Go green down the high street

These "real-time" monitors will demonstrate how much electricity is being wasted by appliances being on stand-by and it will provide pointers on how to make savings.

We have electricity meters out of sight and out of mind and it's not until we get the bills that it focuses our attention.

We could do so much more.

For example, how many of us throw open the windows during the day, let all the heat out and then turn the heating on in the evening?

How many of us have baths instead of showers?

How many leave lights on unnecessarily and have garden lights on all evening?

But it all pales to insignificance when compared to the waste caused by shops.

It angers me when I see door after door left wide open on the coldest of days. Heat pours out from every one.

The government is so hypocritical when it comes to trying to get us greener.

It keeps targeting households when it should be giving shopkeepers who waste energy a real rap and rewarding those who are green.

And while householders are bombarded with recycling bins and advertising campaigns trying to get us to recycle more, there are no cash incentives for businesses, large or small, to recycle.

Recycling and reduction of waste could be given such a boost if it had a chance to become big business.

I went to Worthing's waste "recycling" site last weekend and watched a man dump beautiful conservatory furniture on to the pile of rubbish.

It breaks my heart to see what some people consider to be rubbish. That furniture could, so easily, have been taken to a charity shop where it could have been properly "recycled".

There are charities such as St Barnabas and the Salvation Army who will collect from people's homes.

Not only is it saving something from being trashed, it is helping a good cause too.

It got me thinking how much better every town and city in the UK could be in recycling.

Isn't it a shame that there isn't a place where the public could take their unwanted but still useful items, selling them for a small amount, perhaps, and where they could be displayed for re-sale.

An enterprising council could make a lot of money doing something really useful and benefit the taypayer at the same time.

Not only that, it would make the country greener, too. Another win/win.

Been caught yet in the big Lyons Farm traffic snarl-up?

Go there at the weekend and you will be.

I cannot imagine anything sillier than the council granting planning permission for two large stores in front of Sainsbury's with such inadequate car parking.

The result is traffic trying to get into the car park and blocking people trying to get to Sainsbury's.

On Sunday the queue backed up behind the traffic signals and prevented traffic getting out of Sompting Road.

The extra traffic is finding its way around the "loop" to the Sainsbury's and B&Q exit and causing complete gridlock.

How much longer are we going to have an inadequate road network in what is Worthing's busiest junction?

We've brought in enterprises which generate a huge amount of traffic, squeezing them in a small space on the slopes of the Downs and then environmentalists fight tooth and nail to deny them that extra bit of land to get the service roads right, so we have gridlocked vehicles pumping fumes into the air.

It's just typical British stupidity.

What a sad indictment it is that Britain apparently has the worst drug problem among the young in Europe.

Despite billions of pounds being spent trying to educate young people not to take drugs, they still do it, messing up their bodies and minds in the process and pouring their money down the drain.

This is the generation I shall be turning to to help me in my dotage. Heaven help us!