Banned wagon
A weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit
One of the first acts of any autocracy is to ban newspapers. Though the present Prime Minister has often expressed his annoyance with the press, his govern- ment isn't likely to go that far. Never- theless, it is intent on making life rather difficult for newspaper and magazine publishers, quite possibly banning some titles from the shelves.
The device is an innocuous-sounding and little-known piece of legislation called the Newspaper and Magazine Recycling Bill, currently winging its way through Parliament, which would make publishers responsible for their product beyond the point of sale. By 2002, for example, The Spectator would have to ensure that 30 per cent of its readers each week dumped the magazine in a recycling bin. This target increases at regular intervals, so that by 1 January 2016, 65 per cent of readers would have to be recycling the magazine; failure to do so would result in the magazine being fined.
The question is, how does a newspa- per with a free-thinking readership force its readers to chuck it in the appropriate recycling bin? And what if its readers want to keep it rather than throw it away? A future government will be able to suppress revolutionary pamphlets on the grounds that they are not fulfilling their recycling targets — how proud Orwell or Huxley would have been of dreaming up that wheeze.
It might not be so bad if there were an undisputed environmental case for recycling paper but there isn't — the processes involved in recycling paper use large quantities of fossil fuels and cause a degree of pollution that may well outweigh any damage caused by manufacturing fresh newsprint from managed woodlands. Just don't expect to read too much in the papers about the negative aspects of recycling if the Bill becomes law.
Ross Clark
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