Paying For Plastic Bags
From tomorrow in Wales you will be charged 5p for every single use plastic bag you use. It may be worth it for some, but I use my Waitrose shopping bags as bin liners, which then go straight in the wheelie bin. I do have a collection of large bags for shopping, but they are a pain to carry empty, as they all seem to be incapable of folding small enough to go in my manbag.
So the system may work, but it could be a lot better.
Weekly Or Fortnightly Collections?
In Suffolk, I had fortnightly ones, with alternatively, rubbish and recycling. Here in Hackney, It’s weekly for both.
What is best?
I think it depends on the bin men. I’ve had good ones in both places and they could work either system. For me too, one collection a fortnight would work, as I don’t have much rubbish.
I’ve always felt that the best way to up recycling is to have a reward system, where perhaps bottle banks are weighed and a fund is shared out accordingly in the area on small projects.
Raising Motorway Speed Limits
There is a lot of talk and argument about raising the motorway speed limits to 80 mph. Read about it here in the Independent, where they say that the limit will rise, but with lots more 20 mph zones in towns.
No-one is raising the fact, that more and more container traffic is being taken off the roads and put on the rails. This will decrease the congestion and increase the speed of the traffic. But they do need to selectively spend some money on rail junctions and road/rail terminals.
The Scandal of Adoption
Or should it be the scandal of non-adoption. According to this article and many others, only 60 babies were adopted in England last year.
C who was adopted and handled many such cases in her legal career, would be spitting blood at the news today. As she’s not here, I’ll do the spitting for her.
I have met many people, who were adopted. Not all are white too! But none regret what happened to them. C didn’t.
Cash For Scrap
No wonder we get so much metal thefts with big screen adverts like this at football grounds.
Where to Sell Your Scrap Metal For Cash
I took this picture at West Ham last night!
If I was the Transport Minister, I’d get them banned.
The Man Who Brought You OK!, Brings You The Health Lottery
The Health Lottery is launched today by Richard Desmond, who owns Channel 5, the Daily Express, OK and other media interests.
Surely, with the state the country is in, we don’t need a venture like this. This is an extract from the BBC article.
Some charity leaders have been critical that less will go to good causes than from each National Lottery ticket.
The Health Lottery will donate over 20p per £1 ticket, compared with 28p for every National Lottery ticket.
That has been branded a “pretty disgraceful development” by Sir Stephen Bubb, of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations.
I shall not be buying a ticket. In addition, I shall not be buying anything from any shop that sells the tickets either, as now is not the time, to inflict another tax on the poor and the stupid.
One point about the Daily Express and the Daily Star is that if you click on their web sites or arrive there through Google, you immediately get a new browser window with an advert. How long before these windows are advertising the Health Lottery?
I also like this bit from the Independent diary of March 2nd, this year.
More sterling work from brand synergy specialist Elisa Roche, showbusiness editor of the Daily Express, who yesterday managed to squeeze an entire two-page spread from the news that her boss – philanthropist and former publisher of Asian Babes, Richard Desmond – had launched “The Health Lottery”, a new lottery game designed to raise money for health charities. Admittedly, almost half of the aforementioned spread was taken up by a large picture of Desmond (who owns Television X, Express Newspapers, OK! magazine and Channel 5) and his girlfriend, flanked by fellow guests at the “star-studded” launch. “Celebrities who were keen to show their support for the fantastic new lottery,” the optimistic Ms Roche dutifully reports, “included Kirsty Duffy, from Channel 5’s The Wright Stuff, [Channel 5] weathergirl Sian Welby, OK! TV’s Matt Johnson and Kate Walsh, Zoe Salmon of Fiver’s The Love Bus and Channel 5 news presenters Emma Crosby and Matt Barbet.”
I’ve never heard of any of those celebrities at the launch of the Health Lottery, but then I’ve never read OK magazine.
