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.

From out to in

I'm back.

Last week I saw an ad placed in the window of my local municipal library advertising adult language courses to take place in said establishment.

And although Cicero is generally known throughout Western Christendom even to this day as a man of learning and letters, I still thought ‘I will have some of that’. Especially since these days sadly few can converse in my lingua franca, a massive loss to civilisation I might add.

I was however gobsmacked, dumbfounded and incredulous when reading further that the Local Council Apparatchiks who arrange such learning do not consider the poor sods who work hard to earn the taxes to pay their bloated salaries and their obese dripping pensions worthy of this learning. Clearly we have learnt enough.

For these courses are only available through the day when only the work shy, the feckless and the aged are available. And exactly when the hard pressed taxpayer, or at least most of them, are not.

This is discriminatory and exclusionist. And as you know Cicero is an ardent believer in the inclusiveness of education.

This was a stone that Cicero was not going to leave unturned. Though I bet that the hapless Apparatchik who develops this programme now wishes Cicero had moved on.

On investigating further and through didactic debate with said Apparatchik it transpires that the 2 Caesars, supported by their Apparatchiks and egged on by Townbee and her Guardianista acolytes, have decreed that the workshy and the feckless must be prioritised when it comes to education to help them back into work. Seems reasonable.

But does anyone seriously think that learning Spanish or Italian is going to make a serious dent in the unemployment numbers, especially when Spaniards and Italians already speak in many cases far better English than some of these people do. Mandarin might help but are these people capable of learning such a tricky language?

I was also gobsmacked to learn that less than 10% of people attending these classes are paying full whack i.e. in a job. And that the Full Whackers are subsidising this service to the tune of £750,000 a year.

And although I have no ideological objection to the State, i.e. the taxpayer, funding education, it must be on the basis of opportunity for all. We seem to be swinging away from opportunity for the rich and privileged (equally wrong) to opportunity for the lazy, the workshy and the feckless. 

The solution is obvious. Well obvious to all those who work in the real economy, the ones who know what making a profit is, those who get the need to understand and meet the customer needs. In other words everyone who is not a State-, i.e. taxpayer-, funded Apparatchik.

Run the classes in the evening.

I know such an approach might interfere with the opportunity for the lazy and the feckless to watch Coronation St, East Enders and Emmerdale. (As an aside when did Emmerdale stop being a farm?) But those who do want to develop their language skills for their next visit to the Costas will still come along. As will the Full Whackers. And getting them along and involved is key but we will never do this if the courses are only on during the day.

No one gets excluded. More Full Whackers come along reducing the cost to the taxpayer. And the lazy and the feckless and the aged might even benefit from rubbing shoulders with those who subsidise their lifestyle. Everyone’s a winner.

Did this have appeal to the Apparatchik? What do you think?

Sis felix. Et sis fortunatus.