Hospital charges

I agree @Fat Controller
The government tax us as it's easier for them. If they taxed the manufacturers/suppliers instead it may make them become more efficient and use less plastics etc. As I'm always cynical about these things I thing all they would do is add it to the price of the product and we'll be paying anyway.

 

No, don't tax - ban. If you tax the manufacturer, all they will do is factor that into the unit price and you and I pay again (whilst also paying more profit thanks to the increased profits thanks to the laws of percentages).

If there is such a desperate need for all this environmental stuff, then they should DO something tangible rather than just making money off it.

 

Banning is a good idea but then they'll say they need a lot of time to develop new packaging (why we need packaging, I don't know, but the attached article may give some idea) and there are approximately a quarter of a million people working in the plastics industry and related industries. What percentage of those are in the packaging side I haven't the faintest idea.

This article gives a different point of view and it is probably biased in the other direction.

Packaging industry hits back at ‘plastic-free aisle’ campaign

 

I think you are quite lucky then @pete - try telling the ex-residents of Grenfell, or the many tower blocks around the country that their properties are well maintained and up to scratch.

I am not saying that ALL housing association or private landlord properties are poor, but a lot of them are - and the same applies to private renting to be fair. We looked at no end of dives before finding this place. We are really lucky with our current landlord, in as much as we get left alone and have quite a free hand with the place; if we need anything, it will be done rapidly and correctly. On the other hand, our landlord is lucky in as much as we maintain the place well, and fix just about everything except major problems.

 

I haven't read the article yet (I will shortly) but what I would say off the bat is that the environmental argument has been being raised for years and years - - if respective governments had put a ban in place, or at least started the ball rolling toward something like that, we would be there now. Instead, they chose to tax it - - all that does is put the additional cost on the average person in the street, and the manufacturer can carry on with impunity.

 

People forget, that plastic does so many things - our hospitals would cease to function the way they do without it, for sure.

The best of it is, the same people that whinge about plastics are the very ones that will get on a plane or a big boat and go on holiday, and not bat an eyelid - - - yet the by-product of the fuel that is powering their holiday is used to make plastic.

I remain wholly unconvinced that plastic is the problem - the problem is our government and councils failure to handle waste effectively.

 

I was - I did say somewhere that it applied to most but not all.

The thing is, for many landlords they have no choice who they let the house out to -- in many cases, a greedy wee estate agent will be taking a cut for finding a tenant and 'managing' the property. They sell this to landlords as allowing them to let and forget, and they will take care of all the maintenance etc. Only, when the letting agent has let the property to a bad tenant and then that tenant leaves, it is the landlord who has to foot the bill to sort it out.

 

Apart from using the bags repeatedly I tend to take the empty cardboard boxes from the supermarket to pack my shopping in. They then get stacked at home and used on Open Day for people to take the plants they have bought.

 

After my father died and my mother went into a home (it was her decision) I interviewed six letting agents. The one we ended up with had to do it on my terms. They gave me their standard Agent/Landlord agreement to look at. It was 62 pages of them saying they'll find a tenant, vet them and charge me for their services with no responsibility on their part and then charge a monthly fee for collecting the rent and another fee for doing maintenance.

I reduced the agreement to five pages . I didn't want them doing the maintenance but they had to contact me the moment the tenants, or themselves, spotted a problem. for their fee they had to do the in and out inventory as well. I added in to the agreement that they were responsible if it turned out that their vetting failed to show a problem (a number of possibilities were included).

What I also removed from the agreement were the five clauses saying that if we wanted to sell the house then we had to have them as our agents!!!

They did the job for nearly eight years and did it extremely well. They checked on any complaints (not many), told the tenants who was responsible (the tenants or me) and checked the place every three months. The only slight problem I had with them was that they tried to invoke their sales rule when I was selling the place after mum died.

Good tenants and good agents and a superb landlord.

 

I think KFF has a point. While GC Threads are renown for going off thread it would be nice to either put this thread back on track or, if enough has been said on the original subject, don't contribute to the thread with any off topic posts.