How Hard Can It Be_ - Jeremy Clarkson [13]
In just one night at my flat in London – that’s one dinner for one person – I generate enough waste to fill a hole the size of Worksop. And it makes me seethe, not because of the carbon emissions from the planes bringing it here – I couldn’t give a stuff about that. No. It’s the fact that while I will parcel it all up and put it in the right part of the right bin on the right day for the right binmen to take to the right landfill site, thousands will simply drop it in the street.
And have you bought a toy recently? Every single one comes in a steel-hard plastic mould that blunts all your scissors and severs all your fingers. Seriously, you could store Britain’s nuclear arsenal in the packaging used by toy companies and it would be completely safe. And then you have those plastic tie strips used to secure the product to the box. By the time you’re past those the child is twenty-eight years old.
So, what’s to be done? Well, amazingly you are legally allowed to remove all the packaging in the shop and leave it on the counter. But this will infuriate those stuck behind you in the queue. Or you could refuse to buy anything that has been packaged, but I fear that pretty soon you’d be naked and starving.
So how’s this for a plan? Companies should be fined if any of their branded litter is found on the street. This would soon encourage them to remove all unnecessary packaging. And if they found that impossible, they’d have to ensure their products were sold only to people intelligent enough to dispose of the waste properly.
I’m pretty certain that if this scheme were introduced we’d have the makers of milk chocolate Bounty, Flora margarine and Kentucky Fried Chicken out of business inside a week.
Sunday 9 March 2008
Join me in a saucy oath to Britain
A big and important lord has suggested that British schoolchildren should swear an oath of citizenship, perhaps in the hope that they’d put down their machineguns, stop stamping on old ladies and all become beefeaters.
Unfortunately, if such an oath is to be introduced, someone’s going to have to decide on the wording. This means the government will have to set up an ‘inclusive’ committee that represents all of Britain’s ‘communities’. And can you even begin to imagine what that’d come up with?
‘I apologize for my country’s shameful involvement in the slave trade. I vow to be homosexual whenever possible and to burn anyone driving a Range Rover. Long live Al Gore and death to the infidel.’
In these difficult times, it’s tricky to do better. In America, schoolchildren stand to attention every morning and say: ‘I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and burgers for all.’
Sadly, that sort of thing wouldn’t work here because the flag’s seen by Channel 4 News as racist and God’s a hot potato. What’s more, we’d have to substitute ‘the Queen’ for ‘the republic’ and I’m afraid that’s a big no-no because, we’re told, she has little resonance if you’re a Lithuanian living in a tent in East Anglia.
This might make you seethe. Perhaps you go all prickly-haired and teary-eyed when they start singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ at the Proms, in which case you might say: ‘Look. It’s jolly easy to say what defines us as a nation. The Daily Telegraph letters page. Frank Whittle. And all those bronze men with feathery hats in Trafalgar Square.’
Hmm. Fine. But before you force every single child in the land to swear allegiance every morning to Major-General Sir Henry Havelock, you need to be aware that, if your skin is brown, Sir Henry probably killed your great-grandad.
This brings us on to the biggest problem of them all. In America, it doesn’t matter whether you are a topiarist or a hedge-fund manager, a petrol-pump attendant in Arizona or a retired Jewish lady in Miami; everyone is united by the American Way. The country is seen as a place where you can get on, where you will be rewarded