Paul Crossley

So Saddam has hanged. A solution that will solve non of the problems created by the Bush invasion with the backing of his Labour and Tory cohorts in this country. To go to war on a lie is bad enough but to go to war with no plan for the aftermath is criminal. But then this whole war is criminal, illegal and immoral.

I am still proud that all the Liberal Democrat MPs voted against the invasion.

Lets hope that in 2007 Tony does not want to get involved in any more imperialist posturing.

Meanwhile the ice melts and the government prevaricates. Its in its power to change things swiftly. Change planning law to insist on best environmental practice across the country. Encourage homeowners to convert and modify existing houses. Then we should not need any new power stations - especially we do not want or need nuclear power stations.

If they are so safe they can all be built next to the house of Tony, Gordon and David.

A few weeks back we had a Zero Waste challenge in our authority area. Zero Waste is about ensuring that everything we use or make is reusable or recyclable and that we generate as little waste as possible. Our household has three adults and our total waste by weight each week has been:

w/e Sun 22 Oct   7lbs w/e29 Oct (Zero Waste Week) 6.25 lbs and since then 8lbs (+ 2 extra adults for 2 nights); 6.75lbs; 5.25 lbs; 4 lbs and this week 7lbs. 

The waste has consisted of cooked food waste, plastic (yoghurt pots, food containers, caps), tetrapaks, wrapping and plastic bags, other household waste. Hopefully next summer the Council will be adding a new collection box to collect cooked food waste from households. It would be nice to see manufacturers move to corn starch alternatives to plastic bags and plastic containers as these would compost. The drinks industry really needs to take some responsibility for disposing of tetrapaks. There was an interesting article in the paper with some shoppers removing surplus packaging at supermarket tills. It was a very good visual of how much packaging we have on our products. We buy our veg and most of our meat from the weekly Farmers Market. We get our milk and orange juice from the milkman in bottles.  

Apart from the food waste it is mainly lightweight plastic and wrapping. All our yoghurt is Yeo Valley - a very good local Organic producer. So we aim to keep the food miles down as well but there is still the plastic pot !!

So our waste sack is each week a single bag full - far less than most of the neighbours but still too much. Verdict not too bad but could do better. It will be interesting to see the Christmas week total.