I know what's been said by Chris Humphries about all Parish Councillors having been informed about the "bugs in the bins".  I think you should know that the remark certainly does not apply to Chilton Foliat Parish Council.  At no time were we informed that the bins would be fitted with such a device.

What's more, the idea that the device is there so the bin can be identified and returned if it is lost, or in case of a dispute, does not sit comfortably with a sentence in the leaflet which accompanied the bins in the first place.  This says, "Please mark your bin with your house number so we can return the correct bin to you."

Two thoughts spring to mind.  Firstly, why was that sentence considered necessary if the bin was fitted with a device to do just that and secondly, why bother anyway if all the bins belong to KDC?  If that is the case, it doesn't matter whether I have the bin issued to me, or to anyone else.

Maybe we should have a village bin-swapping party!

Regards

Nic Coome
Chairman, Chilton Foliat Parish Council

The first is the apology of absence from Chris Humphries. He must have a very busy life, doing his job as leader of KDC (see below), and at the moment he must be especially busy defending the council's decision to put bugs in the bins without telling anyone. Especially since KDC (according to their press release) apparently briefed all Parish Councils about their impending presence. That's news to many Parish Councillors. Including most from this village.

The second point is that, according to the minutes, the Youth Club is not meeting any more. Well, this is a de facto fact, but nobody told the acting chair of the Youth Club that it was official. As far as he is aware. But then again, who stepped forward to be chair of the Youth Club when the existing Chair resigned? You're right. Nobody. And the same applied to the fete when the Chair and Treasurer resigned. Youth Club and Village Fete RIP, then. Unless anyone still wants to step forward (cries of applause, stampede of volunteers. Ed...) Click here to read the Parish Council minutes.

It also quotes Mr Meeks, a respected Winterbourne Monkton village resident, and a former Chief Inspector of the Special Branch, as saying: "From my time in the Special Branch I know all about the permissions that have to be sought to keep tabs on someone.... Kennet District Council (KDC) has covertly installed this device on my property and that is an intrusion into my private life.". The article goes on to quote Chris Humphries saying 'These bins belong to the Council (so nobody is allowed to do anything about it)....." And then "A council spokesman added: Residents are not authorised to remove these chips....". He then goes on to threaten criminal proceedings against residents who remove them.

Mr Meeks certainly does know what he is talking about. He had to get permission to bug peoples' phones in his very senior position with the Special Branch. KDC seems to think they are above all this unnecessary paperwork. and just install the bugs anyway. Come on, KDC. Get real! You're trying to do a great job with the recycling initiative. There are a few things that need streamlining, but don't get hung up because you messed up on the bin bugs. Just admit you got it wrong, and do it better next time! Try advance communication and consultation. You may find it helps. Don't forget we're supposed to be living in a democracy!

Angela and Ivan Keen of The Groves, Chilton Foliat, have now got their new Baby Boy, Joshua. He safely arrived on the 22nd August 2006 and all is going well. Angela and Ivan would like to say a big thank you to all well wishers in the village.

And, whilst on the subject of babies, Alex and Sam Wolclough's recent arrival, Kira, was christened in the village church last Sunday. The event was attended by many friends and family.

Mr Smith said: "We appeal to all residents not to remove the chips. Although they are not active at the moment, they may be useful if the Government does introduce the weighing of waste." Having the chips cost the council an extra £2.30 for each of its 30,000 bins, but Mr Smith defended the expense. 
He said: "In the event that the government decided to introduce charges for the collection of household waste, it would save the Kennet council tax payer many thousands of pounds for either new bins or the retrospective fitting of the identification chips and so buying the bins with the chips is a prudent precaution." Some residents have removed the chips from their bins and have been posting them back to the council.Martin Meeks and his neighbours in Winterbourne Monkton, near Avebury, have already taken action. He said: "Everyone here has taken out their chips and sent them back. But there are some disquieting aspects to all this. How was it kept so quiet when public money is involved, and is there a greater plot here? Is the Government going to introduce charging? Kennet says it only has the chips in there for identification so they can be returned if they go missing. What about my green compost wheelie bin? I pay £26 a year for that and that hasn't got a chip in ." 

David Morris of High Lawn, Devizes said: " No one asked my permission to put an electronic device in my bin or even had the good manners to tell me about it. Even if it is perfectly harmless, Kennet have been very highhanded in all of this and it is a very foolish way of handling it." 

Mr Smith said: "The chips do not contain any personal or any other information nor are they capable of spying on anyone." 

Councillors are kept in the dark 

Kennet councillors say they were unaware of the 'spy in the bin'. Coun Alan Wood said: "At no time was I, as a district councillor, made aware by the officers that the chip in the wheelie bin could or would be used for any other purposes than returning lost bins to the home they were delivered to. I will find out what the officers knew about the potential spy uses of this chip and why the elected members were not informed. 

