Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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.