Ikea shelves, books by politicians, even a whole
celeriac: in defence of middle-class fly-tipping
| Zoe Williams
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One experiences politics through direct
encounters with the state, and since the first
wave of austerity that experience has diverged
enormously across income brackets. Benefits
claimants can expect constantly hostile
interactions, their disabilities relentlessly
interrogated, their work hours pored over, their
child-rearing examined, their benefits rescinded
on specious or cruel grounds - all on an act-
first-ask-questions-later principle.

As incomes increase, there is a sweet spot,
particularly for those who are in fine health
and have no children in state education. This
demographic occupies a world where nobody can
touch you but a traffic warden, or a guy from
the council who disapproves of your rubbish
disposal. The issue of traffic itself has now
also entered into that world - whether it is
20mph limits, London's ultra-low emission zone
or the policy of low-traffic neighbourhooods -
and has become a massive site of political
activism.

And then there's fly-tipping - or, to give it
its full name, middle-class fly-tipping. The
local government ombudsman said last month that
councils had become over-zealous in their fines,
with two Bournemouth residents fined GBP 500
each: one for leaving Ikea furniture on the
street, free for anyone to take; another, a
carpet-fitter, for leaving an off-cut that he
thought, probably rightly, someone would find
handy.

However much we may like the idea of our tatty
old belongings finding a new home, this kind of
street trash is undoubtedly an assertion of
middle-class entitlement, which is hard to
justify - even if you personally would be
delighted by a free Ikea bookcase and a piece of
carpet. The rule is if it's middle class, it
doesn't count as rubbish - it's more of an
impromptu car boot sale. So any book, even a mad
one - 1980s facial yoga, recipes from the Hay
diet - is allowable.

Fair play, though, there's an equal and opposite
force, always ready to pounce: a middle-class
person who will pick up literally any book. I
tested this proposition to its very limits when
(no offence, cabinet) I put out books by every
single member of the government (I'd read them
before the election). They were gone in an hour,
even (no offence) Ian Murray's history of the
football club Hearts. Likewise, food cannot
count as rubbish, so long as it's "natural" -
you couldn't leave Pop-Tarts out, but you can
leave as many maggot-pitted windfall apples as
you like, or wild garlic. I've picked up a
celeriac off a garden wall and eaten it, which
I'm neither proud nor ashamed of.

In this milieu, anything you could plausibly
claim was recycling (furniture, clothes,
electronics) you can leave out on environmental
grounds. There are plenty of thrills, too. The
audacious act of sticking a printer on the
street, with a sign saying "in good working
order", when that definitely was not true even
before it started raining, is matched only by
the patrician nod you'll get while you're
picking up that incredibly old and manky fleece,
for a reason you couldn't name, from its
original owner. "Be my guest, fellow climate-
lover," it says. "Wrap yourself in my M&S
bounty."

I can totally see why a small-beans utility
corporation would want to fine us all within an
inch of our lives, in other words. But I'm never
going to stop doing it.

As well as being indicative of the way class
works in Britain, it is also a story about the
monetisation of the civic relationship.
Extravagant fines for the simple act of placing
your old wares on the front doorstep tend to be
handed out by private contractors, engaged by
the council and given a guide on maximum fines
which they find it commercially beneficial to
push to their very limits. Alongside the two
unlucky sods in Bournemouth, it's a pattern also
visible in recent airport parking-fine
"scandals" (the scare quotes indicate that the
rage is utterly understandable yet completely
disproportionate).

Not only do private contractors jack up fines to
the max, but they give no quarter. There is,
after all, no incentive for a company to see
both sides or turn a blind eye, because their
relationship is with the council or authority,
not the individual. The council, which does, in
fact, have a long-term relationship with its
residents to protect, is not blameless in this.
If there's no sense of mutual sympathy and care
between the finer and the fined, it's because it
wasn't written into the contract. But how could
it be?

What would a "we all have to live here, we're
going to have to get along" clause even look
like? The drum beat of discontent that, for
instance, united my mother's entire street in
umbrage when her neighbour's daughter got a GBP
100 fine for putting her rubbish out not in the
wrong place, not on the wrong day, but one hour
too early (Wandsworth council, I'm looking at
you) is the assertion of a community's interests
against the market's. The issue feels bigger
than a bag of rubbish, bigger even than GBP 100.

  * Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist




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