“I’M just doing my roses – would you like me to do yours?” said my neighbour kindly. I accepted gratefully – roses are not my thing.

“Just put the rubbish in the green bin,” I said, “I think they’re due to collect it this week.”

“Not unless you’ve paid!” she said.

As part of Wiltshire Council’s drive to save money, we now have to pay nearly £50 a year to have our garden waste turned into compost.

At the same time, the council’s decision to slash the opening hours at the tips in Salisbury and Amesbury caused traffic chaos last week. So much for encouraging us to recycle!

We can either burn our rubbish or make a special trip to the dump (if it’s open), and burn more fuel while we’re queuing up (not good for global warming!) I hope the council has made some provision for cleaning up an inevitable increase in fly tipping.

Meanwhile on the national scene the double standards are just as evident.

At the same time the government announced a cut back on subsidies for renewable energy in order to save consumers money on their fuel bills (with spurious talk of wanting to introduce ‘a level playing field’), they also announced an additional £200m of subsidies to encourage new oil exploration (on top of the £1.3bn a year that the oil and gas industry already receives in tax breaks and subsidies).

Add to that a relaxation of planning controls on fracking and it’s not surprising that one commentator characterised it as a policy of ‘growth at any cost’.

You could argue that the need to deal with the current financial crisis and budget deficit has eclipsed a longer term perspective.

Except that as we lurch from one short term crisis to another, the longer term issues of global warming and abuse and destruction of our planet will never rise to the top of the national political agenda – nor seemingly to the local one either.

And those that claim that it should are ridiculed or considered eccentric.

The ability to balance the desire for immediate gratification with the need to consider long term benefit is something many of try to instil in our children from an early age.

Surely, we owe it to them to demonstrate that, as adults, we live by the same standards and that we are willing to pay a few more pence in taxes or local rates so that we can pass on to them the planet in the same state that we received it from our parents?

I guess there is one benefit from the council’s new policy. It’s bringing neighbours together in a new spirit of community cooperation: I now get my roses trimmed in return for sharing my garden bin with my neighbour!