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| Letters From London |
| Humorous Views on London Culture, Royals, Gossip and Politics |
Bag it, Bin it, Binbag it - 7 March 2008
Committing suicide by availing yourself of a plastic bag will soon cost you. The food division of
department store, Marks & Spencer, who happen to offer the incomparably cheery chartreuse
carrier bag, are ready to charge us to carry the bags out of the shop. There is a crusade to
create Britain the land of the plastic-bag-free.
Will women need to lug even larger handbags? Will there be an increase in pilfering? “Madam. Is
that an M&S £8.99 pinot noir in your inner coat pocket?” “Oh. Sorry. I got caught out without a
bag and my purse is chock-a-block.”
Another high street department store chain, Debenhams, is following this pocket-lining ploy by
charging for their plastic bags. How clever. The bags that will accommodate coats and suits,
pots and pans, duvets and towel bundles won’t be the type that we stuff in our pockets for just
such an emergency. Sadly we will never know in whose pockets this new money spinning
scheme will line…surely not ours.
The Labour Prime Minister performing most days as a Conservative, Gordon Brown, has plans
to add yet another tax - the eco tax and eliminate all plastic carrier bags from this island –
presumably immediately before the next election.
Will London be forced to repeat its Dickensian past when Londoners tossed their rubbish out any
available window, regardless of who was underneath? Coffee grounds, blackened banana skins,
apple cores, pudding pots…masses of cellophane, cardboard, plastic wrappings suffocating
fruit, ready meals, sandwich boxes, salads, ad inf…or will we be forced to fill those enormous
black/green garden bin bags used in the suburbs where the kitchens are the size of a small
London flat? Clearly the-men-in-suits who make decisions don’t take out the rubbish.
Certainly we don’t want two hundred year old turtles gasping for breath and ultimately choking to
death on a plastic bag where we had carried home our ‘tuna chunks with rosti new potatoes,
lime peel and chopped coriander, sesame seed coated fishcakes’ - or those lovely horse
chestnut trees decorated with nasty ubiquitous shredded greying plastic bag remnants when it isn’
t Halloween - or multi-coloured plastic bags breeding in landfills for 1000 years - but filling our
kitchens with enormous great rubbish bags creating compost… enhanced with mice, rats, flies,
cockroaches, and an assortment of outdoor insects. Argh.
I reuse every plastic bag I drag home. I toss every bit of totally unnecessary plastic wrapping in
my plastic bin bag. I know. B-i-o-d-e-g-r-a-d-a-b-l-e. Problem solved.
Committing suicide by availing yourself of a plastic bag will soon cost you. The food division of
department store, Marks & Spencer, who happen to offer the incomparably cheery chartreuse
carrier bag, are ready to charge us to carry the bags out of the shop. There is a crusade to
create Britain the land of the plastic-bag-free.
Will women need to lug even larger handbags? Will there be an increase in pilfering? “Madam. Is
that an M&S £8.99 pinot noir in your inner coat pocket?” “Oh. Sorry. I got caught out without a
bag and my purse is chock-a-block.”
Another high street department store chain, Debenhams, is following this pocket-lining ploy by
charging for their plastic bags. How clever. The bags that will accommodate coats and suits,
pots and pans, duvets and towel bundles won’t be the type that we stuff in our pockets for just
such an emergency. Sadly we will never know in whose pockets this new money spinning
scheme will line…surely not ours.
The Labour Prime Minister performing most days as a Conservative, Gordon Brown, has plans
to add yet another tax - the eco tax and eliminate all plastic carrier bags from this island –
presumably immediately before the next election.
Will London be forced to repeat its Dickensian past when Londoners tossed their rubbish out any
available window, regardless of who was underneath? Coffee grounds, blackened banana skins,
apple cores, pudding pots…masses of cellophane, cardboard, plastic wrappings suffocating
fruit, ready meals, sandwich boxes, salads, ad inf…or will we be forced to fill those enormous
black/green garden bin bags used in the suburbs where the kitchens are the size of a small
London flat? Clearly the-men-in-suits who make decisions don’t take out the rubbish.
Certainly we don’t want two hundred year old turtles gasping for breath and ultimately choking to
death on a plastic bag where we had carried home our ‘tuna chunks with rosti new potatoes,
lime peel and chopped coriander, sesame seed coated fishcakes’ - or those lovely horse
chestnut trees decorated with nasty ubiquitous shredded greying plastic bag remnants when it isn’
t Halloween - or multi-coloured plastic bags breeding in landfills for 1000 years - but filling our
kitchens with enormous great rubbish bags creating compost… enhanced with mice, rats, flies,
cockroaches, and an assortment of outdoor insects. Argh.
I reuse every plastic bag I drag home. I toss every bit of totally unnecessary plastic wrapping in
my plastic bin bag. I know. B-i-o-d-e-g-r-a-d-a-b-l-e. Problem solved.
