Order of the Bath

We have been in France for the last week and one thing we really enjoy is the wine. There was something new this year, there were little stickers or printed images on all the bottles. We all know how good wine is, but the French seem to think that it is a contraceptive as well 😀

Why is it that some people have started using “none” when they mean “non” as a negative prefix to words? I think I first noticed it in some Word documents or email. MS-Word certainly doesn’t object to “none-” probably because the spell checker regards it as a separate word but it may arise if you leave a space because “non” by itself is not an English word. Do a Google search for “none-combatant” to see what I mean. This morning I even heard someone pronounce it NONE on the radio and he otherwise spoke perfectly good English.

The argument against supermarket carrier bags is not as cut and dried as may appear from the news reports nor is banning them the saviour of the planet. Here are some of arguments to help balance the discussion. It is just a data stream not a structured argument, mostly because I haven’t come to any firm conclusion.

Between 8bn and 17.5bn single use plastic bags are used in the UK every year. Every source has a different figure.

It costs supermarkets around half a penny to produce 1 typical plastic bag.
millionbags4life.com

As that is a net cost of between £40m and £88m, there is clearly a powerful financial incentive to reduce them.

Most are discarded after one use [a newspaper, I forget which]—but what does discarded mean…

80% of UK consumers currently re-use their plastic bags at least once for a variety of purposes – such as bin liners, nappy sacks or lunch bags.
millionbags4life.com

80% of plastic carrier bags are re-used by UK households.
INCPEN (Industry Council for Packaging & the Environment)

These statements are not the same and I question which one is right. The British Retail Consortium quotes both in different places.

The INCPEN flyer is a PDF. Curiously I found it on an anti-plastic-bag site!

Plastic bags account for approximately:

• 1% of visible litter in the UK
• 2% of total litter on UK beaches
• 0.3% of the domestic waste stream
• 3.5–5.3% of total plastic packaging used in the UK

millionbags4life.com

so reducing them will not have a dramatic impact, though they are perhaps more visible than other forms of waste.

Plastic carrier bags make up a tiny proportion of litter or waste—less than 0.1% of litter and only 0.3% of the household waste that goes into landfill.
INCPEN

Elsewhere it says less than 0.06% of litter. Again this apparently contradicts the quote above. Most litter on the town streets is snack food packaging, bottles, cans, cigarette ends and newspaper. In country areas, fertiliser bags and fly-tipping are still a problem.

Energy recovered from incinerating a single plastic carrier bag will power a 60w light bulb for one hour.
INCPEN

0.06kWh. Is that believable? It also assumes that there are sufficient and efficient “energy from waste” facilities, but apparently 30m tonnes/year of plastic waste is used across Europe in this way.

All plastic packaging uses 3% (or 2% British Plastics Federation) of the world’s oil supply. I am not sure that is a positive or negative statistic, both sides cite it.

The Irish Carrier Bag Tax increased the sales of refuse bags, bin-liners and nappy bags. They also report that the alternative “bags for life” and paper bags are heavier and hence require more transport costs.

Whether this is a one off cost as people stock up or is ongoing is not known.

Plastic is by far the lightest of all carrier bag materials—so it takes much less fuel to transport, producing fewer emissions. A paper bag weighs roughly six times more than plastic, is about four times more expensive and takes up to ten times more storage space. British Retail Consortium

In Ireland, the plastic bag tax has encouraged theft from the shelves as shoppers bring their own bags into the store or take goods away without bags British retail Consortium

A financial incentive to keep them then, and do remember to pick up your receipt before leaving.

Supermarket carriers are very efficient—they will substitute for many other carriers at a lower net and gross cost—e.g. bin liners. Today’s plastic bags use 70 per cent less plastic than 20 years ago but are as strong and durable. A plastic bag weighs about seven grams, yet can carry up to 20kgs—more than 2,500 times its own weight. British Retail Consortium

The landfill argument is complex—on the one hand there is the quoted problem that plastic bags take 100 years (1000 years BBC quoting M&S) to degrade but there is also a move to stop putting in bio-degradable stuff such as vegetable waste and paper packaging because it DOES degrade and generates methane.

To maximise the benefit of the new bioplastics we’ll have to modify the way we throw away our garbage—to simply substitute new plastics for old won’t be saving space in our landfills. www.science.org.au

Landfill space is mostly taken up with building industry waste not plastic bags.

All Tesco free carrier bags are now degradable. These break down in just 18 months without leaving anything that could harm the environment.
Tesco

They need to check the language that they use carefully.

Biodegradable means something that is made from organic material that completely breaks down into organic matter leaving nothing behind. Degradable carrier bags are something different; they are made from fossil fuel derivatives, but contain chemical additives to help them decompose more quickly. These degradable carrier bags do not break down completely and tend to leave a powdery residue, which usually requires light, heat and oxygen to decompose.
Sainsburys

Apparently one of the additives uses cobalt. There was a brief period when PVC bags were used (the ones that rustle loudly) but I think these are not environmentally friendly even though they degrade in UV light (like your gutters and windows).

Reuse is a better objective than recycle.

Single use carrier bags are one of the most potent symbols of our throw away society. Encouraging customers to make a small change in their shopping habits here may lead them to extend their thinking to other areas, making it easier to find solutions to the wider packaging and food waste issues that WRAP is working on with Tesco and other leading grocery retailers.
Tesco & wrap.org.uk

this is a powerful argument—it is not the act that is important, but the principle and the precedent.

I don’t know if Geordie is the same but in Bristle we have a useful dialect word:—

• Tempree—liable to hang around a lot longer than you expected. Example: the Temple Meads tempree flyover, a ramshackle girder structure built during the post-war regeneration that was still in regular use into the early ’80s. Opposite of Permnunt.