Milliband To Pledge To End “Fast Buck” Culture
According to this report, Milliband is going to pledge to end the “fast buck” culture.
Ed Miliband will vow to end Britain’s “fast-buck” culture and ensure the “right people” are rewarded, in a speech to Labour’s annual conference.
The Labour leader will say later that the country needs “a new bargain based on a different set of values”.
Unfortunately, the get rich quick ideas have always been with us at all levels of society. As an example, the only shop I can see from my house is a betting shop. If I go down Dalston High Street, it is a sea of similar shops and pay-day loan companies. And look at the success of those legalised loan-sharks, Wonga.
In fact, it will be much easier to curb, the “fast buck” culture in the City, as many responsible people I know, steer well clear of the more dodgy practices that brought us some of the very high risk financial instruments, that took a lot of banks to their knees. It used to be in the city, that when you invested in Lloyds and similar companies, if it all went wrong you lost everything. Consequently, the risk management was a lot better, proving Dr. Johnson totally right about hanging.
Incidentally, I was urged to join Lloyds and didn’t! Why? Because it’s my money and I like to have some slight control over what happens to it.
Thinking after what I have just written about Lloyds, wouldn’t it have been better to have put the various bad banks like HBOS and Bank of Scotland into receivership, rather than use them to poison Lloyds TSB. After all, they were very much a victim of Milliband’s “fast buck” culture. But NuLabor made the mistake of saving them. And who was at the centre of that process?
What’s In A Name?
There are reports that Staines is going to change its name to Staines-upon-Thames.
Will it make any difference to the punchline of so many jokes. It’ll probably create a few more.
It got me thinking about whether your name makes any difference. For instance if your first name was Eustace, would you ever get elected to parliament. If you were no good, you’d probably get called “Useless Eustace”!
Prime Ministers have also had names with a certain gravitas or style; Churchill, Callaghan, Cameron etc. Even Thatcher and Blair aren’t names without style. But look at the two main Labour figures now. Balls to the man in the pub will always talk bollocks and Milliband is one of those names with milli or very small in it.
So I don’t think that they will get elected, unless they change their names.
More Than One Wife
There has been a discussion on polygamy this morning on BBC Radio 5, after reports that it is increasing amongst Muslims in the UK.
As someone, who was with my late wife for over forty years and married for all but about two years, and know how hard work it is at times to sustain and keep reinventing a relationship to make it an undoubted success, anybody who wants more than one wife, is either insane or so weak that they can’t be bothered to make one marriage work.
As a taxpayer, who pays for all the mess, when it goes wrong?
I’m not saying polygamy and polyandry should be banned, but those that practice it, should pay directly for the consequences when it goes wrong.
I also think too, that the marrying of first cousins should be looked at. Two of my mother’s brothers married first cousins and although both marriages were successful and lasted until one partner died, my mother didn’t think it was a good idea.
My uncles didn’t have problems, but a doctor has told me, that in certain Muslim families it has happened so often, there are severe genetic problems.
On a practical side, surely finding a partner is a lot about the joy of the search. Marrying a cousin is just a cop-out that doesn’t challenge or stretch either partner.
I always remember a family in the 1950s, where two boys effectively grew up with the girl of a similar age next door. It was always expected that she might settle down with one of the brothers. In the end, she didn’t, as she felt it would be like marrying her brother.
The Solution’s Behind You
The BBC were interviewing Ed Balls today at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool. He was pontificating on the solutions, that he would do to could Britain out of the financial mess, that largely his party got us in.
Who is right or wrong on the solution is a matter for the future.
Butb I think, that the solution to our problems was behind Ed Balls in his BBC interview. But then politicians never look behind themselves, except to see where the knife is coming from.
Over the last twenty years or so, Liverpool has been transformed, from a basket case, to one of the most vibrant cities in the world, by developing the city in a professional and quality manner. Liverpudlians will point to the European City of Culture in 2008, as a catalyst for a lot of the change, but in some cases it just gave developers a reason and possibly an excuse to invest.
