Less wasted paper, less sermons

I’m intrigued by the new coalition between two local longwinded sermonisers, Sentamu’s Apprentice Robert Paterson and FOE’s Ffinlo Costain.
Is the latter now also working as quietly for the former as he has for the DLGE, or is there some strange marriage of convenience? Alternatively, as greens and godbotherers could both put someone with Attention Deficit Disorder to sleep in seconds with their prose, does it matter anyway?
Whatever, the first evidence came to light at http://www.manx.net/default.asp?id=18&articleid=9565, where it could be excused as just FOE giving another unelected klingon a bit of a leg-up. Because greens and godbotherers do have something else odd in common.
They both seem to prefer to push their case behind closed doors with unelected politicians. One would almost think they don’t trust the public to back their policies; they certainly have a marked disinterest in testing them at the ballot box.
By Saturday the story had spread to Radio Cowshed (see http://www.manxradio.com/newsread.aspx?id=41227), which is unsurprising as by Saturday evening the newsdesk is being run by the religious team, and by today it was in the Excrement too.
So, maybe I could put forward a few green savings of my own.
Firstly, Christians could bury their petty feuds and arrange to meet in groups of, say, a dozen on Sundays, instead of heating 12 different premises in any island town, each occupied by an odd couple and maybe a passing stray dog if it’s raining. Snake-charmers and holy rollers could do the public an extra favour and make a double saving too by not using schools for their bizarre goings on.
Then there’s that unending stream of local colour supplements that flows through our letterboxes. In my case, as part of our strict anti-junkmail policy, my daughter bungs them straight into the bag to go to the recycling bins.
I doubt anyone else reads them either. In fact I’ve tested this idea and have yet to find anyone who can remember one item (or even the name of the publications) except those who arranged for the item to be there.
Overcome your nausea and try reading one and you soon discover why.
Firstly, examine the ‘editorial’ against the ‘advertising’ and check the juxtaposition of one against the other and you might wonder which is which. The odd gaps where the relationship isn’t so obvious, you’ll note, favour woo-woo merchants, neo-colonial racism and exploitation (I think the PC term is ‘faith-based help for the developing world’), or greens shouting at working people for using supermarkets.
So, logically, if the message was so important, and paper waste such a sin, shouldn’t such articles appear online where somebody might read them, rather than in the least recyclable paper form where nobody does?
Most of us would still bin them as spam, but we wouldn’t have to cart them off to the recycling bins next time we’re…well, at the supermarket actually, as the supposedly sin-free retail ‘alternatives’ are nowhere near a recycling bin.