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I just heard the Tory working group ideas about policies to help the environment.

I never thought I would do anything but wave a placard at Tories - but I liked that they were offering positive inducements to be good. Reduction of stamp duty and council tax for getting your house more efficient sounds positive to me.

I've been recycling for 20-odd plus years and using the light bulbs and insulating. I've found myself really frustrated now that it's mainstream ideology. Mainly because attitudes are becoming punitive. Now councils are threatening to charge those who don't recycle or not enough - how about differential charges - with lower ones for those of us who do?

I've paid the council to remove my rubbish through rates, poll tax and council tax, all my adult life. Now, in some parts of Britain (and I'm sure it will come to Scotland) they want to charge to remove bin bags. This was always part of the service and I didn't hear anyone say it had changed. To offer me a little bit off because I religiously recycle - I might learn to like the council!

I'd like to see the current government and councils offering more carrots for socially and environmentally desirable behaviours and rather less judgement, condemnation and sticks. Blame just breeds resentment and feelings of being forced into it, rather than choosing.

I feel this group set a positive note here and I'd like to see other social and environmental work everywhere take it up. Money off for doing the right thing seems sensible to me.

(Rant over for now!)
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The Kips, Pentlands avatar - Scald Law, Pentlands.

Recycling used to be known as make-do-and-mend - when your shoes wore out you got them soled and heeled, and sheets with holes in were sides-to-middled.

I'm not a fan of the modern habit of throwing things away just because they're last week's model. And we do recycle paper, plastic, glass and so on.

But the light bulbs - those are a different matter. We do use them, but I find them unpleasant, and have difficulty seeing as clearly with energy-efficient bulbs as I can with the normal ones. They just aren't as bright.

Council tax was always an unfair tax, and it certainly needs something doing to make it fair for everyone. Personally I would rather see a local income tax brought in instead - pay according to what you earn, rather than by where you happen to live.

I agree that things shouldn't be thrown away just because they are last years model but I wouldn't like to be in the state of needing to recycle something as it was so expensive (or rather it was too high a proportion of my income) to replace .
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'S riogal mo dhream
Ciamar À Thà Sibh

www.cheesesoup.myby.co.uk

I have given a lot of thought to your post Soup.

Firstly, I opened this thread because of the guilt-tripping and blaming that goes on around the environmental issue. We all have to do what we can. Our input, as individuals, makes less impact, than say, the policies of the major oil companies, or the US government. However doing our little bit is good, and we should be allowed to feel good about it, because that tends to encourage us to do more good.

I am sure to digress here - so I apologise in advance.

Almost certainly you will have to recycle because you can't afford to buy, in lots of areas. As the earth's resources get less, they will cost more.

More importantly than that, the political and economic situation will change, inevitably, and the disparity of lifestyle between developed and underdeveloped world will have to narrow. Otherwise, revolutions and armed struggles will be more widespread with even more limitation of access to resources. Since the big boys won't be taking any loss to their lifestyle, we will.

We are already starting to see that with the pensions crises. Apparently, historians say, there was a real tendency to Communism in this country in '45, with the forces returning from WWll. We were bought off with pensions and a National health Service. Pensions are failing. They say the NHS is becoming vastly too expensive.

I would even question what the NHS thinks it's doing. I can't really feel that it is morally OK to be spending so much on advanced, technological treatments and massive immunisation programs for low-risk disease (MMR) when a child dies every three seconds in Africa for want of food or simple medicine. Hard one to answer. If was my loved one I want them alive and well, but so does that African Mum. We have a big issue with heart attacks. As heart disease deaths drop we have increasing numbers of people who are increasingly debilitated and limited in the quality of their life, with an increase in dementias. Most of us want to die active, healthy and with our brains and identities intact. Are we using our health system in the best way to get that? And, of course, needless to say, the whole thing; from expensive technologies, to disputed vaccines makes big profits for the companies that produce them. My political view is, of course, that the NHS is about those profits - and always was. Just look at the South Africans' legal fight to make their own AIDS drugs.

So, to get back to the point, imperialism is being squeezed. What we witness in Iraq and other disputes is the big boys trying to recarve up the world, gain more resources and secure their futures. It is also being squeezed by insurgents and wars in various areas - limiting access to the resources held their and reducing the profits available there.

Imperialism was a policy advocated by Rhodes to stop bread riots on the streets of London. As it gets squeezed, the big boys won't pay the price, we will. A simpler life is most likely for all of us. Yes the things we take for granted now probably will become more expensive. In fact, compare that youth expectations in the 60's could be largely met while youth expectations now largely won't be. (Where the youth have expectations and haven't just given up to dope and booze.)

Within the next 10-20 years our world has to change, big time, and we lack any significant mechanism to protect ourselves in that.

At the very least we can stop accepting the blame for others' policies, marketing needs, exploitation of us and others.

