The Colder Shoulder

Today I bring you a truly chilling tale. If you're watching this in the kitchen be afraid. Be very very afraid.

That refrigerator. Are you sure it's safe? Are you quite convinced that it won't suddenly get a burst of megalomania and blow a hole in the ozone layer? Refrigerators have now become public enemy number one all over Europe. And that's because they've got a chemical in them called Chlorofluorocarbon which, when the refrigerator gets old, might leak.

Before you know where you are, the polar ice cap melts, and Canada vanishes under a tidal wave. OK, it sounds ridiculous, but here in Europe they take miniscule statistical threats very seriously. Back in 1987 there was an international conference in Montreal and most civilized countries, yours too I think, signed the Montreal Protocol which basically said, perhaps we ought to be more careful with these chlorofluorocarbons in future. But the bureaucrats in Europe went a big stage further. They issued a directive, CPG974a to be precise, and boy do they like to be precise, ordering all European Union nations to stop making refrigerators with Chlorofluro-whatitsnames in them. But in this country, our Government didn't read the small print. Because Euro-directive CPG974a also ordered all countries to organise the safe disposal of any old refrigerators by January of this year. Well, umm, yes... sorry. We forgot. So since January, when your fridge breathes its last, you can't get anyone to take it away; and the British countryside is now littered with thousands of illegally dumped dangerous refrigerators, and our Government is hiring secure warehouses to lock the rest up.

Apparently we never bothered to order the kit that makes them safe. They could be there for years. And they said the Cold War was over. They were wrong.

CBS