Landed with Euro-rubbish
From Christopher Booker
Sir: Ross Clark (Rubbish policies', 23 October) should be congratulated for producing such a wonderfully angry attack on the explosion of fly-tipping in Britain's countryside without once identifying its true cause. He excoriates the ever tighter regulation of waste disposal, the mass closure of landfill sites and all the other factors which have, predictably, made this fly-tipping epidemic inevitable, but blames this all on Defra and 'the government's environmental policy'. What he obviously hasn't grasped is that
every single measure he complains about is the result of a succession of EC waste directives, notably the Landfill directive, 1999/31, intended to close down landfill sites in favour of disposing of waste by incinerators (which the UK doesn't possess). It is now nearly 20 years since we handed over the power to make laws on waste disposal to Brussels under the Single European Act If Mr Clark wants to blame 'the government', it is time he took on board which government he is talking about.
Christopher Booker
Litton, Somerset
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