Those in the UK know and dislike (for the most part, I bet) the move by the councils to reduce the frequency of waste collection from weekly to fortnightly.

(With the stunning decreases in services, they still increase council tax. Go figure.)

A government report says there are no hygiene concerns as long as food is wrapped properly.

And there’s the conspiracy! It’s packaging manufacturers who have masterminded this dastardly plan! They want us to invest in all this packaging to keep the flies off our garbage as we wait for the garbage collectors to ignore our bins every fortnight because “they’re too full” (that’s a novel excuse).

Seriously, though. The amount of packaging we find today is abso-fucking-lutely ridiculous. This morning I opened a packet of Quaker Snack Jacks, minding the warning to make sure I close it up properly, so I expected to open the bag and find naked, cold, and shivering rice cakes. Instead I found another plastic bag that I had to open. So my rice cakes were insulated.

If it were at all possible, people should vote with their wallet (my mother’s favourite phrase). Stop going to the supermarket, where their products consist of ridiculous amounts of packaging, visit your closest farmer’s market for fresh food and compost the leftovers. Try to avoid plastic bags when shopping, use a backpack or whatever fabric shopping bags instead. Use your recycling bin for… recycling! The garbage bins can be used for other rubbish.

(To be a hypocrite, I use a lot of those small plastic freezer bags when I bring my mountains of food to work. I think I need a lunch box with lots of compartments, because pitted prunes and cheesy Snack Jacks wouldn’t taste good being rubbed together. Maybe I should make some washable, closeable waterproof bags for this purpose. Or just use a number of Tupperware boxes. I have loads of options.)

Digital Doodle is themed Flash-based doodling. Hehe. You should be able to figure out which was my submission to this week’s Jungle theme without looking at the names. Whee! Via Drawn!.

This’ll get Mark and Kristen’s attention.

It turns out that the actual cost of a Prius is much more than a Hummer (and has a shorter expected lifespan, too).

Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

The smelter built a ‘Superstack’ to try and disperse the toxic gases that caused the damage, but “much of the environmental damage to the Sudbury area is permanent, particularly to exposed rocky outcrops, which have been dyed jet black by acid rain in a layer which penetrates up to 3 inches into the once pink-gray granite.”

Once smelted, the nickel is sent to Wales, then China, then Japan, before the Prius battery emerges. The carmakers (Toyota, and now Honda) would have us believe that these hybrids are miles (haha) more fuel-efficient than normal cars, and so we should pay more money for them.

But some experts doubt whether the Prius even wins the argument over fuel consumption.

Robert Fowler, of the Battery Vehicle Association, said: “It is questionable whether it does any more miles to the gallon than a good diesel.

“The hybrid system has a very small battery so most of the time it’s operating as a petrol car, particularly out of town and above 30mph.”

The Prius appears to do the same mpg as my wee Pug. If and when we get a small diesel (second hand), it’s gonna be even better.

All the streetsweeping machines in the world couldn’t keep up with the amount of rubbish I’ve seen being tossed out of car and lorry windows on the motorway.

Yesterday I witnessed part of a sandwich meet its doom. My favourite so far has been the cigarette butt, immediately followed by an Extra gum wrapper. The mint freshness ain’t gonna disguise your smoking habit, honey.

If there was a way to convert garbage on the motorway into tarmac-like surfacing just by rolling over it, the roads would be bloody perfect.

Every day I read or hear something that just floors me, and I had clung to the hope it was only China’s shenanigans that could do that. Today it’s news that MSPs plan to scrap ‘automatic early release’:

Prisoners currently serving under four years are automatically freed half-way through their sentences.

Under the plans, convicted criminals would be required to serve at least half their sentence behind bars but this may be increased to three quarters.

Erm, shouldn’t early release be the EXCEPTION, not the norm? WTF is going on here?

The Scottish Executive’s plans to overhaul sentencing are expected to be passed despite Conservative objections.

Well, then, they see some sense. But wait:

The Conservatives, who originally introduced early release, said the executive’s reforms were not tough enough.

So they were for it before they were against it.

IMHO, if you’ve been convicted of a crime and are sentenced to four years, you do four years. Maybe it’s partly custodial and partly community-based, depending on what the crime was, but you do your time. Where’s the logic in sentencing someone and then immediately eliminating half of their punishment? How did it become law in the first place?!

… an acceptable office motivational technique involves liberal use of the phrase, “I’ll cut you.”

Possible US slowdown sparks international stock market fall.

This latest round of selling has been sparked by concerns over the US sub-prime mortgage market.

Sub-prime lenders, who target consumers with poor credit histories, have been hit by an increase in defaults and bad loans.

And no one could see that coming? Why am I not a highly-paid financial adviser that points out the bleeding obvious? Why, God, why?

Scotland’s overcrowding problems aren’t as bad as London’s, but the news of tacking on more carriages to existing trains is, frankly, underwhelming. I think people would be happier with more frequent services using these new carriages. We were discussing at breakfast how the less-clever proposal to add more carriages and renovating (and lengthening) platforms rather than adding services could be (given that I don’t know much about train scheduling and safety) due to a politician being lobbied by someone who’s got a bung from some construction company.

This would be a defamation alert, if I actually had any names to name.

How to use GIMP to make 3D effects. I’m probably too ham-fisted to do it precisely, but I’m totally into this. If I ever have the need to make something all 3D-ish.