Friday
Sep302011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Quote of the day
Sep 30, 2011 Greens This morning the British Prime Minister handed the Tesco management a final note stating that, unless we hear from them by 11 o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their plastic carrier bags from their stores, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this government is at war with both Tesco, and the population as a whole…
From the comments at Delingpole's blog
Reader Comments (58)
We're doomed, I tell you - despite Cameron's utter failure to comprehend even a whiff of reality, he is comprehensively trumped in the cluelessness stakes by the Leader of Opposition, who far from being the best leader his party has to offer, is so painfully obviously a patheticy, wobbly shadow of others in his own family.
Are we this bereft of intelligent leadership? How did this happen?
Politicians like to pick easy targets. Cameron can show his resolution by taking on Tesco over plastic bags, but will he stand up to the EU on the calamitous "Tobin" Tax on financial transactions or over demands to make benefit payments to EU immigrants? The environment is a convenient sideshow when real power lies elsewhere.
"or over demands to make benefit payments to EU immigrants?"
Sep 30, 2011 at 11:48 AM | Nicholas Hallam
So your suggestion is that if an EU immigrant comes to the UK to (for example) start a business with UK employees, and it goes bust, that we should let the immigrant starve or kick them out?
That doesn't sound very humane.
"That doesn't sound very humane."
Doesn't sound tremendously likely either...
http://vimeo.com/25438650
The Mark Steyn Video referred to in James delingpole's article is a must see.
I have sent it to everbody I know and would ask everyone else to do the same.
It really is frightening.
I'm not sure which side I would be on in any such all-out war.
Mrs J reckons Tesco have the greater fire power. She could be right.
Since as well as the guns they also have the butter (ref Herman Göring, allegedly) they would seem the likelier winner!
SNTF
You must remember Cameron is not a Conservative, at least not in any form that is historically recognisable. He doesn't even have the courage to stand up to the minority in his own Cabinet or he intends to cement his place in history by being the first PM since Churchill to lead a coalition government successfully. Only it won't be successful for anyone living out in the real world who has to suffer its idiocies.
While in the present circumstances the country would back firm policies put forward in the interests of the country (even if they didn't wholeheartedly agree with them) they would massacre Lib-Dems who got in the way. All except the knitted-sandal wing who would enthusiastically support any Lib-Dem idiocy but they are such a vanishingly small minority they can be safely ignored.
On the subject of Miliamp, read Oborne's piece in the DT- http://tinyurl.com/6apuu2w. He reckons Ed might actually have said something useful this week though there is still a way to go.
Apparently Cam's only doing it to placate his Greenpeace missus.
Obviously she's more scary than the prospect of global financial armageddon.
Re: ZedsDeadBed
"So your suggestion is that if an EU immigrant comes to the UK to (for example) start a business with UK employees, and it goes bust, that we should let the immigrant starve or kick them out?"
Your ignorance is showing. The test the EU is attempting to remove is the "right to reside" test. In your example the immigrant would have already passed this test in order to start his/her business.
Great comment, very Josh-able.
Agree with pesadia about the speech of Mark Steyn in support of Andrew Bolt. One of the most fundamental things I've ever heard the guy say. (The most fundamental being what he says is at the root of our freedom in the West - the fact that before departing in physical form in Acts 1 Jesus is recorded as instructing his disciples to use persuasion, not force.)
Agree with Nicholas Hallam (and Dellers himself) that Cameron is picking a very soft target at a very hard time. But I take a slightly more relaxed view of this. This isn't the guy's real passion. What his real passion is I admit I'm not sure. But the Gove school reforms I think go close - and that remains a good sign. Step at a time, painfully slow but much better than nothing.
Oops. Sorry, forgot about not feeding the troll
War between the government and Tesco?
There are some pretty smart people running Tesco – the coalition government consists mainly of a bunch of dead-beats and half-wits. It'll be a massacre!
Scottie yep I think you are right on this one Tesco ain't become the behemoth it is by being stupid with it's business and customers, I mean the left seems to hate them [much pref M&S they do ] but given Tesco's sale figures I'm sure they can live without the few student activists and failed socialists!
If carrier bags are so deleterious to the environment and have a residency time of eons, why don't I see Carrefour bags in hedgerows when the Carrefour round here died and was reborn under a different name two decades ago?
