![]() The number of con artists involved in ripping off vulnerable people and in white-collar fraud must also be high. On one estimate, aside from the fake companies registered on the Environment Agency site, there are more than 250,000 unlicensed (in other words outright illegal) waste disposers in the UK. Carrying a few grams of cannabis is more likely to land you in trouble than dumping hundreds of tonnes of hazardous waste. Bag snatchers stealing a couple of hundred pounds a week are more likely to be caught and charged than fraudsters emptying the bank accounts of elderly people. There’s no consistent connection between the seriousness of the crime and the likelihood of prosecution. There are two categories of crime in this country: those for which you can expect to be prosecuted, and those for which you can’t. Everything is fishy now, except our rivers. Mind you, as a constant stream of filth suggests, if you are a water company or a regulated site you can also do what you damn well like. In other words, unless you run a regulated site or are a water company, you can do what you damn well like. The agency’s officers are then instructed to “shut down report”. Members of the public reporting incidents at unregulated sites should be “reassured that their report is useful to help us prioritise our work”, and are effectively advised to take the law into their own hands, by speaking directly to the perpetrator. The memos instructed staff to “not routinely spend time” on anything other than acute catastrophes caused by other businesses. The only events to which it can still respond are those it is specifically funded to investigate, which means incidents at “regulated sites” (such as places handling radioactive waste, certain kinds of illegal waste and those involved in flood control) and water companies. They explained that while reports of pollution, illegal dumping and other kinds of damage are rising, grants for incident management have been reduced in real terms “by 90% in 10 years”. Last month, the Environment Agency circulated two memos to its managers. The government says, “We have pledged to reform the licensing system for waste carriers”, but this has been going on for a long time, and the situation is likely to get worse. The registration details of George Monbiot’s goldfish as a waste dealer.Īlready, in other words, the system has fallen apart. If you want your rubbish safely removed, no job too big or too small, Algernon is your man. A month on, my long-deceased goldfish remains on the register as a bona fide upper-tier waste dealer. I gave his name as Algernon Goldfish, of 49 Fishtank Close, Ohlooka Castle, Derby, and paid the requisite fee. ![]() On the Environment Agency’s website, I affirmed that he was a, ahem, sole trader and had no unspent convictions. Perhaps motivated by a sense of guilt, as I had neglected him in life, I sought to fulfil his wishes. This would ensure that anyone paying him to dispose of waste materials could be confident that he had met the requisite standards, and was not the kind of fishy operator who would take your money, dump your waste illegally, evade landfill tax and potentially land you, the unwitting householder, with a £5,000 fine for failing to exercise your “ duty of care”. With a clarity he had never exhibited in life, he explained that he wished to be registered as an upper-tier carrier, broker and dealer in waste. But as chance would have it, at that very moment, the spirit of my dead goldfish spoke to me. ![]()
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