VOILÀ VEOLIA
HE thrice-bankrupted London borough of Croydon, £1.5bn in debt, has played a dirty April Fool’s joke on residents: a new £40m, eight-year contract with rubbish contractor Veolia, the same firm the council sacked for incompetence less than two years ago.
The Tory-controlled council is describing its latest deal with Veolia as an “upgraded waste contract”. The only thing truly upgraded is the amount being paid to Veolia.
Veolia’s record over the previous eight years is not impressive. It includes having persuaded gullible councillors to allow it to remove 1,000 public waste bins from the borough’s streets, to give its workers fewer bins to empty, making the contractors’ job quicker and cheaper. Voilà!