Bottled water !

Bottled water must surely be the most brilliant marketing success in the history of commerce !

People have been persuaded to buy water - that stuff that comes free from the kitchen tap - when it is offered in a 600 ml bottle for a price of around one dollar.

We are assured that it is somehow superior. Better taste ! Pollution free ! From exotic and romantic regions !

Surely someone will take heed from this success and start to market air in a plastic bag. What can they say about that to get the suckers to buy ? Collected from a pristine mountain top ! Fart free perhaps !

Now a community of people have decided to do something about that bottled water scam !

The people of Bundanoon in the Southern Highlands have decided to ban the product. Shops will not longer offer it for sale, and the community will install taps and bubblers in the main street to encourage citizens to fill and refill reuseable containers.

And of course, politics has to muscle in on what must sound like a good idea that will be applauded by the people.

Premier Nathan Rees has jumped on the bandwagon and announced that he will impose an immediate ban on government departments and agencies from purchasing and supplying bottled water !

Unfortunately this will conflict with the policy of " do more with less " that is strangling our hospital system.

For countless decades each day nurses trundled huge carts through the hospital corridors, laden with green plastic jugs of water and green plastic drinking glasses. A jug and glass was deposited at each patient's bedside table.

These same nurses collected yesterdays jugs and glasses and trundle them off to some remote part of the hospital where they were - hopefully - cleaned and autoclaved - for re-use the following day.

Someone figured out that time and labour could be saved by issuing each patient with a 600 ml bottle of water in place of those jugs and glasses, and should the patient fully consume the contents, it can be refilled from the bathroom tap.
Disposal when finished was by way of the ward rubbish bin.

Now - in the name of politically correct thinking - we seem destined to force the hospitals to follow the Premier's directive and return to the time wasting era of those green plastic jugs and glasses.

Perhaps a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water !