Have yourself a very merry Christmas...

What month is it?

At this point you might be thinking that Cicero has finally lost his marbles and gone gaga. I am sure I can hear someone say ‘Poor man, he had such a brilliant mind once upon a time’.

Please, there is no need for faux sympathy and tears.

Obviously I know what month it is-October but only just. The sun still has some warmth in it and the trees remain wreathed in leaves, albeit starting to convert from soft green to crisp rusty brown. Some of the old grey cells are still working, mes amis, as M Poirot might say.

However a recent shopping experience did put doubt into my mind.

For while wandering around a local shopping mega-emporium in the dog days of September, Cicero was mightily disconcerted to see the shelves and other merchandising space replete with goods for Christmas. There were Christmas cards, decorations, trees and all kinds of other tat which we associate with the Bacchalian revels of December.

It’s September for God’s sake! There’s still 3 months to go! The kids have just gone back to school! ‘Strictly’ has only just begun! What’s going on?

And if you look around you bit by bit Christmas messages are beginning to seep into the marketing messages that daily bombard us-‘Book now for Christmas’; ‘sign up for your Christmas party’; ‘Christmas tat on sale here’.

At the place where Cicero earns his bawbees, Cicero is currently being chased on a daily basis for his Christmas card list. Even though the ‘X-Factor’ wannabees are still at Boot Camp.

It is not that I am agin Christmas and all the shenanigans that go with it. But I just like Time’s winged chariot to be lower in the sky before I start to dedicate brain cells to this festival.

Cicero would like to propose a law that there can be no mention, talk or discussion of the C-Word until after Bonfire Night.

It seems sensible that we don’t give a thought to the C-Festival until we have left Halloween and Bonfire Night behind us. Let’s take our festivities one at a time and not rush them. Let’s enjoy them, savour them, imbibe them even, before we move on to the next one. And let’s not confuse the human brain by disturbing nature’s logical and rational and ordered chronological sequence of events.

It’s time for the Two Caesars to do something useful with their days and introduce the necessary legislation forthwith. Instead of messing around with taxes on plastic bags and anything else the eco- and enviro-mentalists might be asking you to do; helping people buy houses with my money; or squabbling over who and who is not allowed to be married, please do this. For me. This might be the most transformative piece of legislation of the millennium so far.

And until Betty Windsor has signed off this legislation as good to go, Cicero will continue to ignore the C-Fest until Guy Fawkes has been reduced to cinders and ash, yet again. And if you are waiting for me to compile my C-Card list, you have another month or so before I will even begin to think about it.

What is the earliest sign you have seen of the C-Fest this year?

Bag it

I hope you enjoyed my long awaited return to the blogosphere last week. And by joining Twitter (Cicero really is down dere with da kids, as they say) I am reaching new audiences with my observations on life. If you want to twitter along with Cicero you can find him here @cicero_speaks.  I look forward to seeing you there.

And so to this week’s wry comment.

A few years back I have some vague recollection of a film in which a band of aliens came down and took over the bodies of humans. I think this is what has happened to the Two Caesars and their Acolytes. I think that the bodies they used to inhabit have been reduced to husks of their previous selves and they have been taken over in the latest move by the eco-mental global conspiracy.

How else do you explain their slavish devotion to the wind farms that are now breeding like rabbits on our hillsides and around our coasts? Is there any other explanation for their so far lack of full support for and commitment to fracking? And why we don’t seem able to build nuclear and even gas power stations in sufficient numbers before the lights go out.

And we do this even though all the scientific evidence that global warming in past 10 years has stopped and seem to be coming to my line of reasoning that it has nothing to do with so-called global warming but just Wonky Weather.

But still the eco-and enviro-mentalists would if they get their way, and they might given they now seem to inhabit the Two Caesars and even Li’le Ed too, take us back to the Stone Age with their eco-mentalist energy policies.

And now we have the latest eco-mentalist initiative-the Bag Tax.

If it wasn’t so serious you would have to laugh at such errant and wanton nonsense as being taxed for the right to take home the food we have bought.

Why do some people, well a lot of people, think that the solution to any problem must be State driven and must involve a tax? The State has much better things to do than take an interest in people’s plastic bag habits. Especially at a time when our hospitals are in chaos, our education system is a mess and we can’t even decide whether or not we should fire off a few rockets in the vague direction of Syria. But instead the eco-mentalists who are controlling the Two Caesars have decided that it would be a good idea for management time to be dedicated to taxing plastic bags. Revolutions in Europe where Jonny Foreigner resides have been started for less.

And has anyone stopped to ask what difference a Bag Tax would make?

Plastic bags make up less than 1% of the volume of waste sent to landfill. And no that is not a misprint, less than 1%. In other words bugger all. If eco-mentalism was serious about waste it would be better targeting other aspects of the waste industry.

It is also worth recognising that many plastic bags are used more than once. Cicero uses his plastic bags to cart his morning swimming gear around after his early morning dip. So it is not as if these bags are carelessly discarded after every use.

And while the eco-mentalists have allies in the Animal Lovers worried about the impact of discarded plastic bags on the fishies and the birdies, it is worth pointing out that the fishies and the birdies are highly prone to being made deceased at a faster rate by lots of other factors-like fishing nets, sharks and the butcher. Are we going to make these illegal too?

We should instead keep the State well away from this. And instead focus on our efforts at point-of-sale on changing behaviour as some retailers are already successfully doing. Or if the State has to be involved it could support R&D into more eco-mentalist friendly yet feasible packing.

In other words this is yet another cynical, gimmicky piece of green wash. Rather than innovation and technology delivering ecological progress, it looks to heavy-handed state intervention to punish consumers. And it contradicts the claims of the Government that they are seeking to reduce red tape and ease the burden on those already struggling to make ends meet.

Now do you see why I think the Two Caesars’ bodies, minds and souls have been hijacked?

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus. Semper.