Date: 27 January 2009 22:49:31
Today I received an official looking A4 envelope in the post. It contained a letter informing me that "a tree will be planted on behalf of [my] child at Coed Ysgubor Wen, near Tywyn, Gwynedd. Grid Ref: SH 625 063".
It's part of the Plant! initiative.
And it struck me that the initiative is slightly flawed.
The letter was printed, in colour, on paper that did not appear to be recycled. It was single sided. And, since all official stuff has to be bilingual in Wales, the letter was accompanied by a separate letter saying the same thing in Welsh. Double sided printing was obviously beyond their abilities. Oh, and there was a colour certificate too - printed on A4 card.
So, the Welsh Assembly Government's initiative is basically this: For every child born in Wales from 1st January 2008 (like Baby Son was), a bit of a tree will be cut down to provide 1 A4 envelope, 2 sheets of paper and 1 sheet of card in order to announce the fact that they'll plant another tree to make up for the ones they're cutting down!