Green bins

About 30 years ago, when I became a Fareham Borough Councillor, we all had one bin into which all household waste was deposited and collected weekly by the council.

Along came Blair and Brown who introduced a landfill tax, which was going to cost the Hampshire County Council a lot of money because Fareham collects Hampshire waste. Up until then, the only recycling was by the scouts who collected newspaper and aluminium cans.

The powers that be decided that we should have a second bin which each household would have to collect paper, cardboard, tins, plastic bottles and glass bottles and jars.

Glass was soon removed as it contaminated the paper. This was supported by all parties and was a great success.

Fareham’s recycling rate was well over 40 per cent one of the highest in the country.

Then Hampshire decided that it wanted to collect green waste.

There was a debate on how to collect it – by bag or bin – and the decision was made to go for a bag as we were on the fortnightly collection system which had caused a in the summer months with flies in dustbins.

We did not want a repeat of fermenting grass cuttings in a hot plastic bin for up to a fortnight so it was decided to go for the airy sack, which appears to have been successful.

The move to bring this before council in less than a fortnight is sneaky because it does not allow the people of Fareham time to object. The cost will be £77 per annum if it’s every week.

Hampshire makes a lot of money out of progrow, which it makes from our garden waste.

The council should rethink this costly idea.

David Norris Westlands Grove, Portchester

Curfew

Although one can see the urgency of doing all things possible to quell the latest spike in corona virus cases, is it necessary to employ the ‘one size fits all’ remedy by having a national last orders at 9.30pm in order for pubs to clear their customers by 10 pm?

Surely this should never have been a national lockdown order but have been confined to local areas where infections have spiked and this does certainly not include Portsmouth.

Also in pubs and hotels that have introduced outside marquees for live bands to perform, why should a wellbehaved outside audience have their entertainment curtailed early?

They present absolutely no risk after 10pm and, for example, The Golden

Lion in Southwick currently has live entertainment on several evenings a week.

There is no reason for establishments such as this to suffer any financial loss for no measurable health advantage and I would say to the government think again on this as any unnecessary loss of tax revenue eventually impacts on us all.

Nicholas Anderson Melrose Close, Milton