Council orders jeweller to throw away £2,000 gold cos it's commercial waste

[righty]

You really couldn't make it up

Council orders jeweller to throw away £2,000 of gold dust... because it is 'commercial waste'
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 9:43 AM on 19th December 2008
A jeweller has been threatened with a fine and ordered to take £2,000 worth of gold dust to the tip because it is regarded as commercial waste.
John Doble was ordered to take the dust to a tip and threatened with a £5,000 fine if the dust is found among his rubbish collection.
Mr Doble collects tiny gold particles from the floor and benches of his workshop and sells it to a special dealer for approximately £2,000-a-year.


John Doble was ordered by a council to take his gold dust to a tip as it is considered commercial waste
The Doble Jewellery business has been in the family since 1918 and for 90 years they use a hoover or broom to sweep up the valuable dust for sale.
But his local authority has now ruled the gold dust is commercial waste and asked for proof that he disposes of it properly.
Council officers have accused him of putting it in his normal collections, despite telling them that he sells the dust.
Mr Doble, 50, said he has been 'bombarded' with letters and visits from council officials and threatened him with a £5,000 fine unless he complies.
He said: 'I am being constantly hassled because they can't understand why I don't put gold shavings in the rubbish bin. It's completely bonkers.


The valuable gold dust, which is worth £2,000, is hoovered up and sold
'I've written to them and explained that we recycle the gold shavings from the workshop floor.
'But they don't believe me. They think I put it in the normal bin and are demanding I leave the gold in bags for them to take to a landfill site.'
Mr Doble, who runs two businesses in Torquay and Devon, sells a range of antique and modern gold jewellery.
A spokesman for Torbay District Council said it is legally required to monitor the transfer of any commercial waste, including hazardous material under the Environmental Protection Act 1990.
He said: 'This includes businesses who have chosen to dispose of their waste by means other than the council's commercial collection service.

[Amy]

Re: Council orders jeweller to throw away £2,000 gold cos it's commercial waste

Richard Littlejohn: 21st October 2008

Today's edition of Warden Hodges' Britain comes from Liverpool, where war has been declared on the illegal disposal of industrial waste. Every firm in the city is getting a visit from enforcement officers working for a public-private agency set up by the council.

Last week it was the turn of Frank Hughes, who runs a small scaffolding hire company. The inspector asked him how he disposes of his waste. Frank said he doesn't. He explained that scaffolding is a relatively simple business which doesn't generate waste.

But you must eat lunch, the inspector retaliated. I bring sandwiches, Frank told him. And before you ask, I take the wrapping home with me. In which case, you're breaking the law, the jobsworth informed him. Sandwich wrappings are classified as industrial waste within the meaning of the Act. You need a licence to dispose of them.

And since you don't have one, you are committing a criminal offence. Frank would be hearing from the litigation department in connection with this heinous crime and could expect a minimum fine of £300.

With that, the official ticked all the relevant boxes and goose-stepped his way out, another job well-done.

Frank wrote to me in despair. 'I am not making this up,' he assures me. I don't think you are for a moment, guv.

It wouldn't have surprised me if the inspector had produced a roll of CSI-style crime scene tape, cordoned off the building, declared the whole business off-limits, called for armed police back-up and ordered Frank to cease trading immediately.

'Enviro-crime' is the new 'hate crime'. All must be punished, all the time.
Many councils have already hired teams of environmental crime enforcers. In Salford, they have started patrolling the streets looking for any emptied dustbins still on the pavement at 11am. Offenders are issued with fixed-penalty fines.

This is particularly distressing for pensioners and for mothers with young children who return from shopping trips to discover they have been nicked.
How are people out at work expected to bring in their bins before 11am? Has that occurred to the morons at the Town Hall?

I shouldn't have thought so for a moment. And even if it did, it would be considered a bonus, increasing the potential for punishment and revenue-raising.

These are just two, tiny examples of the perverted manner in which those we pay to perform straightforward duties go out of their way to persecute us. By tonight, my inbox will be full of dozens more.

Prevention of illegal dumping is a noble pursuit. No one wants chemicals poured away in suburban gutters, or asbestos casually chucked over the fence of the local children's playground.

Too many country hedgerows and city side-streets are besmirched by fly-tipping, an unpleasant but inevitable side-effect of scrapping weekly rubbish collections in the name of saving the polar bears.

But that's no excuse for the Sandwich Stasi. It takes a pedantry bordering on extreme mental illness to define greaseproof paper used for wrapping a round of cheese and pickle as 'industrial waste' - let alone demanding that someone has to possess a licence to dispose of it.

Similarly, having the pavements cluttered with empty dustbins isn't particularly desirable. But fining people for not bringing them in by mid-morning is outrageous.

What are they supposed to do - take an hour off work or stay at home until the dustmen have been?

Of course, none of this would be necessary if councils hadn't ended the traditional method of rubbish collection. Some of us can remember when dustmen came round to the back of your house, carried your bin to the cart, emptied it and then returned it to whence it came.

Now you are expected to wheel your own bin to the front gate - and woe betide you if you don't leave it in exactly the place designated by the council. Even a few inches out and they'll refuse to empty it. Then the 'environmental crime' wardens will come along and issue you with a fine.

Those charged with waste disposal in Britain have taken leave of their senses. They have forgotten that they are public servants. They see themselves as evangelical environmental warriors and the rest of us are their enemy. They now exist purely to bully, fine and punish us.

It is nothing short of monstrous that hard-working, law-abiding small businessmen like Frank Hughes - the backbone of the nation - can be treated in this fashion.

While he is doing everything he can to battle through a recession not of his making, his taxes are going towards paying the salary and pension of a jumped-up, otherwise-unemployable twerp who proposes to fine him £300 for 'illegal disposal' of a sandwich wrapping.

For two decades, this column has made a career out of exposing the unbending lunacy and sheer bloody-mindedness of British bureaucrats, but the monster marches ravenously on.

At a time when we can least afford it, we are being bled white to finance the Sandwich Stasi and hundreds of thousands of index-linked, spiteful, self-righteous parasites.

In another life, these are the very people who would have been loading the cattle trucks to the concentration camps.

To the scaffold with the lot of them.

[righty]

Re: Council orders jeweller to throw away £2,000 gold cos it's commercial waste

They even bring idiots into disrepute