My friend Simcock is an environmentalist and my friend Spicer, for his carbon footprint, is classed as a medium sized country under the Kyoto agreement. This leads to lively discussions after Friday afternoon tennis especially when Simcock has downed his third locally brewed organic bitter and Spicer is on his fourth ridiculously expensive larger that is distilled and fermented in Scandinavia, bottled in Bratislava and shipped via twelve different distribution points to our pub in the Yorkshire Dales for his edification.
The regular topic of ‘green taxes' was again the subject recently. In my humble opinion these taxes aid the environment not one jot but are there for the sole purpose of boosting the coffers of the Treasury and making Brown look Green instead of Puce. Now taxes don't bother Spicer because if it costs a hundred quid more to fly to Dubai for a long weekend, so be it, he can afford it, or if you get 15% less fuel for your tenner, at the petrol station, than you did a month ago, a trifle annoying but the second bottle of Chablis usually puts it into perspective.
Perversely Simcock also believes that the cost of fuel should be a lot higher so that less people would use cars, he owns three by the way, and thus the planet would be saved from pollution. I constantly point out that the only people to suffer from this approach are the less well off. Spicer would still continue to drive and fly regardless of cost, as would all the people with money, but those trying to survive on low incomes, many of whom live in the country and can only get a bus to the nearest town on a Tuesday at 3.27.p.m. and return on a Thursday at 6.55.a.m, would suffer greatly.
As is presently being proven the increase in fuel costs brings with it the increase in all goods. Electric, gas, food, clothing in fact all of life’s necessities are going up in price at alarming rates. But fear not because the Government are on the case or will be as soon as they have finalised the Casino review, forced upon the population Identity Cards, fought off all opposition to jailing people without charge, conscripted our undereducated and undervalued youth into swearing allegiance to the flag and banned all licensed premises, that they incidently coerced into twenty four hour opening, from selling alcohol, at other than extortionate prices, as a delusionary ideal for eradicating ‘binge drinking’.
The latter is apparently to prevent the violence caused by young drinkers but personally I do not see how this can work as your average white track suited; Burberry capped youth will now have to mug and beat up four people, to acquire enough money for his habit, unlike the mere one unfortunate that suffers at his hands at present. You see politicians and economists have no grasp of reality.
They think that we the public are so naïve that if they rage war against plastic bags, in a spin doctored crusade, to save our planet that we will forgive or not notice the fact that they are doing nothing about old people freezing to death because of a 20% hike in gas and electric bills and are ignoring the plight of the record numbers of families being evicted from their homes because the mortgage companies and banks fear that their current millions in profits may dip a percent on the Dow Jones.
Spicer is of course ambivalent to these arguments and Simcock sanctimoniously defends the ‘plastic bag policy’ as something that must be done for the planets wellbeing. I do not deny this per say and have long argued against excessive packaging in general, but I do take exception to being treated, in my local Tesco, to the type of scorn from the check out staff, that in the past was meted out on child molesters, swindlers of old ladies and supporters of Bradford City Football Club, when I ask for a carrier bag because I have left my 'Bag for Life' at home. The fact that the said retailer has kindly flown me an artichoke three quarters of the way around the world seems immaterial.
In contrast on my recent trip to the Algarve a charming Portuguese lady at the mini-mart around the corner from our rented apartment neatly packed a loaf of bread into one plastic bag for me and a bottle of local wine priced at one Euro thirty into another. I felt quite decadent cheap alcohol and two plastic bags.
I didn't bring it up in discussion though as Simcock would have been disgusted at me for using two bags and Spicer would have been disgusted at me for drinking wine at a pound a bottle and I decided against further confrontation because as you will observe I am not an argumentative character.
No comments:
Post a Comment