Offset your infidelity

My friend Tom over at the Wobbling World blog (the link to which in my blogroll, I have just repaired) has recently highlighted an amusing little site - Cheat Neutral. This site allows anyone who is considering adding to the general misery of the world by cheating on their partner, to offset their cheating by making a donation to keep a faithful partnership together.

The site is a joke, obviously, but makes the serious point that carbon offsetting is also a joke. Although I am no expert in this area, it did strike me sometime ago, that if a person is concerned about the size of his carbon footprint, then the sensible thing would be to try to reduce that footprint before spending money on schemes which purport to reduce carbon dioxide on the other side of the planet.

Poll Tax Rubbish

If the success of the Thatcher years were fairly measured by the protests against her then the fact that the single biggest incident of civil protest in ten years was over a reform to local government finance must surely indicate that in 1990, things were pretty good for the average Brit. As I have always understood it, the objection to the Poll Tax was that it was unfairly regressive in that within each local authority everyone over 18 paid the same amount of tax regardless of income or other wealth. The Council Tax, which replaced it, is charged in relation to the value of the house against which it is levied, with discounts for people living alone and consequently is regarded as being completely fair, or at least not worth rioting over.

In the current climate of climate angst, green taxes are the sine qua non of contemporary politics. Local authorities have risen to the challenge by suggesting they should tax more heavily those households which produce more than a certain amount of waste each year. It is said that such a system would encourage people to use less packaging and recycle and compost more. Whether it is also designed to ensure that we finish what’s on our plate has not been revealed, nor, if it is, how this would gel with the government’s drive against obesity. But I digress.

With the exception of a few good people who grow all their own food and then compost what their own, or their dog’s, digestive system simply cannot accommodate, most of us generate a certain amount of rubbish mainly in the form of plastic, paper and glass packaging as well as the remains of last night’s takeaway. But there’s the rub: which households are producing the most sacks of rubbish? Is it (a) the single person living off takeaways and M&S meals for one; (b) the young couple who are never at home; or is it (c) the family with small children who never go out.

Speaking from personal experience, it is (c) by a rubbish strewn country mile. Yes, my family recycles, we would love to compost (but without a garden we have no intention of opening a branch of Dickens World in our own kitchen) and we have food delivered in environmentally friendly cardboard boxes. But we still generate an absolute ton of rubbish each week for the good bin persons of K&C to collect.

There are five of us living under one roof: three adults (including the au pair) and two babies. We would be heavily penalised by a rubbish tax, I am sure. The first irony and unfairness is that such a tax would effectively be per person - not even per adult, and would be no less regressive than the Poll Tax - even less so if there were no exemptions for students or the unemployed. Where are the rioters when you need them? Secondly, the demand for new houses - driven in no small part by desire of a large number of people to live alone - is a massive source of carbon emissions and pollution so much so that sole occupancy should really be penalised rather than rewarded. Unless, of course, you think the answer to global warming is for us all to stop breeding, in which maybe we should all live alone slowly going sterile whilst eating pizza and watching Vicar of Dibley repeats on UK Gold +1.

Cheap flights are not the problem

Another week, another trip. This time to the British Virgin Islands (see idyllic photo, left). I have been here (on business) no less than six times in the past three years, although January is probably the best time to come, given the pleasant climate, so no complaints on that front. Only problem is that the flights are all so full we were waitlisted on our preferred route to come out and are waitlisted on the way back, so it looks like we'll be taking the longer route home via New York. Heavens knows what this will do to my carbon footprint, which is already Yeti sized, given that this is my fifth long haul trip in as many months? But it does highlight that it is not just the Ryanheirs and Easyjetsetters of this world who are causing the icecaps to melt. Even the BA first class lounge at Gatwick was packed to the gunwales.

Still, hope is at hand. If the world can warm up just enough so that places nearer home are warm in January, then maybe the travelling masses can go to the South of France by train or something eco-friendly, leaving plenty of space on the flights to the Caribbean for people like myself (who would actually prefer to stay at home).

On the travelling theme, I was also highly miffed to lose my can of extra strong OFF (mosquito repellent) at security at Gatwick as it contained (or could have contained) more than 100ml of liquid. Stupid of me not to pack it in my big suitcase, but I thought I would have got away with it, given I had managed to get a large can of Gillette shaving foam in my hand luggage through security at JFK in December. I wonder what the magic of 100ml is anyway? More to the point, since I had run out of room in the little plastic bag, I had left some freebie tubes of shampoo and conditioner in my sponge bag and this was not picked up by the x-ray machine. Nice to know that our new anti-terrorist procedures are operating pretty much on the honour system.

But on the plus side, I have only picked up one mosquito bite so far, so the OFF was probably unnecessary in any case.