Safe Speed Forums

The whole business of waste disposal is a racket.
Cumbria County Council's waste contractors were caught defrauding the council, and several of the directors and employees are in court for it. HUGE sums were involved.
Us mere mortals do not often have such recourse, and get ripped off all the time!

I am a waste producer. In my work, I use Ferric Chloride to etch brass and stainless steel. You can buy it from Maplin to etch your own printed circuit boards.
It costs £35 per 25 liter container to purchase, and the supplier in Cambridgeshire will only send TWO containers per consignment, which has to be picked up by a HazChem trained driver, so I get charged £125 for delivery of the FOUR containers I require.
When it reaches me in Cumbria, all four containers were delivered on the same van, by our normal TNT delivery driver, who has had no special hazchem training!

When the bath no longer functions due to exhaustion of the acid, I have to pay £195 per load + £45 consignment fee (regardless of quantity) then £19 per container, to take away the used Ferric Chloride (which has copper and iron dissolved in it by now) to "an authorised disposal point".
Needless to say, the more you send in one consignment, the cheaper it works out, so I have stored up 8 years worth of used ferric at my premises. I have just had an estimate for disposal, of nearly £1000.
I already pay £25 a year to register with the Environment Agency as a waste producer, and have a contract with a firm to carry away my office and workshop waste (two bin bags over three weeks)!

I have asked if I can deliver the used ferric chloride to the authorised disposal point myself, but NOBODY is prepared to say where any is located.
A search on the internet reveals that it is possibly landfill, based on US legislation. One state recommends adding cement powder to make it solid, and simply taking it to the local refuse disposal site!

Ferric Chloride is used by the water industry as a deflocculant in waste water treatment. It causes plant debris to float (where it is skimmed off) and solid matter to sink (where it is settled out), so disposal cannot be that much of a deal!

I have already turned away a pikey looking van driver, who offered to dispose of my waste ferric for just £200, but I can see why some would find such an offer attractive!

D E E P B R E A T H E ! ! !

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

How many entrances are there to your field, Adam? Is it worth putting an elephant trap where they drive over for a week or so - Get a JCB and scoop out a bucketful, then bridge it with planks that adequately support any casual walkers or cyclists, but would give nicely if a tipper truck or similar got an axle wheel or two on it, sprinling a small layer of soil back over the top to make the entrance beautiful again

The result would be extremely photogenic, particularly if the entrance to the field was sufficiently narrow that the driver couldn't open the door of his steed...

There is surely fraud in this.

At the very least, you shiuld be able to claim a refund of your delivery charges, as goods were not delivered in accordance with the stipulated method.

The people that are decorating my locality are, shall we say, not the sort of people that operate within the law, and often drive Transits. The coppers have been called and they have had a word, telling them that they know what is going on and that their details have been passed on to the environment agency, and still they tip. The law know who they are and apparently are the sort of people that give you a good kicking/stabbing if you get in their way.

Don't farmers have shotguns?

Good point - although I have just changed supplier for my recent delivery.

I suspect that the carrier and the supplier would be arguing about who was responsible, but I will drop them a letter this week!

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

At the risk of teaching grandad to suck eggs, your contract is with the supplier not the carrier. The supplier can argue as much as they want, but you are without a doubt in my mind entitled to a refund of that element as there was no token consideration in return.

Nice to see the rules are consistent.

A few years back, when we upgraded our bed, I borrowed a company van (a little caddy van) to take the old bedframe and mattress to the tip. I was told I wasn't allowed in as it was a commercial vehicle. The side of the van advertised IT services and I was getting rid of a bed meanwhile the guy in front of me who was unloading concrete rubble out of the back of an old "Series" Land Rover was fine as that's apparently a car.

So I asked, since the van appears to be the problem, not the load, if I carried it in myself would that be ok, and they said that was fine, just don't bring a commercial vehicle through those gates.

Well, the bed frame was one of those that are just two halves that clip together and the road was a downhill all the way to the tip, and the tip itself was a downhill, so I parked up just outside, assembled the bed and began pushing.

Sadly I couldn't really get any speed up with tiny wheels and a crappy road but I did make a point of jumping on the rolling bed and riding it down the hill just as the jobsworth was turning around to see what all the noise was, only got it to move a few meters but had the desired effect. My (failed) plan was to get enough speed up to ride the old bed through the gates and all the way down to the skips

Next time I'll strongly consider just punting it down the road with the van.

You could have [probably] got a permit to use the van, my local council does that. It is to stop the [free] depositing of commercial waste.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

The distinction is still bizarre however.

Lets say I have a guy come to fit a new bathroom suite. If he takes the old one down to the local tip it is "commercial" waste and he has to pay which is passed on to me. Even worse he might even have to take it to a special "commercial" tip which might be 20 miles away!

OTOH If I put it in thae back of my LC and take it down to the tip myself it is "domestic" waste and I can tip it for free!

(One of the many reasons why I would rather have an LC than a smart car BTW )

It is the same waste, from the same source ending up at the same ultimate destination!

You will typically find these days that the "standard terms" for odd job/minor building and gardening work will include leaving the "waste" on the job for the householder to dispose of!

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

The reason for that is the complex way waste is disposed-of if commercial. The contractor has to be licenced and the waste accounted for. Most contractors could not [legally] dispose of waste anyway...especially any asbestos or other hazardous waste (fluorescent tubes)

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

i'm sure you must have a handy local pond (i daresay .. lake) ernest ?