Has anyone dug about in an old rubbish tip to see what the plastic bags actually do when no one is looking?
My Tesco carrier bags degrade by the time I've driven home. Don't know where they get this 1000 years from.
I can tell you what plastic bags do in the back of my car, when exposed to the sunlight. They disintegrate into smaller and smaller bits, until only vacuuming can get them out.
Being made from hydrocarbons, anyone care to hazard a guess as to which gas is given off as plastic bags degrade? Could it be that a long residency time is A Good Thing, whereas biodegradable bags are actually the ones that do the harm.
If you think that AGW is a serious problem caused by CO2 then is better for the environment to have:
(a) have plastic bags that are inert, don't degrade and effectively "fix" the fossil fuel or
(b) biodegradable plastic bags that will release CO2 during the biodegradation process
Damn Scottie, you beat me to it by 1 minute! shouldn't have spent time previewing!
Oh, I like to start the day with a nice straw man. Actually I'm not starting the day literally, because even though I've been awake since 7, I have only been conscious since lunch.
The question you need to ask is whether or not the immigrant has paid into the system, i.e. paid tax and/or otherwise earned the right to claim benefits. The EU mandarins say you don't have to do that. It's enough just to park your armchair in a country to claim. So in the example you give, it's likely the immigrant in question will have paid some stamp and so be eligible to claim when he subsequently finds himself out of work.
.... is there something particularly controversial about this? I'm struggling to think.....
I like the fact that Cameron admits that a plastic bag will live ten times longer than him, its also more useful.
Blimey, one of mine made the Bishop's blog. I'm honoured and flattered...
... and would like to thank Neville Chamberlain, his mother, his staff and everyone else involved in this cheeky adaptation of his speech.
Can anyone actually remember voting for Sam Cam and Baroness Briony to define UK Energy and recycling policy?
"So in the example you give, it's likely the immigrant in question will have paid some stamp and so be eligible to claim when he subsequently finds himself out of work."
Sep 30, 2011 at 1:33 PM | Robinson
And what if (due to unforseen circumstances) the business folds before he's paid a cent in taxes?
Do you let them starve/kick them out because they went bust too quickly? An entrepeneurial spirit like this may well dust themselves off and have another go, which may be successful. But they'll need state support until that point.
I suspect people like you would deny them that support, stating that they've just come over here to milk benefits.
Then he can return to his country of origin and claim benefits there. Clearly his experiment in moving country didn't go well. C'est la vie.
What is wrong with our Government? They state that they are in favour of evidence based policy and when it stares them in the face they ignore it (oh except for AGW where the "science is settled")
Here is a link to a comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment of the environmental impact of a range of shopping bags. The study was produced by the Governements own civil servants.
http://publications.environment-agency.gov.uk/PDF/SCHO0711BUAN-E-E.pdf
Don't confuse me with facts when I can get 'green' votes and keep Mrs C happy by pandering to prejudice. Governemnts do NOT want evidence based policies they want policy based evidence.
.. and would like to thank Neville Chamberlain, his mother, his staff and everyone else involved in this cheeky adaptation of his speech.
Nice one OG, please keep them coming, I still have a LOL about the EU flag being "The Star Spangled Sphincter"
Regards
I really really hope that the British Prime mMinister has better things to occupy his time than worrying about plastic f....g shopping bags. Far too reminiscent of John Major's Cones Hotline.
That was James Delingpole at his absolute best !!!!!!
@Mike J
Thanks for the link - it's probably the most generous piece I've seen written about Microband - I'd like to believe that he has the spine to redefine UK politics, but the evidence of his being taken in by offal-bearing airheads such as Baroness Bryony does not portray him in a favourable light, nor his enthusiastic gullibility on the whole CAGW farce. And then there's his fratricide.
Ordure springs to mind.
Fratricide is honourable in politicians.
Or am I thinking of nepotism?
I remember Jeremy Thorpe's (I think) comment on Macmillan's 'Night of the Long Knives': "Greater love hath no man than to lay down his friends for his life".
Oborne makes an interesting case for a paradigm shift in political thinking. I read recently (I would need to go hunting) that the current global fiscal arrangement which began at Bretton Woods is also about due to be replaced.
Like so many other things, these have a natural life span. You could also point to the "traditional" British High Street which has been replaced by the crinkly shed and now the internet.
