In Defence of the Plastic Bag

MORPH3US

dixie_dean wrote: »

Geordie is just a troll I think. There is no argument here - it's waste vs don't waste. Kelly, I'd jut like to say I thinks it's fantastic you've got great, green, big boobs.

FPMSL.....

Top post!

geordie_joe

MORPH3US wrote: »

Sorry geordie_joe, I thought we were having a serious discussion, but the childish comments have come out again...

How can you have a serious discussion about carrier bags with some who says "Therefore I am happy for the government to tax plastic bags to the hilt. For the same reasons I wich the givernment would also tax "gas guzzling cars" and cigarettes more...
"

geordie_joe

moonrakerz wrote: »

"I also despise car drivers who drive round belching toxic fumes" I suppose you would be happier if everyone went in an electric car or electric train. Then the "belching toxic fumes " would be spewed out of a power station all over someone else - and not you. If you "despise" the Internal Combustion Engine so much I presume you will have nothing to do with anything that that relies on this evil invention. Such as the van that delivered your PC, the Tesco lorry that brings your food, the tractor that ploughs the field to grow your food, the car that brings out the doctor etc, etc, etc.

Now who is being childish! You can despise something someone does without campaigning to stop them doing it. My whole point was that you shouldn't call people who use carrier bags names and claim they don't care about saving the planet. People have a right to choose, and as long as they have a choice to use a free carrier bag they are free to do that without being put down by others.

I also despise rap music and some other kinds the kids listen to these days, but I fully respect their right to listen to it.

moonrakerz wrote: »

On what medical basis do you state "car fumes will kill you a lot quicker than smoking" ?

On the basis that if you sit in a car and run a hose pipe into your car from the exhaust, then switched the engine on. And I sat in another car and lit up a cigarette I know which one of us would die first.

moonrakerz wrote: »

All the evidence appears to point the other way. I gave up smoking 35 years ago but carried on driving. I know which of those two were potentially the most harmful to me. I strongly suspect the whole of the medical profession would agree with me.

Yes but you are inside the car protected from the fumes, it's the poor b*ggers on the pavements that are breathing it in.

moonrakerz wrote: »

And as for:- "That's why some many people choose car fumes as a means of committing suicide." This has to be the most irrational, ill-researched, ill-thought-out statement of the year !

This gives an annual number of fatalities from this cause of around 200. Hardly the Black Death !

To that can still be said as "so many". Sorry for the typo "some many" should have been "so many"

200 people committing suicide by car exhaust fumes proves they kill you. OK, I didn't know the exact number and had to write "so many", but that is not important. The important point is so many people do use car exhaust fumes to commit suicide.

Whether you think the lives of just 200 people are important or not is not the issue.

moonrakerz wrote: »

There is too much pollution on this planet, be it from plastic bags, car exhausts, junk mail, discarded mobile 'phones or dog s**t on the pavement,

I agree with you.

moonrakerz wrote: »

but so many of the responses to these problems are just ill considered knee-jerk reactions that are never thought through. That was the point of my OP.

I know it was, and I agreed with it and thanked you for it.

But my point was also against the knee jerk reaction of some people who use reusable bags to carry their shopping calling those that don't names and looking down on them.

And also against taxing things just because you don't like them.

As I said earlier, taxing carrier bags and cigarettes won't save the planet, and neither will calling people, who use carrier bags, names.

geordie_joe

dixie_dean wrote: »

Geordie is just a troll I think.

I don't care what you think.

dixie_dean wrote: »

There is no argument here - it's waste vs don't waste.

You haven't been reading my posts, if you had you would know it's about people being free to choose to use a free carrier bag that a supermarket offers.

As long as supermarkets provide free carrier bags their customers are free to use them. It's not up to me or you to tell them they can't, nor to call them names for doing it.

dandare

stop arguing. it's pointless. you're just preaching to the the converts, either side. if ye feel ye should change yer ways to help something do so, if not don't. don't brow beat others into trying to change if they don't feel the need. it just gets their back up and makes the more determined to not change, either way.
we all use things that are allegedly harmful, that's life. if ye want to cut back or not it's yer choice.
as for saving the planet. don't worry about the planet, it's been turning from before we were here and it'll, chances are, still turn after we've gone.
it just might not be liveable for humans that's all. the planet will be fine if that's what yer trying to save and looking at the way humans act towards each other, other lifes and the planet it may be no bad thing if we're gone, we cannae even feed/home people in need.

kellybigboobs

well dixie dean,thank you very much for the compliment?!

i don't think geordie joe is a troll (i've always quite liked them!), i think he's a bored know-it-all who should get out more.

sorry if the moderator thinks that's rude but frankly anyone who has time to break down and quote every single post into so many smug corrections,in his mind at least,really does have too much time on their hands.

also,if he's nearly as knowledgeable as he seems to think he is he would realise that expecting shoppers to provide their own shopping bags isn't a modern thing,it's what was done by everybody years ago quite happily and none of their heads fell off from the effort of taking their own bags or trolleys with them on their shopping trips.still,i imagine it was mostly women doing the shopping then so that explains alot.....

