Plastic Bloody Bags

Hello,
As some of you may be aware my dad is something of a medium cheese in the world of plastic bags, there is nothing he doesn't know about the blighters. I wouldn't say it's a passion, he stops short of being a bag buff but he does have a healthy professional interest coupled with a degree of affection.

You will therefore appreciate how alarmed I am on his behalf by this new war on plastic bags. First it was smokers, then fatties and now the plastic bags. It will be you next and then you'll be sorry. Anyway I doubt charging folk to use them will deter anyone from buying them. Anyone tight enough to refuse to spring 5p for one at the checkout should be shot. Sorry I can't abide meanness.

Whilst I deplore waste and have taken to using a proper shopping bag, I wish to defend the humble plastic bag. That said, we do have a plastic bag binge culture. The rot set in when supermarkets stopped making their unwanted cardboard boxes available to shoppers to carry their purchases in. I used to love the boxes as a child. My chums and I used to build dens or make 'choo-choos' out them.

I reuse the plastic bags that come way as liners for the wee bin but I believe all you other folks are more wasteful. Naturally my father and I came up with a solution years ago but we are lost prophets of the religion of the sodding obvious so we are ignored. Nevertheless I will share it with you. Father an I were in the car tutting at the discarded bags, bottles and bits of carpet that litter virtually every inch of roadside grass in Glasgow. We concluded that as people chucked the rubbish on the grass they should pick it up. We then hit the problem of tracing the dropper and concluded that we could get prisoners out in the fresh air for a bit of exercise and keep the place tidy at the same time.

That is where father and I part company. I wanted to make the litter picking a chic and amusing experience for the general public by having the pickers dressed in arrow print suits and wearing shackles but father thinks there is no need to humiliate people. It's not his fault he's wrong, if I'd been married to my mum as long as he has I expect I'd become a bit of a killjoy.