29th April 2012

Enough politics already. Had to laugh when I saw that the Maire in a tiny French village called Sarthe had come up with a wonderful plan to deal with all their rubbish.  Back in England, the mounds of rubbish piling up in the streets is a big problem. Birmingham, for instance, had this stupid idea of telling all residents to leave black bin bags on the kerbside the night before collection days - a field day for the urban foxes strewing everyone's rubbish far and wide.
But, back to the village Maire...her idea is to give each villager a pair of laying hens. Yes, hens. She says they're eco-friendly, they eat kitchen waste, lay 300 eggs a year, produce fertiliser for the garden and improve everyone's diet (cutting down on health costs).  The Maire calculates that each laying hen should cost around 10 euros each and she hopes to negotiate a bulk discount before distribution in September.  You may think all this an April fool joke, but I kid you not. Belgium (yes, of course) already runs such a scheme with considerable success, I understand. The way councils pay for rubbish collection is changing, being charged on how much rubbish is actually collected, so economies with this new scheme can be made.
Him indoors says all this is just a poultry(!) excuse...