There is a major problem in the UK with illegal landfill sites. One such site has come to prominence recently – at Kidlington, in Oxfordshire. When reading the story about that one I couldn’t quite understand how the authorities could not have prevented it. It is a massive site – consisting of 100’s of tonnes of illegally dumped waste. If it was a one-off dump carried out at night, I can see how the authorities could not do anything. But, 100s of tonnes implies dumping over a long period of time. With another dump, in Wigan, reporting in the Guardian [1] explicitly confirms this:
Simons, the Labour MP for Makerfield, said he alerted the EA in January when rubbish first started being dumped at a rate of 20 truckloads a day but it did not intervene.
This is a serious crime. The Environment Agency, the local council and the local police could all have become involved. EA offices can build cases and prosecute people. It is not 100% clear to me if Council officers can actually arrest people; they certainly seem to have a power to demand name and address. In any event; all three agencies can and on occasion do, work together to arrest illegal waster tippers, as this local council PR puff reveals.
In the above cases, of these massive illegal dumps, filled up over days or weeks with ’20’ dumpings a day, there can be no possible reason why the agencies could not have set up an operation, arrested 20 drivers, located their crime-land bosses, prosecuted, and sent people to jail. But – nothing. It is hardly a crime that involves much detection.
This is the modern UK. The authorities look for soft and easy targets amongst the civilian population while tolerating crime bosses operating large-scale criminal industries in full view. It could be about kick-backs, but I think the over-riding factor is that the authorities simply don’t have the balls to confront criminals. Even though they could do this with over-powering police force, so there is little risk of physical harm coming to them. It is a psychological collapse – it reflects the total abandonment of authority. The same factor lies behind the total incapacity of the authorities to get a grip on the waves of people arriving from France to claim asylum and behind the inability of the government to shut down the benefits explosion – whereby a phone call and a good story can be a pathway to thousands of pounds in annual benefits. The authorities have simply lost the ability to exercise authority.
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