Imperial Wastage
Sammy Wilson didn't bring his newspaper back into the Assembly today, but he did bring a 1 foot 8 inches pile of written material he had received during the fortnight previous to the Christmas recess. He reckons that if you mutiplied this by a month and constructed a bookshelf which could take all the documents sent to all 108 MLAs, it would stretch from one side of Stormont to the other (around 365 feet).
Sammy thinks the Assembly could cut the amount of paper it gets through given that all the material can be accessed on the computer. The Deputy Speaker John Dallat took this on board but warned the East Antrim MP both about using visual aids and his use of imperial measurements. "We've gone metric" intoned the Deputy Speaker before taking another tome off his 111.252 metre bookshelf.
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Maths is obviously not Sammys strong point as you will find Stormont is 365 yrds wide not feet!
Its great to see Sammy wilson speaking out about these sort of issues for a change.
But on Stormont Live today we heard Sammy make the joke something along the lines of "its dangerous to call a DUP member Green!" Most likely this was a play on the green=nationalist idea... or mabye this just shows again that the DUP simply dont see the real Green colour issues such as climate change and environmental issues as legitimate causes of concern.
I think Sammy's visual aid was a great demonstration of the waste produced at Stormont. All that paper for material found on the computer? Perhaps a new stringent law on all public and private enterprises requiring or encouraging re-use, prudent use and recycling of paper? We could demonstrate that we are up-to-date in producing less waste and dealing with it. Surely that would be within Stormont's powers?
Sammy is right. The Government wants us to cut down on the amount of paper we use so why not let Sammy use a computer? The answer is the Government probably dont know how to use computers. The proof is in the fact that the Government spent £1.5 billion on a new system for the Civil Service and then had to abort it because of problems.