England has joined Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in introducing charges for plastic bags, and it’s reignited the country’s love for complaining.
Every plastic bag you use at a large retailer in England will now cost you 5p, so it’s time to work out where you left that Bag for Life.
At times like this, the Twitter outrage cycle has a reassuringly familiar feel to it.
First you have the genuine complaints.
@Tesco Why is onus on customers to buy plastic bags – the provider should incur costs and change to environmentally friendly paper bags.
— joyce miller🇬🇧 (@agapanthus49) October 5, 2015
Then people complaining about people complaining.
Aldi has been charging for plastic bags since forever, as soon as Sainsburys does it's "chaos". Rich people are so whiny.
— keewa.bsky.social 🇵🇸 (@keewa) October 5, 2015
Some will highlight the Britishness of it all.
plastic bags cost 5p, people are outraged, in most British moment in history
— sharan dhaliwal 🍉 (@sharandhaliwal_) October 5, 2015
While others will pick out an example of a newspaper’s hypocrisy on the matter.
Last year, #DailyMail celebrated their six year campaign to ban #plasticbags. Tomorrow, it's a different story. pic.twitter.com/cM87Fhq4pU
— Lord Dave (@dynamicthinking) October 4, 2015
The jokes begin.
https://twitter.com/joolsd/status/650960293338742784
Followed by the anti-jokes.
https://twitter.com/kerihw/status/650963664145678336
Then the archive footage got a spin out.
https://twitter.com/_youhadonejob/status/650996646210371584
Before, finally, someone moves the goalposts altogether.
Hot take alert: it's weird that we're so ok with plastic bag charges and so against water charges when they're ostensibly the same thing.
— Alan (@alan_maguire) October 5, 2015
It’s almost reassuring.
