Tanner talks rubbish again in Oxford

Gordon Brown’s big Labour conference speech was described simultaneously (and by the same people) as absolutely awful and the best he has ever made. A group of viewers were given devices which allowed them to record their reactions to the speech phrase by phrase. The clearest adverse reactions were to the passages in which Brown attacked his rivals and enemies, both those within his party and outside it.

To non-politicians, this is obvious. People react best to positive messages, and if you can only convey your own position by running down other people, you betray the weakness of your own arguments. The only exception to this is when the attacks are extremely clever and preferably witty – Vince Cable’s “Stalin to Mr Bean” attack won reactions which were entirely positive except to its target. For the most part, political attacks are dull bludgeons not witty stilettos, and damage the giver at least as much as the subject of the attack.

This is emphasised if you move down from the big beasts of the political jungle to the worms and creepy-crawlies of local politics. John Tanner of Oxford’s ruling Labour Group is a good example. He has the same clunky, leaden style as Gordon Brown, the same commitment to a socialism which benefits no-one, and was once quoted as saying that everything he says or does is political, which must have made his love-life truly scintillating. Unlike Gordon Brown, he lacks a brain – most old-style socialists have chips on their shoulders over some perceived deprivation of their childhood, and where most recall the holes in their shoes or the bread-and-dripping for tea, Tanner seems to have been driven by his lack of any thinking apparatus.

Excess plastics taken away next time

I wrote a while ago (Just empty the f***ing bins) about a bag full of plastic bottles whch I had left propped up against the blue plastics collection box because I had not had time to drive them to the tip as I usually do. I mused as to what the little jerk from the council expected me to do with them if they did not fit into the box and concluded that, given the choice between giving up milk, dumping the plastic in the landfill bin or driving to the tip, the last was the best option.

Rubbish talk from John Tanner

A photograph in the Oxford Times shows Labour Group councillor John Tanner surrounded by heaps of the green and blue boxes and wheelie bins into which we now sort our rubbish. I assumed that the story was about storing the vast amount of rubbish which John Tanner utters in a typical week, but it was in fact about new plans for consolidating all the recyclables into a single recycling box.

Just empty the f***ing bins

What can we do when Oxford City Council officers refuse to collect the plastic which won’t fit into our blue boxes? Stop drinking milk?

Like many others in Oxford, I make a trip to the tip every so often to dispose of the excess plastic, glass and paper which accumulates as a result of the current fortnightly collections scheme. It is one of the unintended consequences of the cut in the rubbish collections rota that those who of us who do zealously separate our recyclables from the rest of the rubbish find ourselves unable to store the results over the intervals between collections.

One wonders what the council officers of Oxford’s Rubbish Department think about the number of car journeys now being made for this reason – but, of course, the question answers itself at once. Council officers don’t think – invite them to try, and they scratch their bottoms and dribble a bit with the effort, but nothing resembling thought is likely to result.

Fish-heads for Fooks not fair

It seemed more than a little unfair of Dom Joly to pursue Councillor Jean Fooks round Oxford Town Hall with a box of rotting fish on his television programme The Complainers last week. Mrs Fooks is the executant of a policy agreed in principle between all parties and which she inherited when the Lib Dems took control (in a manner of speaking) of the city. Having agreed to give an interview, she smelt a rat (as it were) and was filmed politely declining to go ahead with it.

Emptying some bins in Oxford

I was much impressed to see an Oxford City Council van full of bin bags on Sunday morning outside the Anchor in Hayfield Road, particularly as I had just walked past two overflowing bins in Aristotle Lane rec.

I watched it turn, backwards and forwards as one has to now at the end of Aristotle Lane, thanks to the mess of bollards and posts which Oxfordshire County Council has dumped there (I often wonder how much pollution that causes) and I wondered idly if it would take the easy route into Aristotle Lane up the wrong side of the bollards.

No. It did not go up Aristotle Lane at all, but just drove off. So, this council, which is always nagging us about vehicle pollution and fining us for litter offences, drives a bin van within 40 yards of two overflowing bins and drives off without collecting the rubbish. The bins remained full all through Sunday and were still overflowing on Monday morning.

It is probably not the fault of the drivers who, I imagine, have to follow a rota drawn up by some unthinking wally in the council offices. It seems nonsense to me. Can anyone offer a rational explanation?

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Environment Agency neglects the basics

Many factors contributed to the severity of the recent Oxford floods – a lot of rain fell in a short time; the Government reneged on its flood defence funding commitments; Oxford’s developer-friendly planning officers, too idle to think beyond getting their coats on at 5:00, too thick, indeed, to think at all, allowed unlimited building on flood plains, and so on.

One of the chief culprits was the Environment Agency, on two counts: they could have stood more strongly against flood-plain development (they could not bar it, but they could have opposed it) and they could have kept the channels clear.