jim, BUT...." you merely ignore my words and launch into yet another rejection. And those rejections appear - to me - to be getting sillier and sillier.

Nowhere did I suggest that "the end justifies the means" as a general principle. Nor that government intrusions are a good thing. But clearly the question of whether the ends justify the means must be answered on a case-by-case basis. Plunging a blade into someone's stomach isn't a justifiable means if the end is to get him to stop talking in the cinema. It is, however, a justifiable means if you're a surgeon the end is to remove his inflamed appendix.

Similarly with the chipping of bins, I'm not proposing some kind of 'universal Machiavellian principle' here, I'm suggesting that weighing the amount of garbage being disposed by individual households is a more than justifiable means towards the end of reducing the environmental impact of humanity.

Quite how you equate that with government intrusion and biometric ID cards is utterly beyond me. In fact I fail to see how it can be classified as "intrusion" at all, unless you're suggesting that you have an Unalienable Right to dispose of as much waste as you choose without anyone - including those handling the mechanics of the disposal - regulating it in any way. Frankly I find that idea simply bizarre.

These are rubbish bins we're talking about. How soon before stickers peel off in the rain, or barcodes get obscured by dirt? How long will rubbish collection take when the bin-men are having to clean the side of each bin before they tip the contents into the truck?

Seems fairly impractical to me.