Fly-tipping has turned rambling into a weirdly retro activity

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/08/patrick-barkham-notebook-fly-tipping

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I’ve been continuing a lovely long walk through the ordinary British countryside in recent days. Apart from being struck by the absence of people, and the correspondingly overgrown footpaths (as mentioned in previous Notebooks) , I’ve spotted an astonishing number of green woodpeckers, and quite a few fridges.

There are many more woodpeckers than dumped fridges so perhaps I should rhapsodise about the former, but the randomly dumped refrigerators chime with new figures showing another increase in fly-tipping. After years of decline, last year the government recorded a 20% rise in illegally dumped rubbish. The latest figures are not comparable, coming from council responses to a freedom of information request, but still show an upward trend.

The previous occupants of my house fly-tipped an old gas bottle in the well-mannered old Norfolk way – in the garden

For all the trouble fly-tipping causes farmers, this rubbish problem is more urban than rural, and seems to afflict rich and poor places equally: the 10 worst locations include Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster, Great Yarmouth, Burnley and Plymouth.

This is a weirdly retro occurrence, like a surge in smoking. As with any crime, we can blame consumerism, austerity or fecklessness: an increasingly throwaway society overburdened with possessions, council cuts to waste disposal services, and ignorance of free council collections for bulky items are three reasons. It is also expensive to legally dispose of hazardous waste: I paid £100 to the council recycling centre to dispose of old asbestos water tanks from my house.

And it isn’t always obvious how to get rid of stuff: I’m still puzzling over how I can legally dispose of an old gas bottle that previous occupants of my house fly-tipped in the well-mannered old Norfolk way – dumped in the corner of the garden.

Solar flannel

Like most people who fit solar panels on their roof, I’ve succumbed to the weird addiction of watching electricity generation. It’s far more thrilling than paint drying. A little screen tells me what I’ve earned from the government’s “feed in tariff” (FIT) by sending electricity back to the national grid. I’m amazed that the panels generate electricity even on dull days: I received 16p when it rained for 24 hours and barely seemed to get light; on sunny days I earn enough to buy the Guardian!

Related: Panasonic criticises 'damaging' cuts to solar panel subsidies

Unfortunately, the government wants to stop more people enjoying clean energy joy (it’s not smugness, honestly, just a simple pleasure, and a kind of energy mindfulness that encourages me to charge phones when it’s sunny) by slashing the FIT payment level from 12.92p to just 1.63p.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change initially aimed for 750,000 solar FIT installations by 2020 – it will reach this target by the end of the year. Renewables provided under 4% of electricity in 2005; helped by good incentives, they now provide 19%. This should be a cause for celebration, but the government will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory if it pulls the plug on tried-and-tested – and trusted – clean energy, with the predicted loss of 22,000 jobs. Fancy some generous incentives to frack your garden? No, me neither.

The immortal Gladstone

I gave a talk on Sunday at Gladfest, the festival at Gladstone’s library in Flintshire. Hanging on a banner from this beautiful residential library were some very timely words from the great Liberal statesman: “All human beings have the same claims upon our support. The ground on which we stand here is not British or European, but it is human. Nothing narrower than humanity could pretend for a moment justly to represent it.”

The context for this moral clarity was similarly complex too: the year was 1895, and Gladstone was urging British intervention to defend Armenians from the Ottoman empire, while insisting that this was motivated by humanity – and not by a desire to defend Christians over Muslims.