MAIL COMMENT: Why this idea really is rubbish

From a corner of rural England comes stark evidence of the chaos that will sweep the nation if the Government presses ahead with its deeply unpopular plans for pay-as-you-throw rubbish taxes.

South Norfolk District Council has been forced to abandon a pilot scheme to weigh every household's bins using microchip technology – because the experiment has proved an unmitigated disaster.

Anything that could go wrong with the technology has gone wrong, forcing council officers to waste hundreds of hours trying to sort out electrical, mechanical, hydraulic and computer faults.

Indeed, so serious have the breakdowns been that the council has found it impossible to gather reliable information on any individual household.

Imagine the public outcry – and the bureaucratic nightmare of dealing with the complaints – if bills of more than £450 extra a year were to be calculated according to this highly suspect data.

But the failures go far beyond mere technological teething problems.

Ominously, South Norfolk council finds that fly-tipping has increased by 250 per cent since its experiment began – and that's before any pay-as-you-throw charges have been introduced.

Won't there be a veritable epidemic of fly-tipping if councils start charging for rubbish collection by weight?

The implications for the environment are truly alarming. You can be sure there will be other problems, too.

When microchips were fitted to bins in Bournemouth, angry residents removed 25,000 of them. How can the system work, when it has aroused so much hostility before it has even begun?

Three times since he became Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has appeared to rule out the introduction of pay-as-you-throw charges.

Yet, even now, ministers are asking for five councils to volunteer for pilot schemes.

Meanwhile, a fifth of all bins throughout the country have been fitted with microchips – and legislation granting local authorities the power to impose charges is still working its way through Parliament.

South Norfolk council has learned by bitter experience that pay-as-you-throw charges won't work. When will the Government get the message?

Lessons of the Rock

Today, the Mail publishes the last of three extracts from a book that should be compulsory reading for everyone in the Government and the City who values the Capital's status as the world's leading financial centre.

With the force of a thriller, The Crunch, by our City Editor Alex Brummer, unfolds the story of the Northern Rock scandal from its beginnings in the American subprime mortgage market to the debacle that has left British taxpayers with liabilities running into tens of billions of pounds.

It's a story of bankers who tore up the rules of prudence in their greed for profits and of incompetent regulators who failed to head off the disaster – and then blamed each other when it struck.

It's a story, too, of politicians who weakened the Bank of England's authority, intervened too late to prevent the run on the Rock and then carried on dithering as taxpayers' liabilities mounted with terrifying speed.

Only now, six months after they came into the Mail's hands, can we reveal Northern Rock's emergency plans for closing down the bank within hours – freezing all accounts, closing its branches and shutting down its website and cash machines.

It didn't come to that – this time. But only when the lessons of the Crunch have been fully learned can we be sure there won't be a next time.