Mediterranean Living

A 'green licence' to invade our privacy

- and our pockets

Daily Mail Comment 27th August 2006

Were it not so pernicious and intrusive, the tale of eco-bugging in suburbia would be the stuff of comedy. Instead, it is yet more worrying evidence of the nosy nanny state Britain is fast becoming.

Half a million electronic spy 'bugs' have secretly been planted in British dustbins. Not, as may have been hoped, to record the activities of the feral thugs who roam streets with little fear of police intervention. Nor to track burglars, whom householders tackle at the peril of finding themselves before a court.

No, this is to penalise law-abiding householders who fall foul of the army of Green Gauleiters making our lives a misery in the name of the environment.

No one objects to recycling waste. We enthusiastically make use of bottle banks and paper collections. But that is not enough for our rulers. Now a chip hidden in a wheelie bin alerts a computer as it is lifted into the refuse truck. Any householder deemed to have put out too much unrecycled waste will be penalised.

Our governing class delights in trampling on personal privacies. Councils have already handed over entire databases of personal information to commercial contractors who, using the bugging technology, identify the 'guilty'.

Inevitably, this madness stems from an EU directive and the enthusiasm of our own Ministers for branding decent folk eco-criminals and allowing local authorities to issue them with fines.

Not content with demanding higher than ever council taxes, which surely should cover refuse collection, they will impose a further demand on the insulting pretext that one has done something morally outrageous.

You can be sure these fines will not go towards better street lighting or, Heaven forfend, a reduction in local taxes.

Instead, expect yet more layers of bureaucratic nosy parkers who, under the banner of madcap green-friendly schemes, will skulk further into our private lives and deeper into our pockets.

Definitely not cricket

It was once accepted that the rules of the game must be observed, however great a perceived injustice. In the case of cricket, those rules include one that states the umpire's decision is final.

Of course, on occasion, the umpire's ruling may be slightly rash. Certainly, the decision of Darrell Hair to accuse Pakistan players of ball-tampering and to fine Pakistan five runs has caused a furore.

Nevertheless, Mr Hair does not warrant the treatment he has received from the International Cricket Council. In a deeply unsavoury display of low politicking and self-interest, it has effectively hung him out to dry.

Mr Hair, sensing he would be the fall guy and lose his cricketing livelihood, sent his employers a confidential letter asking for compensation. But ICC officials disclosed details of his request for £260,000 - conveniently painting him as avaricious and of questionable judgment.

But don't be fooled. This is the behaviour of a body whose concern for fair play is subsumed by fear that it will lose control of the sport and its personal trappings.

In ignoring, and then undermining, the primacy of the umpire it has behaved in a way that is far more disgraceful than any misjudgment over ball-tampering.