Jackie Danicki

I don’t like plastic bags and I certainly support restricting their use…

Nope, not a left-wing socialist from Labour, but Conservative MP Geoffrey Cox. Bit of a bummer for him and the fascists in both parties that scientists have attacked the UK government’s plans to ban plastic bags as based on erroneous information disgused as science. Hilariously, a “typo” that appeared in a report four years ago is the basis for much of the hysteria leading to the government’s planned ban. Even a Greenpeace marine biologist says:

[T]he evidence shows just the opposite. We are not going to solve the problem of waste by focusing on plastic bags.

Lord Taverne, the chairman of Sense about Science:

The Government is irresponsible to jump on a bandwagon that has no base in scientific evidence. This is one of many examples where you get bad science leading to bad decisions which are counter-productive. Attacking plastic bags makes people feel good but it doesn’t achieve anything.

For me, the reason to severely limit my use of plastic bags is that I accumulate so many of the stupid things that I could never use them all. (Like many people, I line rubbish bins with them and also re-use them as carrier bags. Plus, they can make pretty good packing material when shipping loose items.) It is wasteful and too costly to me. Absolutely no need for yet another useless, authoritarian law from conservatives (not conservationists, conservatives - these people are so far from liberal they can’t even imagine what that really means)

Filed under: Life