Mark Smith, director of environmental and community services claimed to be stunned by the reaction caused by the newspaper article saying no secret was made of the chip in the bin because it is totally harmless. 

The Gazette & Herald posed a series of questions to Kennet District Council after receiving a stream of of phone calls about the chips. Kennet says the reason the chips were not mentioned in all of the publicity prior to the introduction of the Alternate Weekly Collection in either the DVD and leaflets because a large amount of information had to be disseminated about the need to recycle and the importance of making residents understand the reasons for the new Waste Collection arrangements. They claimed that officer spoke quite openly about the chips at parish, town council and residents' forum meetings. 

Did you hear this discussed at any of the meetings held about the AWC earlier this year? Do you have access to minutes which mentioned this? 

Let the Gazette & Herald know what you think at: www.gazetteandherald.co.uk 

It appears to me that we could set up a system similar to that of the carbon credit trading scheme whereby residents who have spare space in their bins could "rent out" additional space for bags to locals.......

Just a thought!

Having looked carefully at the Kennet press release and various responses I
have some questions concerning the transponder fitted to the wheelie bins.

The transponder is manufactured by Deister Electronic GmbH. Their web site
is www.deister.com.

The transponders operate on the RFID (radio frequency identification)
principle. They may or may not have a battery, those without a battery are
inductively powered by the external reading devices. They have a limited
amount of processing power and a small amount of memory storage. I would
expect these transponders to have no battery fitted.

Q1. Would Kennet please confirm whether these transponders have batteries
fitted or not.

Q2. Would Kennet please advise whether the transponders purchased are "read only" or have "read/write" capability. If the transponders have
"read/write" capability they could be reprogrammed in the future by a hand
held device or a system fitted to a collection vehicle.

Q3. If they are "read only" then to clear up any further issues samples
transponders from wheelie bins of councillors should be tested in Devizes
by Kennet with witnesses to demonstrate the data held on the transponder.

Q4. If they are "read/write" transponders then the question to Kennet is
what are their future plans for additional programmes and data for the
"write" capability, and when.

I apologise that you have been inconvenienced by an outrageous piece of sensationalist and poor quality journalism. The chips in the bins convey no more information, and serve no further purpose, than the bar code on a can of Coke. To describe them as German spy bugs is xenophobic, inaccurate and strays into a fantasy world.
The attached Kennet press release (link below) adequately explains the background to this complete "non-issue". I am extremely angry that this piece of journalistic excess masks a superb achievement from Kennet residents, who have raised their recycling rate from a lowly 12%, 18 months ago to a UK Premier Division performance of 40% in July, following the introduction of their black wheelie bins. However, I doubt that the really important National news, of which we should be justifiably proud, will get reported by our wonderful press. I'm copying this note to other Parish Council chairs and parish councillors, because, I'm sure you won't be alone in bearing the load caused by this media irresponsibility.
(The recycling result is undoubtedly fantastic, and completely necessary. Well done! But next time, don't forget to inform people they can be monitored surreptitiously by the council. Without their permission. Ed...)

With the current wheelie bin crisis looming nationwide, I wondered if this website might offer some respite to those of us finding it all a bit too much:
Click here to see it. "Pimp my bin" seems an appropriate response.

There are no chips on the green wheelie bins, although there is a hole in them for a chip. Can the Council explain why one colour of wheelie bin is chipped, and the other not?

The webmaster has also received a copy of an email from a prominent local councillor, who is incandescent about the bugs in the bins furore. Nobody is doubting the success of the Kennet recycling initiative, which is admirable. The problem is that these devices were put in the village's bins without the knowledge of residents. Apparently, our Parish Council was not aware of them until the recent press stories (see email below).

Having read your latest on the web page I took the link to KDC, it
works well thanks, and was interested in Chris Humphries press release that
all this was "openly discussed at Parish and County levels" but obviously
not Chilton Foliat as the Councillors I have spoken to were as unaware as
ourselves. This I find worrying as Chris attends our PC meetings, why didn't
he inform them ?

I can fully understand the economic reason for adding the chip at the
production level as to have fitted them at a later stage would indeed have
been a far more costly venture, paid for by ourselves of course. But when
will local government and Parliament realise they are dealing with, on the
most part, intelligent commonsense people who are perfectly capable of
coping with truth at conception instead of concealing the whole truth which
inevitably leads to scare mongering and bad press.

I personally think the re-cycling is great and don't have a real problem it
is merely a change of life that we all have to get used to and lets face it
as a nation we do not like change especially on this sort of subject. I
recently had my black box left because I had not washed out a couple of tuna fish tins which I thought was a little OTT but I know others have suffered
worse.

