DEDICATION

It's with some irony that you realise that the greatest single source of environmental wastage is, in fact, the Guinness Book of Records.

The Guinness Book of Records is an A4 sized, one inch thick listing, as you're probably aware, of the greatest achievements in a variety of fields. There's everything in there from the highest jump to the biggest pair of shoes. If you want to know who holds the record for the tallest child under seven or cleanest car that's painted red - the Guinness Books of Records is the number one source.

The trouble is that, as diet improves, you get taller and taller children, so they have to alter the entries. As paint technology gets better, red cars get cleaner and cleaner. And some people, believe this if you will, actually strive to break records just so they can have their name in there as the fellow responsible for roller-skating around Blackpool the most times, or the girl who made the most Moon landings or whatever.

No problemo, the Guinness folks say, we'll just update it every year and include all the new records next to the ones that are still valid from last year.

Which is all well and good until you look at what to do with the previous year's books. Suddenly, you have a load of A4, inch thick collections of outmoded ex-facts. Sure, some of them might be still applicable, but, unless you know which ones, that's about as useful as a dictionary where one in every 50 words is misspelt - only really handy if you're a good enough speller to know which ones.

(And, hey - why do people say they are "good spellers" and "bad spellers"? Isn't it like fiction versus non-fiction - either you can spell or you can't.)

So, every year the Guinness Book of Records fells another dozen rainforests to bring us a collection of rapidly out-of-date facts. Like so many of their entrants, I thought I'd highlight this because I figure they might like the recognition just once. Congratulations, Guinness Book of Records - you are a record breaker!