PS These are only my thoughts, rather than a fully developed line, and I am happy to hear other pictures of where we are.
I'm with Anona's position, really. I just dislike wasting things. I have middled sheets, turned collars and got stick-on soles and heels to repair shoes.
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The Kips, Pentlands avatar - Scald Law, Pentlands.

Wen wrote:

Reduction of stamp duty and council tax for getting your house more efficient sounds positive to me.

Now councils are threatening to charge those who don't recycle or not enough - how about differential charges - with lower ones for those of us who do?

I've paid the council to remove my rubbish through rates, poll tax and council tax, all my adult life. Now, in some parts of Britain (and I'm sure it will come to Scotland) they want to charge to remove bin bags. This was always part of the service and I didn't hear anyone say it had changed. To offer me a little bit off because I religiously recycle - I might learn to like the council!

I'd like to see the current government and councils offering more carrots for socially and environmentally desirable behaviours and rather less judgement, condemnation and sticks.

Money off for doing the right thing seems sensible to me.

Well said, Wen! I agree entirely and have nothing to add (for once!).

Wen on the surface of it, "mending" (say cotton sheets) seems like a good idea but the world is seldom that simplistic. What about all those involved in growing the crop (cash crop for those very Africans you talk off ? ) distributing the raw cotton, making sheets, distributing them etc etc . Note Cotton is grown (so not finite) whereas Nylon etc is made from Oil (finite).

ADDED BIT I have just had a thought maybe those Africans are growing cash crops instead of food ;see it is very complicated when you think of it

P.S. I think Nylon sheets are the work of Stan

ASIDE :- Once did a study for part of my degree and we found that it was actually "better"(energy wise) to make new bottles than to try and recycle "old" glass
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'S riogal mo dhream
Ciamar À Thà Sibh

www.cheesesoup.myby.co.uk

As with the healthy eating debate, perhaps it is a question of the"carrot rather than the stick" approach! (No pun intended!)

Offering householders incentives in whatever form for making their homes more energy-efficient might be one way forward.

While I agree that we should all being doing our bit, it's not always as simplistic as it may first appear. I don't think threatening people with fines or so on for not recycling is the way forward, to be honest.

We all pay a fortune here in Midlothian for our council tax as it is, so I think reductions for those of us who do our bit through recycling might be a good thing.

Punitive measures rarely work, in my view. For instance, charging people for special uplifts invariably leads to an increase in items being dumped (although there is no excuse for that!)

Has anybody ever worked out how many cubic miles of landfill are going to be used up when we all have to throw away our analogue television sets in a couple of years time?

That is going to be compulsory - no choice for any of us. Even those of us who will not be going digital will still have a big square lump of obsolescence to dispose of.

Good point, Anona....and I don't think I've seen that raised anywhere else. It is going to be a massive problem!

Anona.Mouse wrote:

Why are you throwing away television sets?
We have three tellys in this house, one has cable input so the over the air transmission doesn't really affect that and two of them have Digital receiving boxes (digiboxes) to receive a digital signal none of these tellys have any difference to those capable of receiving analogue signals. Fair enough another box has to be purchased (£30~£100) but the telly itself does not have to be discarded.
Analogue or digital is "just" the method used for the transmission signal it does not refer to the tellys internal workings (there are some , high end, tellys out there that have this digibox fitted internally but generaklly there is no need to change tellies at the switch over.
ALL televisions are digital devices the signal however is changing from analogue to Digital
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'S riogal mo dhream
Ciamar À Thà Sibh

www.cheesesoup.myby.co.uk

Thanks Sue.

When they are making recommendations and legislation it would be good to hear it acknowledged that most of the public would want to support reasonable measures to help the planet. Working on that assumption would put across a different message completely to us. We might feel worked with rather than blamed and imposed on.

I agree that if you charge people per bag of rubbish then you'll find more bags in hedgerows. If you want litter in the bins, by preference, then best to agree to continue that uplift.

(Minor moan - someone took my recycling tubs! I'd got the house number painted on and they were clean because I keep them indoors in the hallway. Now I've got muddy ones (that were obviously stored outside) with no number on. I've gained a plastic cover though. I only put one on the top bin, and they used two.)
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The Kips, Pentlands avatar - Scald Law, Pentlands.

"Lose" it 'phone the council and get a new one we had to do that when our (red one) was "mistakenly" taken and we were left with this horrible broken mouldy thing . We got two new bins (we had only asked for the red one) the red one is exactly the same as the missing one whilst the blue one is bigger and a different hue to the "standard" ones.
Anyone else find it funny that the bins for recycling are made out of an irreplacable resource
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'S riogal mo dhream
Ciamar À Thà Sibh

www.cheesesoup.myby.co.uk

Very observant, Soup. I hadn't noticed. Very Happy

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The Kips, Pentlands avatar - Scald Law, Pentlands.

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