Regarding the problem of flies in the bin, the best way around it is not to
put food waste in your bin, ( OK I can hear the groans from here ! ), if it
can't be composted, i.e. cooked foods, it is well worth investing in a
incinerating bin or metal basket burner this is a great way to get rid of
all sorts of stuff that can't be re-cycled. Problem solved.

On another note I heard from a third party that Newbury CA site are no
longer accepting plastic and card from householders ........... does anyone
know if this is true please ?

Regards to all
Liz 'O'

It is unbelievable that residents in this peaceful, law-abiding county should be snooped on by the Council. It seems that that this action contravenes all laws governing the right of privacy of the individual.  It is electronic eavesdropping without anyone's permission.

You can see for yourself what the Council says on their web site: Kennet Council Press Release page.

Their story is that the 'bugs' are inert chips used to identify the wheelie bin, and bearing the same code number as the bin itself. They go on to say that they do not even have any code readers capable of reading the chips. But in the event that they do have them in the future, they will be used simply to record the code against a house number.

It is understandable that the Council wants to keep track of its new bins (on which it has just spent about three quarters of a million pounds), but to attempt to do this electronically without telling the residents, is outrageous, and seems to be against the spirit of the Data Protection Act. The Council say that they issued press releases about this, and openly discussed it. That may be the case, but your webmaster, for one, was completely unaware that his garden contained a new type of bug he had not come across before.

And speaking about keeping track of the bins, the council could have an interesting job on its hands if it thinks the electronic bugs will take care of it. One village resident, who the webmaster talked to recently, said he would remove the bug from his bin, drive to the M25, and throw it onto the hard shoulder. Kennet bin-trackers will be scouring the country for non-existent bins if others follow suit!

The Council's web site says that some tabloids have chosen to make mischief by reporting the bin-bugs.  This is not the case at all. The tabloids have for once, acted completely responsibly in alerting the public to what has happened. This is no less than Big Brother tactics, and should never have happened without public consultation.

The whole affair is outrageous, and the Council is trying to whitewash it. If you would like to make the Council aware of your opinion, email the leader of the Council, Chris Humphries, at kennet@kennet.gov.uk.

There's no doubt that recycling has to be taken seriously, and few would argue against that. Kennet Council has undertaken an important initiative here, and most of it works very well. However, there are some major flaws which need to be thought out. The most obvious are the wheelie bins themselves. They are only collected fortnightly, raising the risk of a serious public health hazard. As anyone with one of the bins knows, during the recent hot weather, every time the wheelie bin was opened, swarms of flies emerged, and thousands of maggots could be seen inside. Villagers were left to hose down their bins (yes, during the hosepipe ban), and wash them out with disinfectant to prevent the village becoming infested with flies.

And the council's advice on that? Well, one village resident rang for advice (apparently their recycling help line is very busy - not surprisingly), to be told, to spray their bin with fly spray. Not only is that not at all eco-friendly, but it's impossible to keep the flies from escaping when you open the bin.  Then, they were told to put their bin bags in their home freezer until collection day. The mind boggles! It's easy to imagine a villager opening their freezer to remove frozen foods for the kids' dinner, only to have to rummage through stacks of rubbish bags. Hygienic? We think not! Freezer sales in the village will go through the roof if everyone has to buy another freezer just for their rubbish.

"Thank you so very much for including me in your emailings.  Some time ago I had requested some assistance in confirming that some of my ancestors had at one time owned property in Chilton Foliat.  This was not confirmed through a couple of investigations.  Imagine my delight when I read through the history of Chilton Foliat and on page 11 discovered a reference to Anthony Hinton buying some property there.  He in turn bequeathed it to his son and then on to a grandson.  This makes a valuable addition to the narrative of my family line.  Thanks again and please keep me on your mailing list."

Having said that, they were also very good, and the webmaster even ventured out to gatecrash the party to hear them at first hand. And party number 2 did not go on all night - the band finished playing at quite a civilised hour. It could be good news for the pub if this trend continues, as they will not need to play any music behind the bar any more!

Now, speaking about public nuisances (which we weren't, but it's an excuse to change the subject), the woodpeckers in the village need to be served ASBOs. Until a couple of months ago, the webmaster was woken every morning by the pneumatic drill-like sound of woodpeckers drilling. He could not find out where they were. A while ago, he noticed that a plum tree in his garden had apparently snapped in half. He thought it was just rotten, but no. On closer inspection the other day, it turned out that the woodpeckers had drilled so many holes halfway up the trunk, that the tree had broken in half! You will have noticed that at the last Parish Council meeting, a complaint was made about the youth of the village cutting down trees at the recreation ground. It is to be hoped that at the next meeting, the matter of woodpeckers doing exactly the same thing will be aired.