Bin Tax - Six more Protesters jailed
dublin |
bin tax / household tax / water tax |
feature
Wednesday November 05, 2003 01:13
by Andrew
From the Newswire - 'No Law for the Rich'
"Stand in front of a bin truck and they may well jail you. Pocket millions, some of which would have otherwise gone to health or education, and they will ask you over for dinner."
They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.
The poor and wretched don't escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.
With news coming in that 6 more bin tax protesters have been jailed for 3 weeks its time to ask just what justice means.
The last months in Dublin have seen the jailing of ordinary working class people for protesting against the bin tax. A tax whose introduction was not only opposed by most people but which tens of thousands are refusing to pay.
In the spring of this year more then five people were held in jail for periods because they had protested against the US military using Shannon airport to refuel en route to the Iraq war.
Opinion polls at the time showed the vast majority of people opposed this war and this refuelling.
Charles Haughey, Ray Burke and Michael Lowry never saw the inside of a prison cell. These were all politicians who specialised in taking cash from their rich friends, salting millions away at the expense of the working class. On the other hand, Liam Lawlor eventually saw the inside of Mountjoy but only after months of defying the High Court, and then one week at a time.. Unlike the bin tax protesters he was allowed to bring his mobile phone and his laptop with him.
In 1989 Dermot Desmond signed a letter from NCB to Pernod Ricard justifying the two million fees he was charging them because "We orchestrated entirely the successful campaign to get a positive tax opinion from the Revenue Commissioners which involved using personal contacts at the highest level, including the Minister for Finance and the Secretaries of the Department of the Taoiseach and Department of Industry and Commerce".
A more farcical example was revealed at the Mahon tribunal the very week the High Court was busy jailing bin tax protesters. Liam Lawlor was given 40 grand by a builder to get the postal area of a new development changed from Clondalken to Lucan. Then to rub the point home it was revealed that Judge Mahon himself had forgotten to declare some of his earnings to the revenue.
Except for Lawlor nobody spent a day in jail as a result of any of the above. Nor have Fianna Fail TD's GV Wright or Michael Collins. A few years back John Lonergan, the governor of Dublin?s Mountjoy prison, admitted that 50% of the prison population come from a few deprived areas of Dublin. He didn't reveal how many were millionaires, but 0 would be a safe bet.
This is not so much a case of one law for the rich - one law for the poor, it's more a case of some laws only being applied to the poor. The corrupt politicians, Judges and their friends in big business ride roughshod over the law and fleece the country for millions and get away with it. The law exists primarly to protect the interests of the rich, so only the poor can be punished for breaking the laws if they have the temerity to stand up against injustice.
It's hard to draw any other conclusion but that the entire legal system from Gardai to High Court exists to protect the interests of the rich by keeping ordinary workers and the poor down. Stand in front of a bin truck and they may well jail you. Pocket millions, some of which would have otherwise gone to health or education, and they will ask you over for dinner.
http://struggle.ws/wsm/bins.html
printable version
Digg this
del.icio.us
Furl
Reddit
Technorati
Facebook
Gab
Twitter
View Comments Titles Only
save preference
Comments (19 of 19)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19Good report Andrew. I know it’s like banging your head off a brick wall but get this into the mainstream media - success will not be achieved without sore heads.
I believe the super-rich in Ireland are slowly being exposed. Denis O'Brien certainly has his back against the wall and is trying to fight back, saying the country has turned communist - no it hasn't, but it will!
The headline of an article in the business section of the Examiner recently read "One law for the poor, no law for the rich". This took on a different angle to that of yours above. It commented upon the huge evading of tax by the countries super-rich using (me - the ridiculous) such means as non-residency. In contrast small firms in general pay their taxes to this country, earn a fraction of the super rich and the survival of their business is often is at stake. Yet the super-rich of this country evade paying huge amounts of vitally needed tax and "continue to be exalted by politicians & business leaders alike, often act as spokesmen for big business & take directorships on corporate or even government boards".
Equality and equal treatment must be a very basic standard in any civilized democracy.
The following is a few hundred years old: has anything changed?
They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.
The poor and wretched don't escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common'
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.
to wrote the above prose???
Well done all the bin tax campaigners particularly those who have been prepared to do time.
FF/PD gov will have got a clear message that the irish working class and the left are prepared to fight tooth and nail to defend themselves.
