Yesterday I presented the 1,622-strong brown bin petition to Fenland District Council at a meeting of full council. I have published my speech to councillors on Medium: https://medium.com/@lawrenceweetman/fenland-district-council-brown-bin-petition-presentation-speech-5d624f502435 After I had spoken, councillors had 15 minutes to debate the petition. This time limit could have been extended by councillors. Cllr Gavin Booth proposed that this time limit be extended. About six councillors voted for this motion, whilst the rest all voted to debate the petition for as little time as possible. Most councillors seemed not at all interested in the views of petitioners, with only a small handful bothering to discuss the points made within my presentation. The cabinet member responsible for charging, Cllr Peter Murphy (pictured), said that the views of all 12,000 respondents to the consultation would be taken into consideration. The consultation was very one-sided, so it is inevitable that the responses to the consultation will be used to support brown bin charging. He also told council that the decision would be made by a meeting of Cabinet in October and would then be implemented. The rest of the councillors would have no further say. Cllr Booth proposed that the matter go back to the Overview and Scrutiny committee, however councillors voted down this proposal. It seems as though this is now a done deal. I found remarks made by Cllr Murphy during the meeting extremely disappointing. He said that the law now allows councils to charge for garden waste collections, and said that this is how councils make their money now-a-days. He also said that the age-group which responded to the consultation in the largest number was those between the ages of 60 and 80. He said that "young people don't care", telling councillors that "young people are all out at work and will just pay the charge anyway". It was disheartening to hear Cllr Murphy talk so glibly about laying further bills at the feet of already cash-strapped, hard-working Fenlanders. It was even more sad to hear him make such sweeping generalisations about young people - especially since Fenland have just scrapped funding for the Fenland Youth District Council. I hope that Cllr Murphy sees fit to apologise to Fenland's young people, particularly those who are politically active and those who are going to struggle to meet yet another charge from a council which already charges twice as much council tax as nearby South Cambs District Council (£250 per year compared with £125 per year). I'm not particularly sure where we go from here. It feels a little bit like we've lost, but at the same time it feels as though we could try and go down fighting. If anyone has any ideas on how to proceed, feel free to get in touch with me or post in the comments to this update on Change.org. Thanks for signing and spreading the word. I'm proud of what we've managed so far. Lawrence