Our Wankers this Week are Liverpool City Council, and in particular their officers responsible for the environment. For anyone who's been asleep sealed up in a cave in Canada for the last forty years, "environment" is a word we use for "anything that gives self-important little jobsworths a chance to push the rest of us around".
Now there's no denying that Liverpool does have a serious problem with waste disposal. The city hosts more than half the fly-tipping in England, with a staggering one and a quarter million incidents in one year (2005-6).
But we have to inform Liverpool City Council that their search for an appropriate and effective solution has not yet been successful. In fact, they're making themselves a laughing-stock - hence this nomination for "Wanker of the Week".
As Richard Littlejohn reported this week in the Daily Mail, they have declared war on what they call "the illegal disposal of industrial waste". But in effect what they've declared war on is small businesses: 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 disposed of his waste. Frank said he had none - scaffolding is a relatively simple business which generate no 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 that 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 is currently waiting to hear for the Council's litigation department in connection with this heinous crime, and can expect a minimum fine of £300.
The official, having ticked all the relevant boxes, goose-stepped his way out feeling the satisfaction of another job well done.
Now the Chief Executive of Liverpool City Council is one Colin Hilton, and you can contact him, or his minions, by emailing enforcement@liverpool.gov.uk, by phoning 0151 233 3001, or by writing to …
Colin Hilton, Chief Executive
Liverpool City Council
Municipal Buildings
Dale St
Liverpool
L2 2DH
If you do decide to put pen to paper, or digit to keyboard, please could you explain to Mr.Hilton (in words of one syllable, I should think - he's not very bright, poor dear) that "industrial waste" is the by-product of an industrial process, not the bit of cling-film you wrap your sandwiches in. We don't care what the law says, or what gibberish seeps from the fevered imaginations of sad little inadequates behind their desks in County Hall, sandwich wrappers aren't industrial waste and never will be.
What will it be next, I wonder? If two employees (preferably but not necessarily of different genders) wander off during the lunchbreak for a quick one up against the back wall of the portacabin, is their used condom "industrial waste"? When the foreman brings his eleven-year-old daughter because it's "Take your Daughter to Work" day, and she loses one of her hair-ribbons, does the ribbon become "industrial waste"?
If a particularly devout worker gets his Bible out during the lunch-break and a page falls out, is that "industrial waste"? Are the punctured balloons and soggy streamers left over from the staff Christmas party "industrial waste", or can one of the secretaries collect them up and just put them in the bin under her desk?
And what about dandruff?
I imagine (and yes, I can usually emulate the mental processes of the intellectually-challenged. It's hard, and distinctly unpleasant, but I can do it) that the jobsworths' argument goes something along the lines of "if something is essential to the industrial process, it must be termed 'industrial waste' when discarded". But I have to inform them that sandwiches at lunchtime aren't an essential part of the industrial process because many workers go without them - some are slimming, some go down the pub, and some just couldn't be arsed to make them before they came out this morning.
Used condoms aren't essential to the industrial process (essential, yes, but not to the industrial process), and nor are hair-ribbons, pages from the Bible, balloons and party-streamers. They aren't industrial waste. End of story. Just get used to it, Liverpool.
What these Wankers need - I mean, we're all agreed, aren't we? They are wankers, right? - is a little lesson in something that isn't mentioned anywhere in the training manuals for council officials, that never features in the council minutes, and for which you can search in vain through local government job descriptions.
It's called "common sense". People used to have it, but now they don't. Not in Liverpool, anyway.
Wankers.
The GOS says: In the same article Littlejohn mentions one or two other bits of lunacy, this time from various Fire Services up and down the country.
They include one service where the ban on ladders and refusal to visit premises where someone has been smoking isn't the half of it. They have to go round team-handed to ward off allegations of sexual harassment from bored housewives. If the householder is a member of an ethnic minority, they have to take a fireman from an ethnic background - it doesn't matter which ethnic minority, just so long as he's not white. After all, they all look alike, don't they?
Ladders are on the way out, too, not just for inspecting smoke alarms. There's a move to fit cherry pickers to fire engines and firemen are not allowed to work at height without a harness.
They're banned from practising the 'fireman's lift', even with dummies, in case someone gets hurt. They're certainly not allowed to carry anyone down a ladder. Nor can they use real smoke for training exercises - and some councils have even banned artificial smoke.
Every single piece of equipment is plastered with idiotic instructions on how to use it and comprehensive elf'n'safety warnings. Oh, and they can't rescue cats from trees, because they might fall out and hurt themselves.
Meanwhile, the political indoctrination continues apace. In Scotland, where not so long ago a group of firemen were suspended, fined and sent for re-education for refusing to attend a gay pride rally, officers are all being sent on a compulsory 'Getting Along With Islam' course.
The sandwich-wrapping story in the Daily Mail attracted no less than 145 responses from readers. No prizes for guessing the general tone - while not one of them found in favour of Liverpool Council, most were of the "you couldn't make it up" variety.
But there were one or two little gems of intellect. Paul from Rushden wrote …
"The Act is vague on the definition of industrial waste but in any case he has several defences :
"Under Environmental law, the evidence of the wrapper is not admissable on the grounds of self-incrimination. Even if it is admissable he can argue that the wrapping is not waste but a container. Demand to know if inspectors have different instructions for their own sandwich wrappers according to the status of the company that they visit. Are their own vehicles licensed to carry waste afterward ?
"If these arguments are not accepted, claim that he has an exemption under The Environmental Protection (Present Processes and Substances) Regulation 1991. Not sure if this is true but I suspect that the courts don't like having their time wasted by trivial cases that rely on entrapment.
"The stupidity of the situation is that every business in Liverpool now knows that the correct answer to any inspector question is "No Comment".
Peter Gompertz from Melbourne, Australia was of a more literary turn of mind. He quoted from "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, at approximately 645,000 words one of the longest novels ever written in any European language ...
"Did you really think that we want those laws observed?" said Dr Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you are up against ... we are after power and we mean it ... there is no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed, nor enforced, or objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on the guilt."
Actually the writer is mistaken. It's perfectly possible to rule innocent men. All you have to do is convince them that if they've done nothing wrong, they have nothing to fear. Then you can do as you damn well like with them.
While on the subject of Elf'n'Safety (yes, we weren't really, were we, but what the hell? …) I did something rather remarkable the other week. I went to my local station (that's the railway station, not the weak-brained "train station") and waited on the platform with about fifty other people, including women and quite a few very young children. We stood only three or four feet from the rails, with no barrier between us as several hundred tons of "Britannia" class steam locomotive and train hurtled past, full of fire, superheated steam, whirling exposed machinery and colossal kinetic energy, at 80 miles an hour.
No Elf'n'Safety expert came round to tell us how silly we were.
And amazingly nobody was killed. You couldn't make it up, could you?
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