The poem about the commons is the work of an anonymous author, but is established to have been written at least two hundred years ago. I first heard it from Peter Linebaugh, author of the ''The London Hanged'' and ''The Many Headed Hydra''.
ps. I didn''t write the initial response. Although I think I can guess who did ;)
Now that would be something worth protesting about - getting the well-connected criminals behind bars.
Instead we have this selfish, petty bin charges protest where a handful of people who can't muster a logical argument between them are interfering with the lives of their fellow citizens. Most of whom, contrary to what you say, do not have a problem with the concept of bin charges.
who can't muster a logical arguement? there have been logical arguements on here every single day since this began. Problem is the likes of you conveniently forget the ones that prove you wrong. Anyone who I've explained the issue to has ended up agreeing with me regardless of their point of view before hand.
David - is this not worth fighting for? The fight for the loss of the commons has been running for hundreds of years. All enclosures have been driven through by the state acting on behalf of those who will benefit. Today the commons exists in funny places, the struggle takes many forms.
In the early 19th century cities were dirty, dangerous places. Diseases were rife. In part to placate social agitators, changes were introduced. One of these was the Public Health Act of 1875 which extended the powers and responsibility of local government so that the cities were no longer cesspits - full of refuse with poor sewage and water.
In 2003 we were thrown back into the 19th century as a new form of commons was taken from us - the commonly held view that we wanted to live in a clean city. Now only those who pay for it will get their refuse collected. But i will suffer when my neighbour doesn't pay: thats why I want to pay centrally for everybodies rubbish to be collected. But the 1875 Public health Act has now been repealed.
Another commons is under attack - that of the clean, healthy city. I know who's attacking it David, but lets deal with the immediate problem first.
I would say this is a rather good example of when the commons begins to fall apart. If I recycle and generally minimise waste but my neighbour doesn't, then the costs of waste management unfairly fall on me.
Treating waste disposal as a commons, with costs hidden in general taxation and evenly distributed over all citizens encourages certain individuals to mistreat that commons.
Telling people this is what it costs the commons to process your waste brings it home that perhaps we all, individually, need to take more responsibility for what we produce. Even a fixed, annual charge helps in this regard, I believe. Ideally, though, there would be a mechanism to pay less for producing less.
The commons survives and everyone continues to enjoy its benefits.
And you don't need to worry about your filthy neighbour. He will be arrested, fined and/or thrown in jail for not disposing of his waste properly.
I agree with your general point though - "the commons" is indeed worth protecting.
Inspired, why have we not seen it before, the best way to protect the 'commons' is to sell it off as small individual patches. Now where have I heard that before?
I don't understand what you are saying. It is not being proposed that the environment be parcelled up into small lots and sold to individuals.
People are fundamentally lazy and selfish and they don't give a fig about the commons. Give them the chance and they will aggregate as much of the common wealth to themsleves that they can get anay with.
I live a stone's throw from a big recycling depot but my neighbours would rather toss their glass bottles and papers in the common bins. I don't understand that mentality but I know that people's behaviour changes when you hit them in the pocket.
My neighbours all live a good distance from the nearest depot but most seem to re-cycle. Maybe you live in one of those posh places where people are happy to pay their bin tax as an excuse not to re-cycle. The consumer version of the 'repak' con.
But anyway you need to bone up on your history. The big 'argument' for getting rid of the commons was that individuals would not use them responsibly and would overgraze etc. So the argument went they should be parceled up into individual plots and put in the safekeeping of individuals rather then the community. (Of courst the rich ended up ending it all).
If you can't see the similarity betweeen what you are saying and the ending of the commons then you need to think about what you are saying.
When something is held in common the rights to access it are not driven by payment. Golf courses are not the new commons.
Your argument
"People are fundamentally lazy and selfish and they don't give a fig about the commons." is otherwise referred to as the "Tragedy of the Commons" or, in economics, the free rider principle. It is generally used as an argument for public services and indeed has been often used as an argument against anarchism of all colors (Joe can probably give more details on this ;-).
But I would propose there are 2 issues here - the first is the public health issue of refuse collection and the second is the environmental issue of refuse creation. Refuse collection for public health purposes is something we have had for 128 years - until the passage of the local government act amendment this year which removed the legal responsibility of local government to collect all rubbish which it had had since the Public Health Act of 1875. So the Bin Tax is socially regressive - moving us back to an era of laissez faire government. The solution here, and what I believe should be the immediate demand of all bin tax campaigns is to collect all bins - and restore the 1875 public health act provisions.
