I apologise, but there is no escape, so let’s kick off with the Corona Virus again this week, as people around the world hit the news, not by falling ill, but by being complete idiots. Fights have been breaking out everywhere as people stockpile everything from flu medicines and hand gel, to toilet paper. According to the Guardian, Ocado, the online supermarket, has started rationing toilet rolls, with customers being allowed to buy a maximum of two 12-roll packs.
It all began when this video went “viral”:-
Instead of pitying the fools, it appears that people around the world (including the UK and Germany) were inspired to rush out to do a bit of their own stockpiling. I have to say, this was not our finest hour. However, according to the Metro, one clever arcade owner in Bridlington in the UK had some fun with the situation. They replaced the fluffy toys in their 30p-a-go grabber machine, with – you guessed it – loo rolls.
The Daily Mail reports that Scottish star Lewis Capaldi is going to provide safe spaces for fans at his concerts, where they can go if they become anxious, and will offer an email helpline and “gig-buddies”, along with trained medical and mental health professionals. Seemingly he suffered a panic attack at one of his own concerts.
What goes on at his concerts I wonder. Of course, it is a moot point now, as all concerts have been cancelled.
Talking of anxiety, the Daily Star featured a not so little piggy called Barry, who has developed a fear of mud and water. Seemingly Barry regularly gets trapped in flooded fields because he is too frightened to walk through the muddy puddles surrounding him. Oink Oink, grunt, grunt.
Barry the porker was raised in the backyard of an urban home and developed a fear of mud and water, and believe me, being afraid of mud and water when you live in the UK is not a good idea.
According to the Daily Mail, takeaway delivery companies distribute an estimated one billion bits of plastic every year. The online meal industry, is worth an average of £8 billion annually in the UK, providing more than 200 million takeaways. The problem is, a typical delivery includes around six pieces of plastic, lids / trays / cutlery / bags / sachets etc.
A study carried out by The Sunday Times found that 15 meals ordered from three leading delivery companies – Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats – for between £20 and £30 contained more than 100 plastic items, even after offers of plastic cutlery had been declined.
Sian Sutherland, co-founder of A Plastic Planet said: ‘The plastic sachet is everywhere and yet is invisible to us. Every year we make almost a trillion of these uncollectable, unrecyclable, contaminated, valueless little packets, enough to completely wrap our planet from pole to pole.
Sources:
- The Guardian
- The Metro
- Daily Star
- The Time
- The Daily Mail