How many surplus clothes do you have lying around in the drawers and wardrobes of your home? And, rather more importantly, how quickly will your current crop of clothes become surplus?

These are important questions. At least, certainly as far as numerous charities are concerned at any rate. And they are clearly banking on some very positive answers from you.

I have some t-shirts that are, ooh, ten or 15 years old and I have no plans to jettison them. They are comfortable friends. One of my favourite jackets cost me an arm and a leg 20 years ago and I have no intention of parting with it in the near future either.

I bought a few special t-shirts while visiting California last year and there’s no way they are going to be ready for the plastic bags for at least another 15 years.

But clearly collecting unwanted clothes is a profitable route to pedal for it can’t be a cheap business to run.

Not a week goes by when we don’t get some plastic bag – wrapped inside another plastic bag – rammed halfway through the letterbox. Indeed some weeks we can get as many as three or four, like last week.

A lot of them come from reputable charities. Others are a bit more questionable and vague. Indeed only recently there was something of a set-to in Marlow Bottom between two bag collectors with one being accused of pinching bags left out for the other.

It all became rather unseemly and the police were called in.

Obviously our old clothes are big business as charities battle to claim them and clothe the disadvantaged in Africa in our cast offs. We often see pictures of people in far away places wandering around – rather incongruously – in yesterday’s fashion items from Bon Marche and the Edinburgh Woollen Mill.

Such a proliferation of excess clothing is a consequence of the years of plenty. With our purses and wallets bulging we could buy the new styles with impunity on a weekly basis and replace our ‘aging’ week-old wardrobe.

But now the famine has arrived.

Several fashion houses have already gone to the wall because of the brutal downturn in the economy and many others are fighting for survival as we all cut our cloth accordingly.

I suspect that buying new clothes for most of us has slipped rather a long way down the priority list as pressure grows on our finances. It won’t take long for this to filter through to the plastic bag brigade.

Indeed after dark we might even be rummaging through some bags that have been left out by our neighbours.

I SEE our local police and district councillors in south Bucks have come up with a grand plan to deal with anti-social behaviour. They are taking a leaf out of football’s book to deal with the Wayne Rooneys of our streets.

A system of yellow and red cards are to be used to tackle nuisance behaviour.

Nice to see them on the ball.