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Tag Archives: WAG

Time to address our plastic addiction

August 3rd, 2010

The Welsh Assembly Government have made plans to enact law from March 2011 whereby any outlet within the confines of the Welsh border that supplies plastic carrier bags to consumers charge a mandatory minimum of 7p per bag – instead of the usual practice of giving them away for free that has stood firmly for as long as I have been alive.

Some retailers already impose a charge, in the case of the small retailers to recoup the cost of purchasing them, but in the case of department store Marks & Spencer – for environmental reasons, where the money made from charging for these previously free commodities gets put back into the local community.

The CBI, whose very business it is to challenge new legislation on behalf of UK businesses, have been sounding their tannoy – as is to be expected. They warn that consumers could be “confused” and that the levy could cause tension at the checkouts, but what is a brief explanation that “bags now cost 7p” in comparison to the environmental devastation the millions of plastic bags that are put into landfill every year causes?

It is my view that people generally do keep as many plastic bags as they can, often using them as bin-liners, and incentive programmes set-up by large supermarkets like Tesco and Sainsburys – where if bags are brought back to the store to be re-used a reward in the form of extra reward points is given – are working, but the sheer numbers that are required to stem an ongoing environmental disaster are not yet being hit.

Making a law that enforces environmental awareness is a good step forward, a step that will force the everyman to change habits of a lifetime – habits that have seen big-business as the enablers for so many years, so why should they not be the ones to break the bad news?

Big-business started giving away free carrier bags, as much for advertising as for convenience, and the world has become hooked on them. Now we all need to be held accountable and change our ways.

Rhodri Morgan, ever the optimist

January 21st, 2009

Rhodri MorganFirst Minister for Wales Rhodri Morgan seems to think that politics in the UK is too far behind that of the US to for a black person to be elected prime minister. In stating this Mr Morgan is, as usual, exercising his right to senility.

Mr Morgan, who is most likely serving his final term, is completely off the mark to suggest that the voting populous would not elect a candidate by reason of ethnicity or skin colour.

Barack Obama was a first term Senator when he was elected President of the United States. 4 years ago he was almost a complete unknown out of his adopted home city of Chicago, yet now he has taken his oath and is sitting as the commander-in-chief of the most powerful of Western democracies.

To say that years of service and experience through the political systems is required to be successful in British politics is utter rubbish. I would even say that a figure who has been languishing within the pig-pen for 20 years is possibly the worst person to put into high office, for all the scandals, lies and cheating that would likely have centred or gone on around that person through those years, making them corrupted or hardened. Look at Peter Mandelson for goodness sake. When will he give it up and buzz off? After all of the drama he’s been involved in, including have to resign, twice, you would expect him to have thrown in the towel a long time ago, at least to save (what is left of) his dignity.

So, to you, Rhodri Morgan, years of being inside a moral-less, corrupted elitist circle may have been your way of getting to the top, but this does not necessarily mean it is the de facto or only route. Stimulation, innovation and conjugation may also suffice and there are plenty of younger whipper-snappers who will be biting at your heels soon enough with oodles of the stuff.