London too, is changing and has been greatly improved over the last few decades. The development of Docklands started it and now the Olympics is pushing the city to new heights.
You could also argue, that Manchester got a kick start from the 2002 Commonwealth Games, but just as with Liverpool and London, the process was going to happen anyway and perhaps these events were just advertising for the place on a wider scale. Wikipedia says a lot about how the Games got Manchester moving after the 1996 IRA bombing. One might even say now that Manchester’s driving force is football.
Liverpool is getting a lot of publicity over the next couple of days, and how many will think about going there for a weekend break? When I was there last, I met a plumber who had come to the city for the day to ride his bicycle along the Mersey. Liverpool is almost becoming a seaside resort!
These three cities have benefited from a process that could best be described as Infrastructure for All.
I could also add how Newcastle has benefited from the waterfront developments along the Tyne. Other cities, like Leeds and Birminghamhave also been improved to everybody’s benefit.
I should also ask, if Glasgow is seeing the benefit for the 2014 commonwealth Games yet.
We must do this more in our run-down cities and districts.
Even on a local basis, Dalston has improved a bit in the year I’ve been here, mainly because of the opening of two new railways, that got built early because of the Olympics. But even if the Olympics hadn’t happened, they would have still gone ahead.
So we should look at all the infrastructure projects on the stocks and do those that are most valuable as soon as finances allow.
Priorities should obviusly go to those that give the greatest benefit. I would start with.
Housing, which would provide homes for our ever increasing population. It should be energy efficient and hopefully built, so that people who live there, don’t need to own one car per person, as we must wean ourselves off our own personal travelling spaces, they cost everyone else dear.
Selective rail projects, to remove bottlenecks and level crossings, improve stations and add a few new ones. In Suffolk, they are adding a new loop at Beccles so that more trains can run from Ipswich to Lowestoft. How many more Beccles-like problems are there out there, that need urgent removal. Many of these projects would have positive knock-on effects in other areas. Some level crossings, like the one in the centre of Lincoln, would have enormous benefits to road traffic, if they were removed.
Rail freight projects, which remove trucks from the roads. This would mean a few more interchanges such as Radlett, but the benefit to roads like the A14 and M1 would be high.
Personally, I would add a better bus network, with much better ticketing and disabled-friendly, information rich two-door buses, like you have in London. I have a free pass for buses, so why do I have to be issued with a ticket when I use a bus in Cambridge. It should be just touch in on all buses.
And of course, it’s important that we create interesting places for people to go. Some sports clubs have been trying to build new grounds for years and this process should be speeded up. And we don’t want any more stadia, like Coventry, Scunthorpe and the Rose Bowl designed solely to be driven to. They should be built near the transport hubs., which in itself would probably make them more financially viable.
You will notice, I’ve missed out new roads.
In many ways they are not infrastructure for all.
Some may need to be built or widened, but our priority should be to get unnecessary traffic off the roads.
I believe that we are seeing a drop in the number of trucks from the roads, as more and more container traffic is diverted to the trains. But this process needs some selective action at rail junctions, and it also needs more rail-based distribution centres near large conurbations. But the Nimbys don’t like these. Some also object to freight trains passing through at night.
There has been talk for years about taxing foreign lorries in this country, just as the Swiss do. The last time I drove the southern part of the M25, it was full of trucks registered aboard. We have the Channel Tunnel and goods to and from Europe should go through it on container trains, just like most of the freight goes in and out of the ports at Southampton, Felixstowe and Liverpool.
Every truck removed, is an increase in road capacity.
We also need better interface between the roads and rail. How many cities build large car parks in the centre, when perhaps building them on the outskirts and providing a tram or rail link to the centre? Cambridge was very much derided by doing this with a guided busway, by many including myself, but they now seem to be making a success of it.
The Anonymous Widower 