8th February 2009

It's been a funny old week. Sarkozy's rubbished Gordon Brown's VAT-reduction, saying the economic solution is to boost industry. I agree. And the old country, i.e. the UK, is still up to its old tricks. The first ID cards are here - but no one in the UK can read them because the necessary finger-print scanners haven't yet been produced! Then there's the thought-police who've not only positioned Orwellian spy cameras on every street corner, but now are set to force their way into homes to check that you're eating properly. And the weather's gone beserk. There's white-out Arctic conditions in normally moderate Britain, so everyone's having to take the ice-trucker route to work, but without the snow-chains. Climate change has certainly started with a vengeance - maybe it's the last billion years of the Earth's existence. I certainly prefer this, natural, explanation rather than the man-made greenhouse gases reason. Everyone's gone recycling crazy, even though when you investigate what happens, the answer is 'nothing'. Apparently more energy is needed to recycle our rubbish than is saved. Our local French binmen tip each recycling container into one big heap in the back of their lorry anyway! And lightbulbs: don't get me started. Here in France our beloved 100w bulbs can no longer see the light of day, all to be replaced by the stupid so-called energy-efficient long-life bulbs. Do people realise that to save money at all, you have to keep these new-fangled things on all day? You can't keep switching them on and off or they won't last. And you won't be able to use your relaxing dimmer-switches any more. And, to cap it all, it takes more energy to dispose of these new lights than they save. You couldn't make it up.

.

8th October 2008

In a place called Beavais in Picardie, horses have replaced bin lorries as part of an experiment by rubbish company Sita France. Unfortunate name I would have thought. Anyway, as well as the economic and environmental advantages of the experiment, it is also a way of saving abandoned horses. A spokesman for the animal charity Equiterra which provide the horses said recently: 'It has gone really well. People don't normally stop and chat with the people who collect the rubbish but it has proved very popular with the town.' Well, yes. Everywhere else no-one really talks to binmen other than that old song via the late Lonnie Donegan: 'Have you missed me?' says an old lady rushing up with her bin bag. 'No - jump up on the cart'. At the top of our lane there is the usual assortment of coloured recycling bins where everyone is supposed to sort out their rubbish before depositing it in the correct container. And woe betide anyone who gets it wrong, by putting glass into the plastics bin, for example. 'Don't see the point', said him indoors the other day after coming back from his daily trip up the lane. 'Why not', said I innocently. 'Saw the rubbish removals truck this morning. The men jumped out, quickly cleared all three containers of their contents and dumped the lot wholesale into the back of their truck'. 'No!' 'Oh yes', said he. So, what was the point of all this recycling message then? To some things, there are no answers, so comme d'habitude I put it into my mental DB file. What's DB? Disbuggerment. Trouble is, here in France, my DB file is getter larger and larger. Oh well, c'est la vie.