Mike Freer, leader of Tory led Barnet council, writing in this morning's Times. Wonder how that all tallies with the parties' bin taxes position... Aside that aside, it's interesting that Freer is honest about the chances of success and failure of the EasyCouncil experiment, in a well-worth-reading article

We are examining how we can let residents prioritise how money is spent on maintaining their street. If they want the street cleaned less, but the pavement cleaned more often, that should be their choice. If they want to take over the running of some of the green spaces themselves and have savings returned to them, that might be another option.

Another example is how we might move from a waste disposal service to a waste minimisation service. Rising landfill tax will mean the cost of this service rise by 75 per cent over the coming five years. We could recycle more than twice what we do if residents sorted out more of their waste. But the rewards of doing so seem just too distant for busy people.

We could follow the lead of San Francisco. Waste disposal costs