When we bought a new television, we gave the old one away on Gumtree. It was pretty outdated technology and we wouldn’t have got much for it, so we put an ad up saying that the first person who comes to collect it can have it. It went within the hour. Likewise, with old phones and computers – Gumtree or eBay are our usual methods of disposal. There’s a whole sub-culture out there that is buying and using old stuff. The make and mend attitude lives on. And that’s a good thing.
Which is why it irritates me to be lectured by some pumped-up, egotistic clown of a politician lecturing and patronising us about just that.
Families should reconsider their buying habits and resist the temptation to spend more money on the latest electronic gadgets, clothes and food that they will not eat, according to Lord de Mauley, the environment minister.
Under his plans, consumers will be advised to sell their unwanted possessions on eBay and other auction websites instead of throwing re-usable items away.
The advice is aimed at helping families and businesses to save money while protecting the environment by reducing millions of tonnes of waste that is buried in landfill every year.
Fuck me! We already do this perfectly well. The very success of websites such as eBay and Gumtree is testament to this. I don’t need Lord de Mauley to tell me to do the bleedin’ obvious. I certainly don’t need nannying by Blue Labour. Indeed, I’d appreciate it if politicians would just shut up and let us live our lives without their constant interference guidance.
Lord de Mauley, the waste minister at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, insisted that families would save money by re-using old clothes and repairing faulty equipment.
“Reducing waste is everyone’s responsibility,” the hereditary peer said as he published the draft scheme for consultation.
I’ve got a brilliant idea for cutting waste. Axe the department for environment, food and rural affairs and let us have that money back.
Under the proposals, businesses and families will be told to take care not to waste food, paper, plastics, and electronic and electrical equipment.
No, no, no, you’ve got it all wrong. These people are our servants, our employees. We are supposed to be telling them what to do, not the other way around. And I will decide for myself what I get repaired and what I will throw away – irrespective of EU diktats and nannying from the replacement Labour Party that are the new Tories. I will make my own judgements based upon cost effectiveness, not what you bloody well tell me.
The consultation document states that consumers should “consider their own buying habits to identify where they could make savings”, for example, through wasting less food.
Words are close to failing me. Really, if anyone out there needs a politician to tell them how to do this, I suggest they ring up Whitehall and ask if they can send a bottom wiper round as soon as possible. They are clearly in dire need of one.
The last word goes to Douglas Carswell:
Since when do we need government to tell us what to do with broken toasters?
Since your party was body-snatched by New Labour, mate.
The most farcical thing about this utter shite of course it that charity shops no longer accept electrical goods because of health and safety fears…
So perfectly usable items are dumped rather than donated to charity shops and sold for a few quid…
Although to be fair, most ‘charities’ can fuck right off anyway… 😉
The Sofa Project won’t accept furniture unless it has a specific fire safety label on it. So that’s perfectly good furniture we had to throw away because no one would take it. So, yeah, much of this is created by state interference in the first place.
One word… Freecycle.
The sofa I’m sitting on came from there, the old piano we didn’t want went to there. Just folks who want stuff or want to get rid of stuff, swapping it amongst themselves for free.
I agree with recycling I agree with reusing we do our best to reuse everything we can.
I draw the line at ebay because they are a bunch of *&^%$*”.
When our washing machine went PHUT we looked at getting it repaired it was second hand when we got it and the repair bill would have been astronomical so we bought a new one and the old one was removed free of charge and recycled by the company we purchased from, same for our fridge freezer which although it functions after a fashion is really beyond hope and actually belongs to our landlord as we need to move we are waiting to replace it till we move.
However it seems to me that the War attitude of make and mend is not as prevalent as it could be,but there does seem to be a resurgence of this, we have a fantastic second hand clothes shop near us, there are things there my mother wore 50 years ago, and my Granny too, the place is always packed with youngsters picking up bargains and we shop there ourselves, our children love it there too, there is something very satisfying about rootling around rails of old clothes and coming up trumps with something of great quality for a snip.
I do think that Lord de Mauley is following a nasty government trend of “everyone is too stupid so TELL them what to do” my argument is still if successive governments had NOT dumbed down society for their own ends, this sort of ministerial nonsense would not been necessary. I am a 48 year old mother of 3 children , my parents were war babies and my Grandparents Victorians, I don’t need lessons on make and mend and child rearing from a bunch of Hoorays who never missed a meal or went without in their lives, I find it insulting, patronising and shear rudeness for them to assume we are all so dumb.
“…a nasty government trend of “everyone is too stupid so TELL them what to do”…”
Well, ‘everyone’ elected Blair several times in a row, and then allowed Cameron to become PM.
So, I put it to you that COLLECTIVELY we are more than stupid – we’re utterly moronic…
Well, not everyone. About thirty to forty percent of those who voted.
You may have voted for them I DID NOT.
They are politicians, it’s what they do. Hang the lot of them.
And yet aren’t we being told also that people need to go out and spend more in order to get the economy going! I make no comment on whether this is indeed the key to get the economy going, but clearly both courses of action can’t be right.