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Economics Lesson

Business, Eco-Crap

As the “climate change” foolishness grows apace, we find bullshit like this increasing at a similar rate:

Shoppers have been left furious as Sainsbury’s has doubled the cost of its plastic bags to 20p in a move dubbed ‘day light robbery’ and ‘profiting from forgetfulness’.
The supermarket’s bosses have said it is part of a strategy to reduce the stores plastic footprint by ‘encouraging customers to develop a re-use mindset’.
There is an incentive to cut plastic use by more than 50 per cent in five years, with the profits going to good causes, Sainsbury’s claimed.

Of course they will.  Actually, what this is really all about is Sainsbury’s doing a little “virtue signaling” (as I believe it’s called nowadays).

It’s been a while since I looked at the numbers, but I believe that plastic supermaket bags carry a F.O.B. price of something less than a penny per bag, so that’s quite a profit margin to pass on to the so-called “good causes”.

I think I use canvas bags about 50% of the time, mostly because I either forget to pack them in the car before going shopping, or I do some impulse (i.e. unplanned) shopping on the way home.  When I remember, I keep the canvas bags in the car, but it’s not a big deal in my life, because I reuse all supermarket plastic bags at least once, as bathroom trash bags or similar.

Here’s a word of warning about canvas (or any reusable) bags:  you have to wash them frequently (errr involving electricity, hot water and detergents, oh dear) as over time they will become portable petri dishes of bacteria, especially if you carry raw meat or fish home in them.

When I travel in Britishland and Euroland, I carry a little polyester bag (folded, it’s about the same size as a handkerchief) in my coat pocket just so that I don’t get caught without one and have to pay for the bags — and in some Euro stores, they don’t offer any bags at all.

If this pisses you off (and it does me), then your revenge should be to pack your groceries away yourself before paying.  It slows down the transaction, and cashiers are measured on a simple “time/#items scanned” efficiency metric.  Take your time, for added pleasure.

Quote Of The Day

Legal Stuff, QOTD

Via Insty:

Kelo  comes to mind, and a couple others also dealing with property seizures.  The big one, which if re-litigated now would result in its overturning, would be ObamaCare because the “tax” enforcement has now been annulled.  Not even Roberts could save it.

Educating Immigrants

Education, Immigration

From Gates Of Vienna comes a “tl;mr” (too long / must read”) post by a teacher at the sharp end — probably literally so — of the effort to get newly-arrived immigrant children to integrate into the host society.  As you can well imagine, it’s going to fail dismally:

I know I will be called a “damned whore”, “damned pussy”, and I know I will hear, “You don’t decide for me.” There will be mess and noise in the classroom, the hallways, the schoolyard and the dining room. Changing rooms where classes change for physical education classes will, as usual, be places where girls don’t dare change since boys will show up and sneakily photograph the girls.
Showering is not on the world map for girls and even for some boys in school. It is enough that one or two pupils refuse to follow the instruction and scream “shut up” at me every time I am going to say something; thus is the lesson destroyed for 28 other pupils who want to learn something.When I call parents in for a conversation, I hear that I don’t have the right to tell their children off, that I should be careful so that I won’t be reported to the principal or school inspectors. They know where my family and I live, what car I drive, and I know that the risk is great that my car will get scratched or destroyed in some other way. I know that certain pupils threaten other pupils, but I don’t dare get in the middle because I risk being beaten.

Read it, and don’t weep;  get angry.  Because this (and the mindset which enables it) either has come, or will soon be coming to a school near you.

Hidden Agenda

Gummint, Legal Stuff

Talking about legislatures passing laws which seem to be quite insane, not to mention un-Constitutional and unenforceable, Joe Bob Briggs nails the mindset perfectly:

“We don’t like things as they are, and so we’ll make it really, really expensive for certain people to enforce their rights. We’ll make them fight every day for what should be rightly theirs for free. We’ll take away their birthright. We’ll screw with their businesses and screw with their wombs and screw with their assumptions about what the courts have guaranteed them, and some of them will give up, and some of them will make mistakes, and we’ll just make sure they have many bad days, and eventually they’ll get tired of fighting with us and we’ll get a team of brutal lawyers to take them down and put them in their place.”

And then having said that, Joe Bob concludes with the killer line:

Well, okay, I guess it worked with the Indians.

To us normal people, this is known as the “beating a dog till it snaps at you, then killing it because it’s dangerous”-style of government.

The only problem with this approach is that we’re not Indians.  And we have some serious fucking teeth.

Busted

Food & Drink

Seems as though most wine critics and tasters are  bunch of posers who couldn’t tell a Beaujolais from a Bass Ale.

In other news, Queen Marie Antoinette was guillotined yesterday.

As an aside, I once did a couple of wine courses over a period of two weeks at the Bellingham and Meerlust estates.  During that adventure, I learned that a.) there are some people who can in fact tell the grape varietals from a sip of wine, and b.) there are only about a couple dozen such people, tops, in the entire world.  Blindfolded, most people can’t tell red from white from beer (seriously, I’ve seen a few of those challenges).

Here’s a tip when dining out and the sommelier  asks you to “taste” the wine:  don’t do it.  Pick up the sample glass, swirl it a couple of times and then sniff it cautiously.  If it’s not rancid — and you’ll know that  when you smell it — just nod and say,”That’ll do.”  If he says, “Don’t you want to taste it?” reply “I don’t need to.”  Then sit back and carry on with your conversation, ignoring him.

For extra points:  if it’s a dark red like a cabernet or burgundy, wince slightly, then tell the sommelier  to let it breathe for ten or so minutes before he serves it to the table.  (That’s a cheat, by the way;  all  reds need to breathe a little after uncorking.)

The wine world is full of phonies who like to show off.  The way to make people think you know what you’re talking about is to say less, not more.  What you do  (see above) is more impressive than what you say.