I don't see James' site on your blogroll. Can you add it? Thanks.
Phil
Read that, then read this:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/05/teen-decomposes/
Following on from Jeremy.
In the conclusion:
"Plastic bags are usually buried in landfills or thrown into the oceans and surrounding ecosystems.
The process of polyethylene degradation developed in this project can be used on an industrial scale
for biodegradation of plastic bags. As a result, this would save the lives of millions of wildlife
species and save space in landfills."
http://wwsef.uwaterloo.ca/archives/2008/08BurdReport.pdf
For what it is worth, my wife and I haven't used shop supplied plastic bags for about 12 years.
We bought 2 collapsible crates which fold fairly flat. Keep them in the car boot and when we shop, we fill them up. We also have a couple of wine carrier bags and a "chiller" insulated bag for meats and frozen items.
There is a small tax here in Ireland (I think it is 20 cents or close to that) on plastic bags as supplied by supermarkets and I object to paying this so that is why we started using the crates. the crates cost about €3 or so.
And I also am constantly amazed at the to-do about bin collections in the UK. Does anyone (really) want to know why I put out my large 200ltr grey/black bin only once a year? And it doesn't pong either!
And no, I am not one of those revolting greenies who menace this planet with their ridiculous theories.
Advice from the Welsh 'government' states the following:
"You could have loose apples, potatoes and pears in one bag and not have to charge. If you then placed a box of tea bags in there too, you would need to apply the charge...A person can not put an apple in one bag with lots of other shopping, a potato in another bag with lots of other shopping, a lettuce in another etc. and get all their single use carrier bags for free...If you went to a fast food restaurant and purchased a packet of fries and a burger then the fries can be placed in a free bag...If the burger is also placed in the bag, then the bag would be charged for."
Great. So if I get a burger and chips and ask for a bag, then when I put the chips in the bag I don't have to pay for the bag, but if I then put the burger in I'm expected to pay for the bag that was free when I put the chips in? Does the law define a minimum time lag between paying for the goods and the bag being chargeable? Best to pay and then pack your stuff how you want. No-one is surely going to go after you or the shop once all is paid and it's your property.
This is a total con anyway. Most people I know use their supermarket bags as bin liners, so they are not used for 20 minutes on average but days. If they are not re-used as bin liners then people have to go and buy bin liners so there is no saving in plastic, and a reduction in utility.
Q2. What are we saving the space for? It's not as if we were short of holes in the ground and the best way to bring worked-out quarries back into productive use is to fill them with assorted rubbish and then put earth on top. Then you can actually use them for something.
You are also sequestering all that CO2 for 1000 years (or if the bags are buried deep enough even longer).
Looks like win/win to me
Some decades ago in NZ, an acquaintance (Yorkshireman and a graduate of Leeds University's Arts faculty) a successful TV comedy and dramatic film scriptwriter, plus a very entertaining lecturer, insisted that to write excellent satire one only needs to report current events accurately; still as true as ever.
Anyone have an estimate for the ratio of overall plastic consumption plastic bags represent for the UK?
It must be a very small number.
Rubbish policies. Another political area where desire to control masquerades as environmental concern.
Jud - quite, and it would be good to estimate what mass % of an average "weekly Tesco shop" total packaging is carrier bags...
The explanation for this initiative is clear. SCameron has told the PM he needs to burnish his green credentials and show who is boss around here.
Where do I apply for a job as a bag inspector?
When shop assistants ask me the pointed "do you need a bag" question - I always respond with "oh yes we should all try and support the plastic bag industry - it's had terrible unemployment problems since politicians started meddling with it".
"The Government has always been at war with Tesco"
(at least since 1984...)
My favourite 'bag-stat' is that a 4-pint plastic milk bottle contains enough material to make 40 supermarket bags. They are a tiny proportion of plastic packaging in general, so the greens are aiming at the wrong target. Again.
Save an oil well, save a tree, or spread germs.
I'll take option B. Isn't CO2 dangerous? Don't trees metabolize it?
==============
please let the politicos deal with the crap.....they cannot handle the major stuff that tends to sort itself out best without them buggering it up
Would it surprise anyone if I highlight a note from the Continent earlier this year in which the EU calls for input on what to do about plastic bags? The Quislings in Westminster are just following orders.
Sadly, the consultation ended in August.