With regard to Mr Adam Green’s post in last week’s post bag.

Apparently Mr Green has elected himself to speak for the (not so silent) ‘Silent Majority’ that applauds the action of the council in charging for brown bin collection.

A measure that Mr Green admits to being “unpopular” while still claiming it is supported by the “silent majority”. The logic of which is difficult to reconcile, but let’s assume the silent majority actually supports unpopular FDC money grabbing edict’s and are happy to pay for the same service twice.

The questions to ask are:

Does the operations of the FDC represent good value for council tax money?

Is it reasonable for the council to charge for a vital service which may affect public health and which some would consider as non-discretionary?

Is it reasonable to charge for a service that was once free (free as included within the existing council tax), while at the same time increasing the council tax by as much as they can get away with?

Can the council be trusted not to increase the brown bin collection charge on an annual basis, once it discovers that the householders can be treated as cash cows?

Will the new brown bin collection provide the same or better service to the old one? We already know that there will be new restrictions on what can be placed in the brown bin, as indicated by Stanley

Poulten’s post in the same post bag.

As far as I am concerned the answer to all the above questions is an emphatic NO! I personally do not trust the FDC, which annually demands increasing taxes and fees to provide fewer and poorer services. Whenever council services are contracted out to the private sector, there is always the suspicion that the service will be degraded over time to ensure the private company involved makes a profit.

It is difficult to understand why the non profit making public sector is expected to provide a poorer service to the private sector where parasitic shareholders will be taking a cut of the tax payers money. Whenever such decisions are made, my first reaction is to wonder who’s vested interests are being served.

NIGEL JOHNSON

Via email