How Hard Can It Be_ - Jeremy Clarkson [12]
Normally, I would turn to the Church for help in these difficult and noisy times, but I fear no backing will be forthcoming. Partly because the Archbishop of Canterbury is too busy chopping the hands off shoplifters, but mainly because, with its nonsensical and infernal bell-ringing, it is the worst offender.
Sunday 2 March 2008
Oi, shoppers – that’s my petrol
If I were to see someone indulging in antisocial behaviour, such as cycling on the pavement or urinating in a public place, I would roll my eyes and quietly tut. If it were something more serious, such as riding a horse through a supermarket or throwing a baby dog into a ravine, I might even say something.
Strangely, however, when I spot someone dropping litter, I am overcome with a sometimes uncontrollable need to perform experiments on his head involving petrol and scorpions. Prison? No chance. That’s for rapists and robbers. Litter louts should be peeled and rolled in a barrel full of salt and snakes.
That’s why last week I was delighted when a newspaper called the Daily Mail began a campaign to rid Britain of the carrier bag. Gordon Brown was delighted too as he’s fast running out of other things to ban. ‘Oooh, goody,’ he didn’t say, but you could see he meant it. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. Yes. Carrier bags. I’ll install a network of cameras throughout the land and anyone caught using one will be fined a million pounds.’
The trouble is that while I support any move to rid the world of carrier bags – and shopping in general for that matter – I cannot think of an alternative. If you have been to the supermarket for your weekly groceries, how else are you supposed to carry them home? Especially if you’ve gone there on a sustainable bus.
Brown paper is one suggestion but it really works only in places such as Arizona. Here, where there is rain, it quickly becomes soggy – and then it has the tensile strength of fog. The Women’s Institute suggests that bags could be made from hemp or wheat so that they would degrade. But while it might be possible for a little old lady to knit a bag from natural fibres while listening to The Archers, I think she might struggle to produce 60m a day.
Some people say supermarkets should charge for bags to encourage people to reuse the one they were given last week. But the figure being bandied about is just 5p, and that, unless you’re a refugee or a coastguard, doesn’t seem much of a financial hurdle: £5,000 would cause us to think twice; 5p won’t. And besides, a charge presupposes that you have gone on a planned shopping trip. Not that you were just passing and suddenly thought: ‘God. I wish I had last week’s bag with me because I don’t half fancy some Smarties.’
I fear, therefore, that we are stuck with the bag, but this does not mean we should give up on our struggle to deprive the stupid and the fat of things they can drop on the street because they are too gormless to go and find a bin. And my suggestion is, we look hard at packaging. Three years ago there was much brouhaha about this – and of course the government made lots of threats and noises. Such was the outcry, in fact, that most of the big food producers and supermarket chains promised to clean up their act.
I should have thought this would be a simple thing to do. A cauliflower, for instance, does not need its own Michael Jackson-style oxygen tent. It will not run off if placed on a shelf naked. Nor will it be embarrassed. Can it possibly take three years to work this out?
Evidently yes, because in my local supermarket everything except the spring onions still comes in a packet of some sort. No, really. Those manky-looking weeds that silly women eat at breakfast time instead of food are served under Cellophane. Apples come in polythene on a polystyrene tray. And you should see the Easter eggs. Jesus. Two hundred tons of petrochemicals diverted from where they belong – in the tank of my car – to puff