Since I began blogging, there have inevitably been a number of topics that have occurred more than once, however usually these are topics with a degree of significance. Todays topic, although a matter I have written about in the last week certainly does not fall into that category. As I wrote on Tuesday, David Cameron recently visited a School in Teddington where he told the students about a meeting he had attended to discuss the idea that we should all pay for carrier bags at Supermarkets. I was a bit scornful, not because plastic bags are unimportant, but because the decision to impose a payment for them does not seem to merit the involvement of a Prime Minister at his pay rate of some £600 a day. However it now appears that Nick Clegg was also at the meeting and it was actually a meeting of the Cabinet, so the cost to you and I must have run into many £1000’s. According to this weekends news the promoter of this big idea was actually Nick who is planning to “announce” the new policy at this weeks Lib Dem conference in Glasgow. He is claiming that the idea was not universally popular and it seems that George Osborne was particularly critical, as it has the perception of being a tax on consumption.

A number of things are rather odd here. If David Cameron was leaking the policy to upstage his deputy Prime Minister, why do so in a classroom full of students rather than the more traditional approach of leaving policy documents on a shared photocopier? Alternatively if the intention was to test out the policy with the public why would the deputy PM suggest that he is the unpopular policy champion? In either event why leave the Prime Minister with his fingerprints all over the pre-release or leak. Why would the Liberal Democrats want to make the set piece of their conference, a 5p plastic bag tax? and perhaps most confusing why would the Chancellor who put the VAT rate up to 20% feel that a 5p tax on plastic bags would place either of the coalition partners beyond the pale or suggest that they have gone against their ‘principles’?

I was musing on this last night in our local Sainsbury Supermarket. The shop was packed to the full capacity of its many aisles with students and their parents/carers. As the students packed their shopping into the bags they did not need to pay for under the watchful gaze of their parental advisers, I wondered how many would be willing to overlook the impact of an earlier Lib Dem policy, knowing that Nick has now turned his attention to the needs of the environment? My guess is they won’t, but only time will tell! Last year as a Police and Crime Commissioner candidate I visited the Lib Dem conference which was held in Brighton. I took part in several events because at that point there was no local Lib Dem PCC candidate and an Independent was more palatable than any of the other party based candidates. Many of the delegates were walking around the building with plastic bags smothered in party logos, stuffed full of leaflets. I wonder if these promotional bags will also cost 5p in the future?