The second issue is the environmental one. I honestly don't see how the regressive tax that is the bin tax will send any signal through the market to reduce waste - since by your own admission reducing waste will not have any impact on my payment. (and it is a regressive tax not a flat tax - someone on minimum wage pays more than someone on the top rate of tax. And I mean absolutely more, not relatively more. Think about how the tax credits work).
If there is a belief that a market mechanism must be used to motivate people to produce less waste, and seemingly David believes that this is required for everybody but himself ("I don't understand that mentality but I know that people's behaviour changes when you hit them in the pocket. ") then I think the government has already hit on a much more effective intervention in the market to discourage waste production: the plastic bag tax. Extensions of this can be looked at, door collection of recycled material etc. etc.
But all of this should take place after the commons has been restored, after we have managed to recover rights that have been ours since the 1870's and after there is a commitment to collect ALL bins. Only then should we look at how the service can be paid for to include a motivation to reduce waste and recycle / reuse what is produced.
Trade unionists, bin tax campaigners, environmentalists and all who believe in the concept of a 'Commons' should be able to support the restoration of the 1875 Public Health Act, and then look at how the service is funded, managed etc.
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.
There are so many subtle points in Joe's and seedot's comments that I don't think I can really do justice to them here (I do appreciate them though).
Waste collection as commons: I think, Joe, you are saying that waste collection will ultimately become entirely privatised and so it's one less thing we collectively own. I guess I'm OK with that. I know I pay the costs of collection one way or the other (general taxation or local charges) so I don't feel hard done by. Strict regulation and control to remain with local councils though. It's a political issue, I know others feel differently.
Recycling in posh areas: I haven't heard that one before. I live in D12, it ain't so posh. But I would have thought that recycling comes from some desire to have a positive influence on your environment. You either want to or you don't. I can't imagine a person can feel that paying a charge is morally the equivalent of bringing bottles to the bottle bank.
Bin tax as regressive tax: yes, I see that but no doubt hundreds of thousands of people will manage to secure a waiver. Anyway, it would make a lot more sense to attack the TV license as a regressive tax. Why not start a campaign against that utterly ridiculous tax? It serves no useful purpose and it squanders over EUR10m in collection costs alone. As far as I remember, New Zealanders did that a few years ago and the government was forced to abandon it.
Plastic bag tax: you like this, seedot. A volume or weight-based bin tax is exactly analagous and will have the same positive effects.
The law: (seedot, I looked for the amendment to the Local Government Act you mentioned but I didn't find it. Do you have a reference handy?) It would seem that instead of a right to have the government run after us cleaning up our mess, we now have a responsibility to make sure our own waste is dealt with properly. Personally, I prefer the latter. I want to have an Ireland where folks are always conscious of how their individual actions impact on the community. It would be nice if we could just have that without resorting to monetary inducements or penalties. But I'm pessimistic enough to think we can't. Having the bins magically disappear from the end of the drive, seemingly cost-free is just not the way to encourage a collective viewpoint.
The law again: this is an entirely separate point. Waste charges are the law. Many people are paying it. Most people (I think) do not object to it in principle. It was a good strong protest but it didn't succeed. Keep badgering local reps and vote on the issues in the next elections. But in the meantime, pay up and stop disrupting a service that your community relies on.
Restore the act!
QUOTE:waste collection will ultimately become entirely privatised and so it's one less thing we collectively own. I guess I'm OK with that.
I know I pay the costs of collection one way or the other (general taxation or local charges) so I don't feel hard done by.
ANSWER:The phrase "Tragedy of the Commons" is used in at least two different ways: one of them is the one introduced by Gareth Hardin which was based upon an ahistorical and inaccurate belief about what happened to the commons. This meaning is typically referenced by micro-choice market-economists as an argument for why public services can't work. Harding was however discussing a theoretical outcome in which individual choice in the context of a collectively owned resource would result in competitive squandering of the resource -- he had little or no evidence that this is what happened in the actual historical case of the commons; the other meaning is a historical one which refers to the stealing of the commons and their associated rights of turbary, estoppage etc. by means of enclosures.
The historical lesson is that if you own something collectively then the rich will always come sniffing along looking to steal it off you. Waste-services are the first of the public-services which the _privateers_ intend to wrest from us. Water, hospitals, transport etc are all on the list. The immediate evidence of how this has happened can be seen in the UK with water services and in the US with energy privatisation. [Enron was involved in both according to Greg Palast].
