Plastic carrier bags

This topic currently in the press annoys the hell out of me. The reason: Why the hell do we have them at all?
Currently M&S and various other stores are going to charge 5p for a plastic bag. 5p! is that going to stop people using them, if you shop at M&S you can afford 5p per bag so this is hardly going to reduce or even stop the use of plastic bags, maybe charging £1 per bag might have an impact.
In the States they use brown paper bags at nearly all stores AND someone packs them for you, they are totally biodegradable, recycleable and probably cost less than 5p to provide. why hasn't anyone in the media mentioned this. Is there some underlying political reason for not using paper, do the health and saftey Nazis have some problem with paper bags?
I remember not to long ago when supermarkets used to stack cardbaord boxes near the end of the checkouts, hardly anyone used plastic bags it was so much easier to pack everything into one box.
So vote for paper bags at supermarkets, lets face it they provide free 6 bottle wine carriers in cardboard so get rid os the plastic bag!

Pleas sign the onlie petition to the Prime Minister at http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/bio-degardable/ and make the government force all retailers to use paper bags.