This is a guest post by Ami
In my leafy NW7 cul de sac a few weeks ago, there was a skip outside the home of the young man who fresh out of uni was elected as our local Tory counciller at the last by election. It was filled with the contents of two entire childhoods, his and his sister’s: books toys, games, from infancy to teens, all in pristine condition. I wondered if his parents had thrown it all out unbeknown to him while he was away, so sent him an email. By the time I plucked up courage to go and ring the doorbell to ask his somewhat daunting parents if I could remove the stuff, there was a layer of builders’ rubble over most of the contents. There was a stranger with a white van carrying away about a dozen perfectly preserved Action Men and Barbies salvaged from the rubble. He said they were collector’s items which would fetch £100 at a car boot sale. He had no interest in the books and had not saved any.
All those items could have gone to a charity shop which could have benefited from the £100. And it broke my heart to see beautiful books dumped like that. They could have had no fondness or attachment to books in their young lives. And what about the landfill tax the EU imposes which we taxpayers bear?
Tory boy eventually phoned me.He was very offhand and couldn’t see what the problem was. He knew about it, the house is being divided into flats for himself and his sister.
When I told him everything in that skip could have been sent to the charity shop or recycled, he bafflingly said the items were all too old to be recycled.
Later, I checked the local Conservative party website and there he was being interviewed after his election victory telling them what his priority action as a councillor would be.
It was recycling.
