THE stark warning that we will have to recycle more or pay for it is not surprising. The British are a fairly filthy race, prepared to wallow in our own rubbish and with a flippant attitude to just chucking things on the floor, confident in the knowledge, or perhaps merely hopeful, that someone, somewhere will tidy up after us.

That attitude is reflected in our approach to recycling. What a faff, what a nuisance. Three bins! One of them divided into two sections! Not for me, thank you.

But Coun Roger Nicholson, who we don't mean to insult by calling him Craven's rubbish champion, painted a stark warning for local households at a recent council meeting. Either fall in line with the new recycling regime or brace yourself for higher council tax bills (or perhaps that should read, even higher council tax bills).

Tony Blair was delivering stern lectures on global warming to world leaders this week and if he is to practice what he preaches at home, then stern measures to tackle our throwaway mentalilty must ensue. Thus the directive on recycling. What the Government has effectively told Craven is: "Not bad, now do a lot more and if you don't, we'll cut your grants".

Only the foolish would ignore the dire warnings about global warming (and August's floods should have been a little poke in the ribs) so the directives seem fair enough.

But we would feel happier if industry was forced to do its little bit to make life easier for consumers and got rid of wasteful shrink wrapping and plastic. Quite why a couple of carrots and a swede need to be packaged on a plastic tray with a polythene shrink wrap is something only supermarkets can explain. And while we're at it, wouldn't a 5p "tax" on every supermarket plastic bag make us all a little bit more serious about recycling?