Not exactly a lightbulb moment for the government is it? We've seen some jaw-dropping dictats from them for some time, but this one beggers belief. So, from yesterday apparently, it's 'ban all those perfectly serviceable lightbulbs, use this crap instead because it will save a polar bear'. Ugly, dim, and utterly out-of-step. And that's just the Department of Eco Facism. Will we now have the Lightbulb Police flashing their clockwork torches through our windows- "ere, put that light out, don't yer know there's an iceberg melting?". What are cartoonists going to do if they're stopped from putting the traditional bulb above someone's head to denote 'idea'? What will happen is that it will always be the good sense symbol for a bright idea, just like the steam loco silhouette is still used for a unmanned level crossing. But I digress. I'm sorry if you find these new bulbs aesthetically pleasing, and that they do, in fact, fit nicely into your standard lamps, but Ashley Towers is going over to candles in enamel holders and hurricane lanterns. Welcome to the dark ages, let there be light.
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire
1 day ago
17 comments:
I hate these new bulbs. I hate the way you have to wait for them to 'warm up' like a 1970s TV and I hate the way you have to wear a gas mask and a radiation suit if you break one. And having been to China in recent years and seen their dead rivers and belching smoke-stack factories by the thousand, I'm pretty certain that handing my beer bottles and newspapers to a nice man in green overalls every tuesday will make shamefully little difference to the Polar bear or the Large Blue of the Giant Sequoia. It doesn't even make much difference to landfill - it almost always gets buried somwhere, even if it's not in the UK.
I have to say I find it difficult to blub and about a bulb. However, firing up the Tilley lamp does seem a rather good idea.
All is not lost Peter. If you can't stand it a minute longer I have here; 8 x 800 watt lamps and the big daddy of them all a 2000 watt lamp that together create summer daylight. They have the delightful trade names of 'blonds' and 'redheads'.
Thankyou Toby, I knew you'd have just the thing.
I calculated how many bulbs I would need for next 10 years and bought accordingly...sod em.
Did you know ( respect to the Sainted Michael Caine ) that the late Queen Mother (Gawd bless `er ) would pencil in ,on each bulb ,its alleged expiry date (as claimed on its packaging) and get molto fed up if they didn`t last as predicted ?
I submit that kind of thought equipped her to look the East End in the face.
More of this today please.
God bless you Ma`am.
Sorry, can't agree on this one. I have never yet had an 'eco' bulb run out, and you've all gone soft if you can't wait a few seconds for the bulb to brighten. I'm all for ecomentalism, but I buy them because, in the long term, they save me money. Anyway, I like wearing a gas mask.....
For many a year I have had recurrent nightmares... I would be in a room so depressingly, feebly, dimly illuminated, that I would awake in a cold sweat of sheer despondency.
And so it has come to pass...
Ah well, none shall now be able to witness my ortolan supper.
Wartime Houseife, God bless her snood, should pay homage to the light bulb that still burns somewhere in a fire station in the U.S.? Ah yes, 'Nick-o-Media' or whatever it is gives its age as 107 years.
No more the jolly T.V. advertising refrain -
"Mazda bulbs burn brighter longer, always ask for Mazda" - accompanied by an excellent cartoon of a johnny-come-lately cheap caddish bulb named flashy to which presumably the dependable bright Mazda bulb is superior in every way. Oh, and all to the tune of 'Bobby Shaftoe'. More corrugated cardboard packaging!
That's the stuff Jon, thankyou.
It's only the 100W bulbs that have been banned, for goodness sake. Obviously you all live in palaces with vast saloons and drawing rooms that need megawatt bulbs to enable you to see over to the other side of the Axminster.
How on earth did we survive in the days before the electric?
Chris: With candles, set before looking-glasses to reflect their gentle and flattering light. I'm off to the ironmongers tomorrow to see if they'll mong me some.
Sounds very elegant I'm sure. Wax candles, are they? We can't even afford tallow here. My wife, myself, our 14 children and the servants all have to huddle together for warmth under a cloth of shoddy, lit only by the red glow of the peat fire.
40 watts only at Diplo Hall, paricularly zebra and leopard skin shaded table and standard lamps, they can hum alittle when they get too hot
Oil lamps fuelled by Sperm Wale oil too. No wonder the whaling industry was so huge. Do you shoot the lights out with your .410 before retiring Diplo?...you still can with 40Ws - at least for the time being. We knew an old Kenya (pronounced Keenia) hand who claimed that he and his Happy Valley chums did just that - same blokes who drank iced Campbells condensed soup and Vodka when they came into The New Stanley Hotel, Nairobi for a break away from the Wildebeast or whatever...saved all that inconvenience of eating apparently.
Whatever the merits or otherwise of the different bulbs, surely it's the restriction of choice that really rankles? I hate being told what I can and can't do in my own home, especially by some bloated overpaid beaurocrat in another country. If people have not been persuaded to change to the "eco" bulbs voluntarily, then it seems to me that the argument in their favour has not been strong enough.
Quite,Martin
"When we lose the right to be different,we lose the privilege to be free."
Peace and Love!
Post a Comment