Monday 9 May 2011

Every day trade-offs and random thoughts

In the last week I've seen two street bins on fire. Applying Occam's Razor I conclude that they were both set alight by a cigarette from someone who thought he was doing the right thing. In retrospect, it would have been better to toss it in the gutter with all the rest.

My attitude to littering is one of severe intolerance, coupled with an indulgence with regard to cigarette ends, which don't count, mainly because they're burning! You can hardly put them in your pocket, can you?

Some would think me a hypocrit. Could they not be made bio-degradable? Instead they seem to be fashioned from the stuff Alec Guiness discovered in 'The Man in the White Suit'.

Meanwhile, changing the subject I note Alcohol Concern are running a survey on advertising and young people. Is it just me, or are these questions skewed somewhat? E.g.,
Alcohol ads on TV should be:
Banned from television altogether?
Limited to after the watershed?(9pm when young children have gone to bed)
Shown at any time of day or night?
Almost every question asks about banning something, and it is part of a campaign to lobby the government to ban stuff, so it's hardly an objective piece of research. Not that I like to see 14-year-old girls lying catatonic in the streets, but neither do I like to see a man with a beard producing his passport at a supermarket check-out, simply to buy a bottle of wine; frankly ridiculous in my view. Thankfully when I was under-age it wasn't such a big deal. Apparently Turkey's just raised the legal age to 24!

4 comments:

Angry Exile said...

Most public bins in Melbourne have a slot on one edge away from the rubbish bit where you can stub out and dispose of your ciggie. In a handful of places I've actually seen free standing ashtrays that are bolted to the pavement and double as bollards. Some of these have water in to put the butts out. Not the only city doing this, it's just that Britain's cities haven't caught up yet. I also bought a pocket ashtray from a tobacconist in town. It could hold a few butts and would also extinguish them by crushing. I was always a bit paranoid about smoking in the countryside in case a bush fire was my fault, but it was just as handy to have handy anywhere really.

Trooper Thompson said...

Bush fires is less of an issue here!

Angry Exile said...

Not lately from what I've seen on the news, but generally no, it's not something you think of as happening much in Britain. Anyway, that was just one of my reasons for buying a pocket ashtray. Not being a litterprick and leaving the butts lying around was another. I'm sure you can find the things in the UK. In fact just typing that sentence prompted me to go look and the first Google result was for a page on keepbritaintidy.org with list of links for pocket ashtrays. Some clever designs too, especially the one which is a cylinder the same size as a cigarette which extinguishes and holds a few butts and can be kept in the fag packet where it's always handy. It's one of those things where you look and instantly wish you'd thought of it.

Trooper Thompson said...

Alright AE, I'll look into it. It will allow me uncompromising access to the moral highground.