So when Alistair Darling says that Northern Rock will go into a “temporary period of public ownership,” we know exactly what he means. Remember that Rolls-Royce was “emergency nationalised” for 16 years.

I know I am straying on to dangerous ground here as there are many that know much more about this subject than I do, but I have been asked what they are and could find no good cross-denominational reference.

A sacrament (literal meaning “a sacred thing or mystery”) is the symbolic act or ritual that the church uses to outwardly express and practice the faith. There are seven that are commonly practised by Catholic and Orthodox traditions and most Protestant churches (except perhaps the Salvation Army and the Society of Friends) accept the first two even if they don’t use the word. I am not entirely sure why, in the case of the Church of England, some are accepted and others not even though we adopt most of the practices, but I suspect that it is more than mere terminology.

Baptism (or Christening)

This is the rite of initiation into the church as originally practised by John the Baptist using water (John 3:22–24). In the Anglican (Church of England), Catholic, Orthodox and some other churches this can be as an infant where the vows are made on their behalf or they can be made in person if the candidate is old enough. In some protestant denominations this is called the “Believer’s Baptism” and is only available to those who can declare for themselves.

Eucharist (Holy Communion, Mass or The Lord’s Supper)

This is the regular ceremony where Christians re-enact the “Last Supper” as commanded in the Gospels (e.g. Luke 22:14–20). At the Eucharist the consecrated bread and wine are sometimes referred to as the “Blessed Sacraments”, particularly if some is kept for later use (known as the “Reserved Sacrament”).

Confirmation

An infant who has been baptised later confirms their faith for themselves in this public act before their Bishop. In different traditions this can take place either before or after they receive their first communion. Although practised by the Church of England, it is not regarded as a Sacrament.

Matrimony (Marriage)

Although Protestant churches practice marriage in Church, it is not seen as a Sacrament yet it doesn’t lessen their view of marriage as having been given and blessed by God.

Ordination

A person who wishes (with a “Vocation” or “Calling”) to formalise their ministry in the church, both pastorally and in preaching, may go to their Bishop who, after suitable training, may ordain them, first as “Deacon” (servant to the church) and (perhaps) later as “Priest.” In many denominations, only the latter can preside at a celebration of the Communion. Particularly worthy priests may later be “Consecrated” as Bishops, though this is not a sacrament.

Penance (Confession or Reconciliation)

Unlike the other sacraments, this is very much a personal affair between the penitent and God, often with the assistance of a confessor or priest. Practice varies from a routine attendance at a confessional some time before Mass to an occasional and prayerful confession and renewal or baptismal vows in time of need.

Extreme Unction (Anointing the Sick or Last Rites)

Adopted from the passage James 5:14-15 “Any one of you who is ill should send for the elders of the church…” the Sacrament offers the grace of the Holy Spirit to overcome anxiety at times of weakness. Sometimes a similar anointing is available to all-comers at festivals, particularly (with ashes) at the start of Lent and (with oil) on Easter Eve.

A Catholic view of the sacraments can be found here and here

This schools page demonstrates all that is wrong with religious education.

I have only this to say to those who are criticising Dr. Rowan Williams for apparently advocating that Sharia Law be adopted in the UK; Read the lecture and the interview transcript. If you can’t be bothered to do either, and the former at least is not easy as it was intended for an audience of academic and legal minds, then for goodness sake, read a commentary written by someone who has.

Some extracts from the lecture…

…there are large questions in the background about what we understand by and expect from the law, questions that are more sharply focused than ever in a largely secular social environment. I shall therefore be concentrating on certain issues around Islamic law to begin with, in order to open up some of these wider matters.

This lecture will not attempt a detailed discussion of the nature of sharia, which would be far beyond my competence; my aim is only, as I have said, to tease out some of the broader issues around the rights of religious groups within a secular state, with a few thought[s] about what might be entailed in crafting a just and constructive relationship between Islamic law and the statutory law of the United Kingdom.

Disclaimer: I know nothing about football, or any other sport for that matter.

Judging only from snippets of news reports overheard, I understand that the manager of a football team (probably better described as head coach) is very important to the success of the team. This is to the extent that if a team performs badly, it is the manager that gets the boot on the grounds that he didn’t pick a good enough team to do the job or train them well enough.

If that is the case, why is it that the same nationality rules don’t apply to the manager and the rest of the coaching staff as they do for the players themselves?

I’m a bit behind on this news but it shows how good Virgin are at keeping their customers informed about what is going on. They have now come clean about how they manage traffic for their heaviest users. I have checked the Acceptable Usage Policy and Terms of Service again and nothing has changed there so I still don’t think it is justified, but at least we now know what is being done. It seems that on the (L) package I am allowed a maximum of 800MB down or 325MB up between 4pm and 9pm. But some things do get better:—I see that I am now only paying £16 for the service which was £25 and it has just been announced that they are to uprate it to 10Mbps (and 512Kbps up) some time soon.

I don’t think that I am likely to hit the limits but I now wonder how I can monitor my usage—somehow I need to watch traffic through my router as there are multiple machines using it. The 800MB limit amounts to only an average of about 350Kbps over the 5 hours. It would be quite easy to exceed that with a torrent running and even easier to exceed the upload margin.

Update: Virgin media is a strange organisation. When I checked my account I found that I was still being charged £25. The Customer Care desk didn’t know anything about the £16 price so they forwarded me to customer relations. They checked the web site, consulted the supervisor and said—”That’s fine, we will apply it to your account straight away.” Not just the £16 per month but the £11.50 for the first year special offer, and a rebate on the month just paid in advance as well. I suppose that because they are over charging the many people that don’t know about it they can afford to be generous! The only small catch is that a 12 month contract starts again but at that price I am not at all bothered.