LIVE 24-SEVEN
DIGBY LORD JONES THOUGHTS FOR AUGUST...
By the time you read this, two of the three main parties will have a new Leader. As I pen this offering in mid-July, it looks odds-on that the new Leader of the Conservative & Unionist Party will be Boris Johnson; the Liberals will have chosen either Jo Swinson or Sir Ed Davey as Leader.
Wishful thinking on my part would love to see also a change of Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition so that the Marxist takeover of a once-great Party with all of its hate-filled and anti-semitic overtones can be halted. Sadly I guess that has to remain precisely that – wishful
thinking...for now.
By the time you read this Dear Reader, maybe on a beach somewhere (enjoy!) you will certainly know more than I do right now.
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So I want now to steer your thoughts to something utterly removed from the shenanigans at Westminster, but what is so very important (some would say, more so) for all our lives and especially those of our children.
I’m not going to witter on about the effects of climate change and also the disgraceful behaviour of mankind so far as single-use plastic is concerned, but I am going to have a go at hopefully getting your thought processes working on a few ways in which we can all (with not a lot of effort, but with a dollop of thought blended with action) make a bit of a difference to our environment and at least give the planet a better chance of being fit for our grandchildren. We might all save a few bob in the process.
So here we go with seven things we can all do right now:
• Turn off the tap as we clean our teeth. Don’t let it run while the toothbrush is in our mouths. Imagine the water saving if we all did that twice a day, every day.
• Don’t keep the engine running as we wait to pick up people in our cars – kids/grandchildren from school, friends from the shops.
•
Take as much plastic out of our lives as possible; I do not mean going over-the-top by observing that cars or iPhones, remote
controls or pens have a lot of plastic in them and we use them every day, so we are somehow absolved from doing our bit. Let’s leave that to the manufacturers. I mean just doing a few things differently in our day-to-day lives:
- insist on paper bags for the fruit and veg at the supermarket
- insist on repeat-use, recyclable bottles for your water, sparkling & still
- tell Amazon, Next et al (and keep telling ‘em!) to stop using bubble wrap and plastic in their packaging when they send stuff to you
- write to or email your newspaper and insist (and keep insisting!) they stop wrapping those Saturday and Sunday supplements in plastic
- ask your children, your friends and neighbours, your mates at work for ideas on how what you all do every day can be done without just one item of single-use plastic. Then repeat the exercise every month, possibly every week. Set up competitions to come up with new ideas.
• Think about using the train rather than the plane or car just once a month more than you do now
• Given that imposing the charge of 5p on plastic bags at supermarkets saw a reduction of 80% in their one-time use (yes, 80%!) why not increase that charge to £1, but make the supermarkets use the money to develop ways of taking plastic out of the packaging used in their supply chains. Tell your supermarket; tell your MP; tell your radio station; tell your friends.
• Start a campaign of writing to your MP or newspaper (use social media!) to insist the Government makes it a condition of developing countries receiving Direct Overseas Aid from your and my taxes that they change their behaviour so far as plastic use is concerned. This is not economic colonialism or
LIVE24-SEVEN.COM
BUSINE SS LORD DIGBY JONE S
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