Vox Polis

So the Government has decided to agree with the Tories and introduce permits for Bulgarians and Romanians.  This is likely to fail to achieve any of its goals, because people will come to the UK anyway and work here illegally or move to a member state where there are no restrictions.  We’re also likely to lose out on the best workers.

And I thought there was going to be a proper debate about immigration.  Yet again the Government is making policy based on misguided tabloid pressure.

It seems that Romania is preparing to place its own restrictions on worker migration when it joins the EU next year in retaliation to those planned by Britain and other member states. Although you might think that no one in their right mind would want to work in Romania where the average wage is $7,700 - Romania does face a shortage in construction workers - so all those Polish builders could end up there (the average Polish wage is $6,948) unless Poland places restrictions too.

Universal Music are backing a new site which will allow users to download music for free after wading through some adverts.  The move seems to me to be largely an admission of failure in the “war against downloading” that the labels have been running; if we can’t make you pay at least look at these ads.  It’s unclear whether advertising support is a sustainable business model but with advertisers particularly keen to target the youth sector (who are the main consumers of online music) they’re in with a shot.  It does strike me that Universal’s willingness to accept the likely drop in income gives lie to their claims that £12 was the absolute minimum they needed to put bread on the table.

Personally I think this is a pretty horrendous solution to the problem of getting money to artists.  Outside of the pop conveyor belt there are still artists with some integrity who aren’t going to be comfortable being associated with certain companies.  Just take a look at the horrors of commercial radio to see what happens when music gets too much in hock to advertisers.  On the flip side of this, there’s plenty of music being used by advertisers at the minute and no-one seems to be particularly cut up by it.  Indeed, it’s not too different to the financial support provided by wealthy patrons in previous centuries.  So I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.  Napster and iTunes will certainly be watching closely.

Via FT.com.

London has the best transport system in the world- apparently. Clearly the respondents of the survey havent been caught up in strikes, delays, hot weather, or terrorist attacks.

The Mail on Sunday had an interesting article showing that local councils are “bugging” our wheelie bins to determine how much non-recycled waste we are producing. To be fair the information they are collecting is minimal - it calculates how full the bin is, and is the equivalent of someone with a pen and paper marking how full/empty it is (but much more efficient).

The real ‘concern’ is how this information is going to be used. Clearly it is a precursor to a “pay as you throw” scheme where households are charged for not recycling. Although I believe this is inevitable, I’m not convinced it will work (people will just dump their waste elsewhere) and should only be implemented with an equal policy to get producers to reduce packaging - perhaps the “one layer” scheme I blogged here.

Councils’ first policy should be to introduce the fortnightly pick up that Canterbury City Council has implemented - discussed here. The stench of 2 week old rubbish is enough to convince anyone to recycle.

Oh and finally if the Tories are going to criticise the scheme can they come up with something better than:

“Conservative MP Andrew Pelling said burglars could hack into the computer system to see if sudden reductions in waste at individual households meant the owners were on holiday and the property empty.”

Don’t people have to put the bin out to be collected? Isn’t that be a pretty clear sign that they’re away on holiday?!

David Hencke at the Guardian has an interesting piece on the state of funding for the 3 major parties.  The sources are largely what you’d expect - state funding, business, wealthy individuals and for Labour the unions.  But the bit that really had me nodding my head was Hencke’s final point about the moral, democratic solution to the funding question - return policy making power to ordinary party members.  The sad thing is that political decisions being made for the true benefit of the majority seems like an almost impossible dream in the current climate.

Anyways, read the article here.

Have the Tories learnt nothing from their last two election defeats?? They’re back onto the immigration debate, calling for restrictions on immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania when they join the EU next year. This is a bad idea because:

• As I have pointed out here and here, we’re unlikely to swamped with new arrivals.

• Restrictions and quotas will not stop them coming to the UK. It will only stop them working here legally (the black market will be very welcoming). This is because of the Free Movement directive, which even allows them to claim health care and benefits.