You may not feel hard done by when you are asked to pay _again_ for a public-service that you already pay for, but that's just a statement of your own carelessness and lack of responsibility. There are many others that can ill afford to pay the extra charge that this represents. You may also feel that Rolls-Royces are reasonably priced, or that the health-service is adequately funded. All that this leads us to is a discussion of your personal situation and finances which is unproductive.
QUOTE:Recycling in posh areas: I haven't heard that one before. I live in D12, it ain't so posh. But I would have thought that recycling comes from some desire to have a positive influence on your environment. You either want to or you don't. I can't imagine a person can feel that paying a charge is morally the equivalent of bringing bottles to the bottle bank.
ANSWER: If you're arguing that recycling happens because of conscience then why not work on people's conscience instead of taxing them? Recycling happens when it's made easy by the production of a recycling infrastructure. There have been several posts on indymedia.ie pointing out that the Ringsend glass recycling plant was closed, that plastics are trucked up to the North, that the government has made clear its desire to introduce incinerators instead of recycling facilities etc. The introduction of a flat-rate bin-tax will mean that even if I produce 6 organic banana-skins and 1 empty bottle of Tyrconnell a week I'll be paying the same for my bin as someone with it loaded to the brim. There's no incentive for me to reduce my waste consumption -- I may as well get value for money. Also a larger working family is going to find it hard to keep their waste volume (or weight) down, because minimally packaged products DO NOT exist. Some previous threads on indymedia.ie have centered around whether or not it's possible to strip excess packaging and leave it in the store or not. The matter remains open to debate. Even if it _is_ legal to do so, it's going to be a time-consuming and embarrassing as I scatter my condom boxes and those little paper cups they wrap Butler's chocolates in all over the shop.
QUOTE:Bin tax as regressive tax: yes, I see that but no doubt hundreds of thousands of people will manage to secure a waiver
ANSWER:But the working PAYE stiff won't and they'll pay through the nose to subsidise the rich and the careless.
QUOTE:Anyway, it would make a lot more sense to attack the TV license as a regressive tax. Why not start a campaign against that utterly ridiculous tax? It serves no useful purpose
ANSWER: It provides a revenue for independent state broadcasting. Whether or not this is good is open to debate, but it definitely has a use.
QUOTE:Plastic bag tax: you like this, seedot. A volume or weight-based bin tax is exactly analagous and will have the same positive effects.
ANWER: I like it too. There's an alternative open to me: I can use my own bags. I can easily choose to leave the shop with the goods bagged as I desire. I can _not_ choose the packaging though. So the analogy is false and non-exact.
pessimistic enough to think we can't. Having the bins magically disappear from the end of the drive, seemingly cost-free is just not the way to encourage a collective viewpoint.
QUOTE:The law again: this is an entirely separate point. Waste charges are the law.
ANSWER: Yes, we already pay them as an existing tax. What we're discussing is an _extra_ tax.
QUOTE:Many people are paying it.
ANSWER: Many people rape children. That doesn't mean that it's moral. (Not that I wish to draw a parallel between you and them, but you know what I mean)
QUOTE:Most people (I think) do not object to it in principle.
ANSWER: Most people (I think) do object to it in principle.
QUOTE:It was a good strong protest but it didn't succeed. Keep badgering local reps and vote on the issues in the next elections. But in the meantime, pay up and stop disrupting a service that your community relies on.
ANSWER: It is succeeding and there's no point in badgering the local reps because they're all going out on their ears in the next election.
It's about time all the people that are protesting about the bin charges got a dam life or a job. The people in prison don't decerve to be freed, there is a clear difference between protesting and breaking the law, you lefty types really need to get to grips on that.
It's really time you trolls went and got a life, instead of hanging around here abusing us 'irrelevancies'. If there's no mass backing for the protests then why are you even bothered? If you think there is a mass campaign then surely you don't think throwing abuse at some people on the internet will have _any_ effect?
AND YOU SHOULDN'T SHOUT - IT'S BAD NETIQUETTE
Just to let you know that one of the protestors,John Murphy, from Cherryfield in Walkinstown has suffered a heart attack in prison. He is in hospital, but after they observe him for 48 hours, they want to send him back to prison to do his last two days. This from a government who cannot keep it's own house in order. Truly scandalous. All are urged to attend a protest at the Dail , Friday 21 November at 1p.m. Let Bertie know this is unacceptable.