Plastic bag charge tackles real pollution issue

WHAT is it about your columnist Father McNicholas? It seems that anything which he perceives as a directive from government, albeit that it might serve a need to address a problem, is dealt with by him with sneering mockery. The latest is his rant about the “priority”, as he sees it, given in The Queen’s Speech to the imposition of the charge of 5p for a plastic bag in supermarkets (The Yorkshire Post, June 7).

If you were not completely biased, you might accede that plastic bags have become a big modern day pollution problem.

You might think that a 5p charge might serve as a start to encourage people to think of alternative ways of carrying their shopping, even though, shock horror, we may occasionally forget. The mockery of concerns by “environmental lobbyists” (a phrase spat out with disdain) ignores all the reports and statistics about the effect of plastic bags on animals on land and sea.

From: Ann Petherick, Scarcroft Hill, York

I WISH Father Neil McNicholas had greater things to 
worry about than plastic 
bags.

Is it really so difficult to remember to take a bag 
with you when you go 
shopping?