• Think how they feel. Does no one else think it’s hypocritical to allow Western Europeans to visit, work, buy up all the nice land/houses in Eastern/Central Europe, but not allow them to do the same??

Tesco is moving in the right direction with this pledge (as Jonny reported) to bribe shoppers with loyalty card points to encourage them to either reuse or not use plastic bags. Although the loyalty card point system can be a powerful incentive for some people (I’ve seen people sign up to ridiculous credit card deals for a measly few hundred points), not everyone will be persuaded by the offer, especially those smart enough not to have a card in the first place.

An Irish style plastic bag tax may be a good place to start, but even that has its failures, namely how quickly the tax effect wears off. Perhaps linking the tax with inflation might help.

One step forward would be to return cardboard boxes to the check outs, a policy that most supermarkets seem to have dropped because hordes of cardboard boxes look untidy, and probably won’t be carrying the supermarkets logo. Its bad PR to see someone stumbling out of Tescos with a box marked “Kellogg’s cornflakes contains 20”. There are certainly legitimate reasons for removing the boxes; legislative pressure has led to most supermarkets replacing them with green reusable “environmental” plastic boxes that get returned to suppliers and refilled. However, many products, especially cereal, still arrive in cardboard boxes. These are squashed and compacted by the shelf stacking monkeys before you can say “recycle”.

But as Jane Barry points out in this article, in 2003 “Waitrose washed and reused 28 million plastic trays but it also recycled 14,000 tonnes of cardboard boxes”. According to the Waitrose site, they recycled 15,000 tonnes of cardboard and plastic last year. Although they don’t separate the two, we can still assume they’ve got a number of boxes they could give out to consumers, if they wished to.

Some supermarkets may still allow you to take boxes (mine doesn’t) but usually you have to ask and persist (even nag) with your request. In the end you’ll be lucky to get one. Returning cardboard boxes to the checkouts means it’s easier for people to pick them up and reuse. That’s got to be cheaper and better for the environment than just recycling them. It’s also clearly better than giving away (or charging for that matter for) plastic bags.

Currently British shoppers get through an astonishing 17 billion plastic bags a year (more numbers here) most of which are used once. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that this is, to put it mildly, a bit wasteful. Tesco (who hand out 4 billion of those bags) have announced a scheme where customers will be given loyalty card points if they reuse bags. This isn’t going to do any harm but I doubt it’ll be very successful either. Some of you might remember that Sainsbury’s used to give a penny back for each reused bag. If you don’t remember it’s because Sainsbury’s didn’t really bother to inform their staff or customers about the scheme. The Tesco plan is better than Sainsbury’s version in that you get desirable loyalty card points instead of undesirable pennies but I firmly believe that in this case sticks are better than carrots.

Irish consumers are have been charged 10p per bag since 2002 which has resulted in a 90% reduction in carrier bag usage. There are some caveats to the success of the Irish system - use of black plastic bags has significantly increased as these aren’t subject to the levy - but there’s no doubt that it has acheived it’s aims. In comparison, a voluntary system in place in Australia has resulted in a 45% reduction.

As for a compulsory schemes in the UK, the Scottish parliament are currently looking at a bill put forward by Liberal Democrat MSP Mike Pringle to introduce a levy on bags. The environment minister Ben Bradshaw would “prefer for this to be on a voluntary basis” but did not rule out a move to compulsory charging, saying that was a decision for the treasury.

Personally, I’m strongly in favour of a compulsory charge for bags along the Irish model. There’s no justification for the current level of waste and no downsides to a change. Normally, I’d be happy to see government keep it’s nose out but sadly the public, in general, have shown no sign of voluntarily changing their behaviour. If anyone reading this isn’t reusing bags already then I urge you to start doing so, it’s one of the easiest ways to reduce you environmental footprint.

Via The World at One.

I’ll be upgrading the site software this afternoon so there might be some strangeness for the rest of the day.  Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.