A MATE who attended boarding school once told me weekly canings were the norm. If, by some miracle, you had escaped a whacking, then it was assumed you had got away with something and given six strokes to teach you a lesson.
I went to a grammar school and spent five years on the run.
Occasionally I was caught and hit, thumped, knuckled or pinged on the head with a long-handled chemistry spatula. I was caned often enough to still clench my buttocks instinctively whenever going past the old school.
But I was never punished for something unknown but which I was deemed to have done simply because I had not been caught doing it.
A pity really, it might have prepared me better for the living under an increasingly public school discipline minded regime.
I might now be able to accept my punishment without moaning. But here I go again.
Soon they will be able to fine you for not recycling enough.
And don’t they just love it? Don’t politicians rejoice in having powers to make people do as they are told? That’s what these new rules are all about, nothing whatsoever to do with saving the planet.
Look, only 10% of waste is domestic; 90% is created by industry and business.
Meanwhile, councils will not collect waste from shops for recycling. My wife offered to separate cans, glass and plastic bottles and cardboard at her sandwich shop for them to collect. They weren’t interested.
That was a year ago, so it’s fair to conclude they are not bothered either.
When the binmen call at my local you can hear the empties crash in to their lorry like an explosion at Pilkington’s. No recycling there. Yeah, but who cares?
Of course we should recycle. But why, when it hardly makes a ha’porth of difference are they so trouser-wettingly keen to make us behave ourselves?
They invest thousands in the technology to weigh your rubbish to try to catch you out, having sent the men in black coats and sunglasses to fit computer spy chips to your wheelie.
You can see them flexing the cane now.
“What’s this Buckley, a cardboard box man? Bend over!�
Over the past year my wife has had to become a secret green, sometimes taking her illicit tins, bottles and boxes from her shop to the local tip, or hiding the stuff amongst our own at home.
Ludicrous, isn’t it? If they found out what she was recycling she’d be give a damn good thrashing.
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