A HEATED CHALLENGE

KINDLY bear with me today as I land you with a load of rubbish. Not the verbal kind, of which we possess more than enough, but the other sort you throw in the dustbin most days.

It arises from a head-on challenge delivered by Coun John Ballance, chairman of the land use, transportation and highways management committee on Brighton and Hove Council.

That mouthful means he is the man above all others to persuade our learned leaders they must consign to the rubbish bin any proposal to build an incinerator in the area of Shoreham Harbour.

At the weekend I went along to the town hall with a non-political delegation led by Tim Loughton MP to tell Coun Ballance and his officials of public fears about potentially harmful emissions from waste incinerators.

Iput it to him straight: "Since just about every person in this area, including MPs and councillors, is totally opposed to incineration, you have a duty as servants of the public to allay our fears and kill this monster at birth."

Now you might think that a reasonable proposition since we elect these people or pay their wages.

Forget it! There was no shifting Coun Ballance and Alan McCarthy, his director of environmental services.

Igot the uncomfortable feeling all the bureaucratic jargon means they plan to impose an incinerator on us and to hell with the public.

Admittedly something has to be done. Waste disposal in this area has reached crisis proportions, which inspired Coun Ballance's challenge to me: "Well, what would you do, chum?"

My own Association of Harbour Communities supports socially acceptable means of waste control through recycling, re-use, reduction and composting, but even if such methods were fully employed we would still be left with at least half the annual 350,000 tons of household rubbish produced locally.

My solution, Councillor, is to reduce waste on a major scale through Government-led action, to increase recycling plants and otherwise stay with landfill, which at present accounts for 85 per cent of household waste.

We have been getting rid of rubbish by filling holes in the ground since the Romans.

We must carry on the fight against this outrageous incinerator scheme until it is dead and buried. Preferably by landfill.

I'M LEFT-HANDED - NOT DISADVANTAGED

THE Left-Handers Club, which eagerly seeks my support, has just issued a training video for teachers and parents of those, like myself, born what we used to call "cack-handed".

Now I'm all for ending the mythology surrounding this strange occurrence in something like one in ten of us, but cannot quite see what the fuss is about.

Without expert help, say the video sponsors, left-handed children "will continue to struggle and be disadvantaged by a lack of appropriate equipment and training."

High-minded tosh! When I was a child, left-handed meant to be in league with the devil. We were treated with great suspicion. For two terms at school I had to sit with my left arm by my side, which is why I never could do joined-up writing.

For all that, I didn't feel disadvantaged - us left-handers are clever little devils and were always pleased to be one of life's mysteries.

HOPEFULLY JAWS WAS A ONE-OFF

UP at the crack of dawn on Sunday as official starter when 11 intrepid youth leaders from local clubs took a St Valentine's dip in the icy waters opposite the King Alfred estate.

"As mad as hatters and brave as lions," I said over the airwaves. It was all in a good cause. They raised some £600 for charity - proving yet again that most young people today are second to none.

Staying with the sea, I've been looking out of my window since hearing that Gary Brownrigg, 40, a Worthing catamaranowner fishing for cod, caught a man-eating mako shark a few miles off Brighton pier.

It was eight feet long and weighed nearly 400lbs, the biggest fish of its kind landed in home waters for more than 25 years. It's now being served in a Paris restaurant.

The mako has teeth like razors so I'm wondering whether my beach superintendent friend, Charlie King, will be issuing a Jaws warning to bathers next summer. Fear not. Makos are extremely rare and usually prefer warmer waters.

GIVE 'EM A ROYAL ROCKET

NOW then, Prince Charles. You're never slow to open your mouth, so when you visit that heap of rubble known as the West Pier tomorrow, ask them why it is taking longer to restore it than it did to build the Pyramids. Put a rocket you know where.

By the way, it would help if you could donate a few bob from the Prince's Trust towards the restoration of our beloved Dome. You won't believe this, but £20 million raised so far is not enough. They're still £1 million short.

No Dome, no West Pier, the station looking like a building site - at the present rate of knots Brighton is going to miss the millennium by about ten years.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.