Serious nonsense!

Here is a collection of silly things. When I was a child a source of income for us kids was scouring the local recreation grounds for discarded pop bottles. Provided they were reasonably clean, you could take the bottles to a shop that sold that brand and reclaim the three old pence deposit. Considering that my pocket money was not much above three old pence, this was a pretty good extra! That was a perfectly good system of recycling. Together with returnable milk bottles, given back directly to the milkman, it kept bottles going round and around.

Over in the united states, as early as the start of the twentieth century, drink bottlers were criticised for not putting a deposit of their returnable bottles. Without the incentive of the returnable deposit it was beleievd that it was too easy to just throw bottles away. In 1905, for example, the Southern Carbonator and Bottler proclaimed: “The only sane, logical and lasting solution of the bottle question is the deposit system.”

And then companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola put their energy into backing the idea that roadside recycling, containers to put your empty bottles into, was a sufficient solution to the problem. They didn't want deposits because it might make their product seem too expensive!!! Well, that worked! And now Coca Cola alone produces 100 billion plastic bottles in a year. A large percentage of them are just thrown away, not recycled. It has been estimated that, on current trends, by 2050 the plastic in the oceans may weigh more than all the fish! No further comment!

No comment is needed in the article in this link. A well known newspaper published an item comparing the size of various famous women's bottoms. This is the twenty-first century?

There is a Turner prize-winning artist who created a centenary commemoration of the lost soldiers of the Battle of the Somme. Now he is working on staging a tribute to Beatle's manager brian Epstein as part of a series of events marking the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Now, I love the album. I remember spending almost all of my first week's wages from the shoe shop where I was working my holidays from university on the album. But really, can we put the anniversary of the release of a pop record on the same level as remembering soldiers who died in a World War?

As I type I have been listening to stuff on the radio. At the moment it's a feature about Donald Trump's first 100 days. I have just heard a recorded item from the day after the inauguration, the day that Trump reckoned there were more people at HIS inauguration than at anyone else's. He was protesting that there were far more people than the press reported. Rain, he said, might have kept people away but then God decided not to rain on his speech and so rain did not keep people away. god decided not to rain on Trump's speech? What is that about?

And in the Newspaper I have just found a quote, from a Bolton voter: "Jeremy Corbyn talks about policies I want to vote for, but it's no good if you're never going to be in power". Oh boy! Double think is alive and well in this century!

The world is full of arrant nonsense!