I can’t believe a government minister wasn’t aware of the detrimental effects of plastics in the environment…
… but then again… after all, he’s only the Environment Minister… it’s either a shocking level of wilful ignorance or an equally worrying degree of naivety… or could it simply be a feint to hide inertia and inaction and a ‘sweep under the carpet and turn a political blind-eye’ policy, i.e. the continued irresponsible and unchecked use, abuse and disposal of plastics in general… surely not!… this is something the technological gold rush hasn’t helped with its explosion of gadgets , computers, hand-held this and hand-held that all made predominantly of plastic…
… I half-expect, albeit begrudgingly, the small-minded to be blissfully ignorant and ill-educated in such matters (sad to say there are so many), but a politician whose brief and ultimate responsibility at the very highest levels of government is such things is disturbing……
… then again, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised as this particular government has become well-versed at acting conveniently dumbfounded that it’s become its own parody… having never left the public school playground as yet another here-today-gone-tomorrow, ill-equipped and poorly-qualified minster is shunted from back-bench to front-bench rarely staying long enough for us to even know their name before skulking away in a wake of yet more innumerate and illegitimate failed policies…. I imagine their weekly cabinet meetings to be a veritable Mad Hatters Tea Party… “I know, let’s make the teapot the Minister for the Environment!”….
… now I may be sounding a bit cynical here (oops, is it that obvious) but when politicians start banging on about things many of us have known for years, and I mean years, because he’s just come across it on a recent television documentary it can be frustrating….
… their public epiphanies are not just embarrassments but dangerous precedents……
… an Environment Minister who has singularly failed to notice or even read the plethora of newspapers articles (particularly ones of an environmental and scientific kind which you imagine would be fundamental), journals (particularly ones of an environmental and scientific kind) papers or books (particularly ones of an environmental and scientific kind) that have been around for decades on this very issue, plastic….
… it’s not all evil of course, plastic, just our increasing reliance upon it and its harrowing abundance in any supermarkets ‘sweaty vegetables section’…… charging for plastic bags in shops and proposing a ban on plastic straws though laudable is small fry and not unlike trying to kill midges with a fly-swatter… it may make convenient headlines but the words “drops” and “oceans” spring to mind, not least because it was a documentary about oceans that seemed to wake up our aforementioned Minister to the fact that yes, maybe we are pooing on our own doorstep here….
© 2018 robert greig
