"R D S" wrote in message
...
Rocked up at the tip yesterday, with a few big pieces of plasterboard and
a couple of croc tubs of ****e only to be turned away because i've no
permit.

Apparently since Feb you've to apply to the council for a permit, with
which I will be able to dispose of 10 x 25k bags per year.
A 25k bag of plasterboard? I've to break it into ####ing bits?

Less than one bag per month on average? I've a fairly big project on.

In a town that (like many/most others?) has a fly tipping problem.

Pure genius.

Some years ago I dug up a large pile (maybe several hundredweight) of
sandstone sheets (naturally occurring, in the sandy soil). I took most of
the smaller pieces to the tip in refuse bags, at a time when it was still
free to dispose of rubble as long as you didn't take more that n bags per
month - so I took n bags per month to each of several tips in the area
(nothing wrong with playing the system).

The rest ended up in a large pile at the bottom of the garden. By that
stage, tips were charging colossal sums of money - we worked out that it
would have cost over £100 to dispose of it. We could have hired a skip,
which would probably have been cheaper, but it was overkill for something
that would barely cover the bottom of a skip. The official explanation for
what people should do with their waste rubble was "advertise locally to see
if anyone wants rubble for filling potholes in farm tracks". Oh yeah. I bet
you'd get a *lot* of takers...

So my wife build a "dry stone wall" of the slabs, alongside part of the
hedge beside a brick compost heap, where we had problems with local dogs
getting in when their owners let them off the lead while going for a walk
along the unofficial "footpath" at the bottom of the garden.

The concept of paying to dispose of any waste, over and above normal council
tax, seems fundamentally wrong when *I* transport it to the tip and don't
even want someone else to collect it.


We were also expected to pay extra if we wanted the council to collect
garden waste. Initially it was free. The council sounded aghast when I asked
them to collect the bin, and said that we'd take our garden waste to the tip
ourselves for free.