Pop a paper bag behind aunty
SOME areas of pollution are difficult to escape. We inherited them – diesel buses, coal-fired power stations and that kind of thing. It will take time to move away.
But in other areas the pollution is not just disgusting, it is stupid and stoppable. Every year, some 15 billion kgs of plastic end up in our oceans, throwaway bottles and bags. They break down into microscopic particles that never disappear. These have been eaten by fish and molluscs and have entered the food chain, ourselves affected. Great islands of plastic garbage are floating about the oceans.
It is the result of sheer gormlessness, nothing else. No, perhaps a bit of greed as well, on the part of the bottlers and the packagers and bag-makers.
At last some people are trying to do something about it. In Britain, TV giant Sky News and billionaire Sir Richard Branson are backing an Ocean Rescue project. It's something that needs to go international and very quickly.
All it needs really is for people to insist on being given paper bags, not plastic. Also to insist that plastic bottles be sold with a deposit that is refundable on return, as with the old glass bottles. Whether the bottlers re-use or recycle them is their indaba. It's already happening with great success in Norway. Scotland wants to follow suit.
Imagine discarded bottles in this country having a cash value, however small. It would be a godsend to the army of people who are destitute through no fault of their own. They would collect them. The present gormless chucking into rivers and ultimately the sea would stop just like that. Ocean Rescue would become Social Rescue as well.
Also, paper bags are just the thing. You can blow them up and pop them behind your aunty. Let's get with it!
In flagrante
HOUSEHOLDER Jamie Barnes returned to her home in South Memphis, Tennessee, to find it had been ransacked by burglars.
Not only that, the burglars - a man and a woman - were still there, making love on the couch.
Jamie grabbed a broom and chased the man out of the house. He fled, still in the altogether, and has not been seen since.
The police caught the woman, who is currently lodged in the Shelby County jail, charged with aggravated burglary, according to Huffington Post.
Yes, I guess all that does amount to aggravated burglary.
Penguin puzzle
Zoological news. Scientists have always been that puzzled by the fact that dead penguins are never found on the ice in Antarctica. Surely they can't all die in the water, where the carcasses would be devoured by killer whales and such?
However, inquiry reveals that penguins are very ritualistic. They live a complex and ordered life. When one dies, it is buried in an ice grave, hacked out by the other penguins' beaks.
At which the penguins gather and solemnly sing:
Freeze a jolly good fellow,
Freeze a jolly good fellow,
Freeze a jolly good fellow,
And so say all of us …
Pensees
SOME food for thought:
· A recent study has found that women who carry a little extra weight, live longer than the men who mention it.
· Relationships are a lot like algebra. Have you ever looked at your X and wondered Y?
· You know that tingly little feeling you get when you like someone? That's your common sense leaving your body.
· Did you know that dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish?
· My therapist says I have a preoccupation with vengeance. We'll see about that!
· I think my neighbour is stalking me as she's been googling my name on her computer. I saw it through my telescope last night.
· I hate when I am about to hug someone really sexy and my face hits the mirror.
· Money talks ... but all mine ever says is good-bye.
· You're not fat, you're just ... easier to see.
Tailpiece
"WHAT'S that you've got there, Paddy?"
"A thermos flask. It keeps hot tings hot and cold tings cold."
"What you got in it?"
"Two cups of coffee and a choc ice."
Last word
A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognised.
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