Jackie Ashley sounds off today about the environment, about how more should be done to limit fly-tipping, more prosecutions for those who litter the country. Entirely missing from her analysis is the fact that recent Government actions have made the problem worse, not better. Closing most of the landfill sites that can take hazardous waste means that more such waste will be dumped anywhere. Raising the cost of scrapping a car (it used to be that one was paid for dropping one off to be scrapped. Now one has to pay to do so) has, predictably, led to more being abandoned on streets than being dropped off for scrapping.

Abolishing the possibility of refurbishing and then exporting old fridges (and in the abscence of a factory allowed to dismantle them under the new rules) has predictably led to mountains of fridges awaiting disposal. Imposing a 25 pound fee on the movement of old car batteries led to the closure of the private company that recycled most of those in the country. (I once sat next to the MD of the lead recycler at a metals conference. He was trying to buy lead ore in Russia to replace what he could no longer get from the closed recycler. A quite wonderful addition to the cause of recycling don’t you think?) A decade later the recycling rate is still vastly below what that company provided.

I know it’s dificult to get this sort of idea into the heads of those who write for the Guardian but in this field, as in so many others, it is the actions of the Government which are the problem. Adding another layer of penalties does nothing. The rules have to be cast so that the economic incentive is to encourage recycling, encourage proper disposal, but then when did you ever meet a politican or bureaucrat who would know an incentive from a hole in the head? Or Guardian columnist for that matter.

Ms. Ashley, and others like her, would do well to read EU Referendum on the subject.