Blair gets it wrong again

I see Tony Blair's contribution to the recycling debate is to undermine attempts to introduce fortnightly collections of refuse and suggest vaguely that there must be better ways of boosting recycling figures.

What are those ways, Mr Blair? If you don't have any constructive contribution to make, please do us a favour and keep your mouth shut. We're hoping you'll be gone within the month, when your opinions will hopefully cease to matter and your damaging effect on this country and the world at large will no longer be in our faces.

Fortnightly collections worked in Wiltshire - they helped drive down the amount of rubbish we were putting out, and yes I will be smug that fortnightly collections won't affect us here, because we produce a bag of rubbish a week. Our recycling rates have fallen too - because we re-use more and reduce the crap we bring into the house in the first place.

It's all about reducing and reusing before you come to recycling, but that's at odds with our capitalist "consume, consume, consume" lifestyle. People have had years to modify their behaviour and think about boosting their own recycling efforts - if you're not willing to modify your behaviour voluntarily (a bit like the car industry), then stop complaining when your local council is forced to take matters into its own hands and start rationing the number of refuse collections.