PrinceGaz

moonrakerz wrote: »

I'm sorry - but those are the most ludicrous couple of statements I have seen in many a long day.

...

And as for:- "That's why some many people choose car fumes as a means of committing suicide." This has to be the most irrational, ill-researched, ill-thought-out statement of the year !

Could I quote from the Office of National Statistics: "hanging, strangulation and suffocation’ was responsible for almost a half of all suicides.................................. and ‘other poisoning’ accounted for only 10 per cent" (Car exhaust gas is included in 'other poisoning') Car exhaust gas specifically was responsible for 38% of that 10%.
This gives an annual number of fatalities from this cause of around 200. Hardly the Black Death !

It is worth noting that the number of people who "successfully" commit suicide from car exhaust fumes has fallen dramatically since catalytic converters became mandatory on all new cars. The catalytic converter has the effect of converting almost all the carbon monoxide in the exhaust fumes to the much less harmful carbon dioxide-- the gas you breathe out naturally anyway as a normal part of metabolism. Too much carbon dioxide will kill you, but it is the CO2 level in your blood (not the oxygen level) which automatically triggers your body to try to get more oxygen, so it is actually quite difficult to kill yourself in a car with a working catalytic converter, unless you drink or drug yourself unconcious first, in which case you may as well not bother going to the trouble of the hosepipe and exhaust as a few more pills would do the job anyway.

Before catalytic converters, carbon monoxide was a silent sleepy killer, your body would not naturally respond to the ever rising CO levels in your bloodstream preventing it from carrying oxygen (as I said, lack of oxygen does not feel like suffocation, only too much CO2 does), so gassing yourself in a car was an easy and guaranteed painless way to die. Incorrectly fitted home gas appliances kill quite a few people each year in their sleep without them ever realising there was anything wrong, in much the same way as gassing yourself in a car used to, but more gradually.

Many many more people killed themselves in their car in the past. I personally knew someone quite well who did just that in the early 90's and had to attend the subsequent inquest, so I suspect the rates then were a lot more than 200 per year. These days, knowing that exhaust fumes won't work very well, they probably choose other methods instead.

That doesn't change the fact that cars are still bad for the environment, a lot worse than public-transport at any rate, and cars shouldn't be used if there is a viable public-transport alternative.

moonrakerz

PrinceGaz wrote: »

That doesn't change the fact that cars are still bad for the environment, a lot worse than public-transport at any rate, and cars shouldn't be used if there is a viable public-transport alternative.

Thank your for some well reasoned "non-troll" comments.

Agree with your comment about public transport but most things man does are bad for the environment. From the moment stone-age man lit a fire to cook his mammoth burgers we were on the slippery slope. As I have said before, most Government action to "protect the environment" involves raising taxes and the populace having to pay through the nose for non-existent returns.

The latest hike in vehicle excise duty follows this path, everyone pays more for their car, estimated "green" effect - less than 1%. IF the government was really serious about reducing car pollution, it would say - who actually needs a car with an engine bigger than (say) 1500 cc ? Who needs a Hummer to drive around Knightsbridge ? - ban the lot of them !

This would do far more for the environment - but think of the all the extra people out of work - oh sod it, lets just put up taxes instead !

PrinceGaz

Unfortunately, introducing penalising taxes against the vehicles which pollute more and which are also a much bigger danger on the roads than other vehicles in urban areas, would alienate a lot of voters.

I respect Ken for managing to do what he has already in reducing car usage in Central London. I don't live in London but his example should be followed in other areas. Transport for London is a shining example of what could be achieved today in other urban areas if public-transport was brought back under some sort of centralised control.

Up here in Newcastle, we have a chaotic mix of the once integrated Metro system, and numerous bus operators all running to their own agenda. Whereas once the state-of-the-art Metro linked with bus services at a few key purpose-built interchange stations, the interchanges are now largely underused as most buses now run into congested central Newcastle even if they stop at a Metro interchange on the way in.

Central management of transport policy is needed here like what Ken has done for London, but that isn't going to happen in the forseeable future.

Ban big (high body SUV-type) cars from inner-urban areas? Why not? It would make the roads safer for everyone else, both car-users and pedestrians, as those cars are far more likely to kill a third-party at a given impact speed than ordinary cars. People able to afford luxury SUVs could easily afford another small hatchback for inner-city journeys. It's rather ironic that people driving their children to school in SUVs are more likely to result in a child being badly injured than parents who use normal cars - so the more parents who use SUVs for the school run, the more dangerous it is for children near the school.

MORPH3US

sweeno wrote: »

Not sure what most posts here have to do with saving money but the world manufactures one trillion plastic bags each year, bags are used for 12 minutes on average before being discarded and they don't biodegrade. They take hundreds of years to breakdown and the resulting plastic bits cause damage to wildlife. And bags are not free, their cost is included in our shopping bills. So I suggest paying a few bob for a reusable bag, save money and save the environment at the same time.

Thank god for some common sense on here at last...

:beer: