Insubstantial and very quickly ineffective, Alistair Darling reminds me of the disposable plastic bags he's seeking to eliminate. "We will introduce legislation to impose a charge on them if we have not seen sufficient progress on a voluntary basis," he warned, staring earnestly at the dispatch box, like Sage, the owl from The Herbs. Let me tell you something, Alistair. The supermarkets will have no problems taking money from shoppers if they're told to. Same as they'll have no problem eliminating below-cost selling on booze. Any licence you give the supermarkets to make money, without the pressure of intense competition from rivals, and they'll bite your hand off. To be fair to the Chancellor, I think raising money for charity by charging for plastic bags is a good thing. I hate plastic bags. I've got about 150 bags for life in the back of my car to prove it. Maybe the Chancellor can provide us all with personal organisers and text us as we leave the house, or get out of the car. (If civil servants get free iPods, why not?) In the meantime, I expect the supermarkets to put up more signs, in store, and in the car park. What annoys me, however, is the idea that charging for plastic bags will save the planet. Darling is not the only politician guilty of extrapolating inflated outcomes from tokenist measures, but what's he going to do about the global epidemic of plastic bags, or global warming itself? The idea that this speck of an island can save the planet in the context of China's growing power needs, and the world's population expansion, is as ludicrous as suggesting that eradicating plastic bags is the answer to tackling the waste mountain that grocery shopping throws up.