Gordon Brown is rubbing his grasping hands with glee, which means that the rest of us are about to be ripped off yet again with a "Chip 'n' Bin" Stealth Tax

They are the size of a penny and they're made in Germany. They have been fitted to 500,000 wheely bins in Britain, and they are there to enforce New Labour's principle of 'the polluter pays through the nose'.
   'Bin Brother' chips are in use all over Germany, where they report to the refuse collection vehicle, the identity of the household which filled up the chipped bin. The collection vehicle then weighs the bin's contents and the local council uses the data to issue bills charging €25 per kilo of non-recyclables.
   The plan in Britain is to reduce Council Tax by £100 per year and introduce a local refuse tax to make up the difference. Only knowing the way these Stealth Taxes work, councils will be looking to make a profit on the deal and most customers will be ripped off.
   Pilot programmes are already running in South Norfolk, Surrey, Woking and elsewhere, and the Local Government Association is pressing for the scheme to be made national.

The object of the exercise is to persuade people to recycle more in order to pay less. It will also let hackers break into insecure local council computers and find out who isn't generating garbage and, presumably on holiday, in hospital or otherwise away from a home, which can be burgled. But under New Labour's rules on the misuse of data, the council will not be liable to pay compensation to the burgled householder, despite being an accessory before the fact.

A complication . . .

What if some evil person with lots of garbage to get shot of swaps his/her bin for the identical wheely bin of a neighbour?

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