Yes, if I'd fancied having the remains of an old bed stored in the pokey little flat I was living in at the time and my boss was prepared to let me borrow the van again then I could have got a permit.

All I'm asking for is a bit of common sense. The van advertised IT services, if it advertised a removals company, or maybe a B&B then I could see the problem.

I bet even the stupid little BT Fiesta vans would be banned too.

Besides, finding ridiculous ways to get around the ridiculous rules amuses me. It's just a shame I didn't have enough dead car parts lying around (or sufficient time, skill and enthusiasm) to build a scrapheap challenge style bed on wheels that I could have rode in properly, and maybe push it with a large pole while singing in fake italian.

What gets up my nose, literally, and affects millions of us is dog waste. No-one can or does ever do anything about it.

I moved house last year and my front garden is just a toilet for dogs, unless they don’t get that far and it’s on the pavement instead. Even if I could find and confront the owner there’s bugger all I could realistically do. Unlike general litter, it can also infect children with Toxicariasis.

Obviously I don’t blame the dog. There’s no such thing as a bad dog, just bad owners, but I’ve never heard of one getting this £1000 fine that’s supposedly enforceable. I’d like to do some owner tipping!

Rant over.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

Dog Dazer
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dog-Dazer-II-Ultrasonic-Deterrent/dp/B001E0L5YA

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

I suspect the "dog poo fine" is not 'enforceable' on your front garden, so if it gets 'enforced' more often then expect more poo on your garden and less on the road. Same with the 'littering fine' really.
Chavs will go on as before, and the little old lady who always picks up her dog's poo will, on the one and only time she doesn't notice, be jumped on by the council workers 'enforcing' this law and then can't afford to eat.

Yeah, 'fines' work.

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Andrew.

Big Tone, I take it you have got an open plan front garden. There are dog Dazers and various other things which either give off an unpleasent smell, well to dogs anyway, or emit a sound which dogs do not like and so move on. These do not always work on older dogs whose hearing or sense of smell is not so good.

These days most dog fouling is dealt with by way of a fixed penalty notice £50 if issued under the Dogs (Fouling of Land) Act 1996 or up to £80 if the Council has made a Dog Control Order under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005. You could try contacting your local council and asking if they would enforce on private land with the land owners consent although the answer is likely to be no lack of resources. They will also have the same problem as you apprehending the offender. You could also try asking if the Council employes an animal warden. Some times the better ones will do leaflet drops in the locality advising dog owners on the dangers of dog fouling and trying to promote resposible dog ownership.

Unfortunately those of us who work in local government are damed when we do and damed when we don't. If we get RIPA authorisation to put up cameras we are accused of being heavy handed as it is regarded as a trivial matter unless like Big Tone its in outside your house!

Whilst the max fine is £1,000 when did you last hear ofthe Courts imposing a max fine? Credit for a guilty plea, means form completed no money living on benefits and if it is an offence which can be dealt with by way of a fixed penalty then magistrates tend to double the amount of the fixed penalty unles there are agrevating factors, and award prosecution cost which for a local authority prosecution are likely to be about £400 but again means dependant.

At least they have put laws in places for dogs. For some reason it's still ok for horses to shit all over the road despite the fact that the sheer quantity horses produce is enough to completely fill the tread on your tyres and cause a safety issue if it starts to rain. It smells a lot worse too.

Of course they could never ban horseshit because then the local councils wouldn't be able to function.

Thanks for the info guys but I’m still sceptical about the whole thing. Whenever I have tried to get councils to do something it falls on deaf ears and the tazer thing doesn’t work according to my friend who gets his leg chewed on his postal round every so often as he carries the universe on his back.

The previous owner of my house liked birds and left a cat scare thing at the bottom of the garden but they congregate around it like moths to a light. (I’ve checked the battery).

So basically I’ve got dogs pooing at the front, cats pooing at the back and pigeons pooing on my garden furniture. At least horse poo is useful in the garden and horses can’t fly yet, thank goodness.

I see patients who poo a lot and sometimes while I’m grovelling on the floor around their bed I kneel in stuff wot aint exactly Evian.

I don’t like poo.

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The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the views of Safe Speed.
You will be branded a threat to society by going over a speed limit where it is safe to do so, and suffer the consequences of your actions in a way criminals do not, more so than someone who is a real threat to our society.

BT, I would love another dog, but it is like Turd Terrance around here . Dogs everywhere and it would seem, most owners don't clean up after them.

My house is tied to my job. The next door on the one side is really nice, and so was the one on the other side of my semi until Bern moved a few years ago. It stood empty for a year then was re-let. The new tennants have let the place, including the fences fall apart. To add to this they have bought a Staffordshire Bull Terrier (suprise, suprise ). Last weekend while mowing my lawn I found dog eggs in my garden. This displeased me somewhat. So the only suitable cause of action was to chuck the said dog eggs back from whence the came. It was a pure accident that some of it landed in their washing. But it was over a week before the washing was brought back in, so hey ho.

Horses are a different kettle of fish. To know horses and horsey people is to know they don't live by the same rules as normal people. With this in mind, when we see horse apple festooned along the road, we should be grateful that they walk past our houses. We should also feel privileged to clean horse $hit off our cars.