We went down this route under Blair.
Although I know why it happened and know the Sun ‘did a number’ on the facts as only they can, a fine of £3000 fir dropping a crisp packet in the street imposed on an unemployed man showed the utter stupidity of the concept.
Here is the story
www.thesun.co.uk/news/6923245/roofer-43-fined-300-for-havingHe was issued a Fixed Penalty Notice for £300 by an overzealous Council Official for not having a Waste Carriers Licence
Oh god. Blair strikes again.
Like most freelancers business goes up and down over time, right.
I was trained in my undergraduate days to solve problems including designing my own experimental kit, chambers to culture isolated cells and stuff. When I moved into defence work, I found the shakedown after an installation or launch the most challenging and yet the most fun. Nothing ever goes right first time, it can’t be duct tape and chewing gum to the rescue it has to be fixed right but equally there are no AA men eight miles offshore.
So those of us able to think and suggest fixes to navy spec there and then we’re in demand.
With that setting the scope of where I’m going…
After the millions no billions spent on Y2K and the Euro 2 years later the IT game shrank a bit. A friend rang me one day and the chat went like this …
“John, what do you know about turning shit into compost ?”
Pardon ?
“Well you were a biochemist you should know a bit about it. Can you do it organically and keep the organic farmers happy ?”
Why the @£&! do you want to know that
“Because I’ve got three hundred tons of horse shit …”
My mate had seen the future of IT and saw there wasn’t one for little guys under Labour so he cashed out and started getting into landscape gardening.
Then under his mantra ‘let the polluter pay’ Blair went all out to shit on riding schools and farms offering stabling and all those country folk offering pony trekking for holidaymakers by making them pay a pollution tax for the shit their horses produced.
My mate saw an opportunity and called round every such place offering to collect their shit for free and take it away.
Have you ever told a farmer you want to cut his bills and it will cost him nothing more than the loan of a jcb-trained farm hand for half an hour ?
Within weeks he was more successful than he ever thought possible. Three hundred tons of success.
Then he called me.
I’m an IT guy. Hauling people out of shit of their making is my day job.
Hauling them out of shit of a horses making however …
… was remarkably similar.
The Soil Association were incredibly helpful. I went to them saying what I wanted to do, they told me what I could and couldn’t do, they helped me find people who told me what facilities to build, how to contain waste runoff, all sorts.
And so three months later inside low brick wall enclosures with sealed floor, mountains began to grow, and steam overnight.
As a 20 odd year old I took a summer job where the chance to drive a jcb came up. Off the back of that I took Bamfords internal course on JCB handling and a public driving test on a bulldozer. Which is how I have a full licence to drive a tank
As a fifty odd year old the JCB skills got re-used.
The soil association came back, took samples, sent us a bill and shortly afterwards we’re delighted to pronounce us an organic producer.
Which to cut a long story short is how I made over thirty grand a year several years running shovelling shit.
Did it interfere with my IT career taking two years out ? Not at all. When interviewers spotted the two year gap and asked, I said “I took time out to make thirty grand a year doing little more than driving a JCB and piling up and digging through mountains of horse shit.”
Why did it end ?
This is the link to your story. I was far from the only person to react to Blair’s attempt to tax horse shit. We were not really any better at it than others, we probably didn’t make as much as some but you have no idea how much sheer fun it was.
Ok I’ll be fair I had a wad of cash in reserves from the IT game, I could have afforded to waste a year and have this tank on us. But it did no such thing.
Sadly, when Blair saw his scheme to screw the countryside lifestyle and workforce crash and burn, he gave up the idea of taxing the horse owners for creating the shit.
He came after people like us for transporting it on the public highway. A licence, we were told by a singularly joyful council twat who would I swear be right in place as an Auswitz Railhead Guard would be eight thousand quid. Per vehicle.
I think the bastard was both lying, and on the take. He got not a penny. I went back to IT and my mate returned to mainstream landscape gardening, apart from a stint growing hydroponic lettuce with an EU grant. Maybe I’ll post on that later. After that he closed up shop (sold it all off to a young man actually) and entered a fairly happy retirement.
But one of the things I couldn’t help noticing was both Newport Council and the one that gestapo guard worked for opened public schemes to turn green waste into compost. But none of THEIR vehicles were licensed under Blair’s hazmat scheme.
So naturally I shopped both to the law.
I think Newport swept it under tbe carpet. They’ve got form for that. But the gestapo guy lost his job, I am told.
My mate reacted by se
