Britannia Radio

The headline (which Booker does not write) is wrong.  Tony Blair 
voted for this nonsense and Defra (proprietor at the time?  Margaret 
Beckett? - taking time off from screwing the farmers by spreading 
Foot & Mouth ?)  gold plated it 'to set an example'.  So the result 
is that our 'partners' in the EU can go on for some time yet with 
incandescent bulbs but they will be no use to us since they are screw 
fittings and not bayonet!!!

Note also that this government so hates the British people that it 
first withdrew the 150 watt bulbs and has now turned to the 100 watt 
ones.  But it is precisely these two wattages - for which there is no 
'long-life' equivalent! - that are most needed by the elderly and 
those with poor eyesight.  (The lower rated bulbs are for general 
background purposes and DO have equivalents)

Personally I saw this coming and bought a stock of 150 watt bulbs 
some time ago and have now laid in some 100 watt ones too.

So the elderly not only have their savings wrecked by Gordon Brown 
but also are denied a free pleasure of pleasant reading.

xxxxxxxxxxxx cs
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DAILY MAIL     7.1.09
Dimwits! Those bright sparks over in Brussels have decided to stop 
you buying old-fashioned light bulbs
By CHRISTOPHER BOOKER

As the Daily Mail revealed yesterday, our shops and supermarkets will 
from this week be running down their stocks of familiar 100-watt 
incandescent light bulbs, the kind most of us use in our homes when 
we need a good light to read by.

Soon it will be hard to find a 100w bulb on sale anywhere in Britain.

After that, all other incandescent bulbs will follow, until by 2012 
they have disappeared altogether - thus ending 140 years of history 
since an Englishman, Joseph Swan, followed by the American Thomas 
Edison, invented the idea of using an electrically heated filament to 
light up a glass bulb.

All this is part of a move by which Britain is leading the rest of 
Europe in forcing us all within three years to switch to nothing but 
'low-energy' bulbs, or CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps), which 
supposedly are going to help us save the planet from that global 
warming which has been so much in evidence in recent days.

Incandescent
No doubt there are still wild-eyed 'greenies' who will cheer at this 
revolution in our lives. But the more we look into the story of how 
this revolution came about, the more it looks like one of the maddest 
flights from reality that the political class which now rules over us 
has ever taken.

The crucial decision was made at a gathering in March 2007 of the 27 
Prime Ministers of the European Union, including Tony Blair.

This meeting of the European Council marked the high point of the 
EU's infatuation with the idea that it should lead the world in 'the 
fight against climate change'.

Sitting round in a grand room in Brussels, they cheerfully nodded 
through a whole set of proposals designed to save the planet.

Twenty per cent of all our energy was by 2020 to come from 
'renewables', such as thousands more wind turbines.

Vast areas of farmland were to be switched from food production to 
growing crops for ' biofuels'.

The EU's industries would be forced to pay tens of billions of euros 
for the right to emit CO2 (the bill to be passed on to all of us).

Also chucked into their wish list was a proposal that the EU should 
follow the lead set by the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro by banning the 
sale of incandescent light bulbs as early as 2009.

What a bizarre example of gesture politics that summit now looks to 
have been. In practical terms, not one of the proposals those 
politicians agreed to now looks remotely achievable.

Even Sir David King, at the time our government's chief scientific 
adviser, later admitted how surprised he had been to discover what 
they had signed up to, indicating that they had not been properly 
briefed.

And as soon as the proposed light bulb ban was announced, lighting 
experts and electrical engineers rushed to point out all the reasons 
why it was hopelessly impracticable.

Toxic
It was not just that many people find the 'low-energy' bulbs ugly, 
slow to warm up and much more expensive, and the harsher light they 
give off less pleasant.

Their rapid flicker can cause eyestrain, migraine, headaches and even 
seizures in those who suffer from epilepsy.

They also, ironically, rely on mercury, which the EU had otherwise 
banned as highly toxic, creating serious problems with disposal.

Just as seriously, however, their vaunted energy-saving potential has 
been vastly exaggerated, since the more they are switched on and off, 
the less electricity they save and the shorter life they have.

Even Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) 
only claims that the total hoped-for saving would be equivalent to 
the output of a single small coal-fired power station.

But on top of this, not the least practical disadvantage of forcing 
everyone to use the new bulbs  -  as millions of aggrieved 
householders will soon discover  -  is the wide range of uses for 
which CFLs are not suitable,

As I reported in the Daily Mail in March 2007, Defra had two years 
earlier commissioned a report on the practical implications of 
switching to CFLs for Britain's 23 million home-owners.

It was known that there were many purposes for which low-energy bulbs 
were not practicable, such as inside fridges and ovens, where 
temperatures don't allow them to operate, or inside enclosed 
fittings, such as patio and garage lights. They also did not work 
with dimmer switches.

What the Defra study ('Energy scenarios in the lighting sector') 
found was that 'less than 50 per cent of the fittings installed in UK 
homes can currently take CFLs'.

To carry out all the conversions and replacements required, it was 
later estimated, could take years, costing £3 billion or more.

The staggering fact is that, even though this was known at the time, 
Tony Blair and his fellow leaders blithely agreed to the proposed ban 
without giving any indication that they knew what they were doing.

Even the European Commission officials, when they were asked how this 
decision could be implemented, had to point out that, in practical 
terms, there was no way the switchover could be made as early as 2009.

But what followed should leave us in Britain even more shocked. At 
this point, the 'green' fanatics who had become so influential in 
Defra put it to Brussels that at least there should be an EU-wide ban 
by 2012.

When they were told this was not possible, and that a total ban could 
not be implemented before 2016, Defra's zealots decided that Britain 
would go it alone, by taking the lead in banning incandescent 
conventional light bulbs by 2012.

That is why, this week, Britain becomes the first country in Europe 
to start phasing in a ban which even Brussels has ruled out as 
impractical.

Ignorant
When I asked Defra how they proposed that 23 million homeowners 
should get round the problem of all those millions of light fittings 
which their own study had shown were not capable of taking the bulbs 
they want to make compulsory, I was given the complacently deadpan 
reply: 'All energy-efficient light bulbs are compatible with standard 
light fittings.'

I asked for a definition of what Defra meant by a 'standard light 
fitting', but an answer has not so far been forthcoming.

Even though lighting technology has moved on since that report was 
published in 2005, this suggests that many homeowners will soon be 
discovering they can no longer buy bulbs for all sorts of fittings, 
such as chandeliers, for which they are needed.

Thus will a knee-jerk decision taken by a bunch of sanctimonious, 
ignorant politicians once again bring home to us what it means to 
have handed over the power to run our country to this crazily 
undemocratic form of government known as the European Union.

What makes it far worse, however, is that our own high-and-mighty 
officials and politicians should then decide, without any reference 
to Parliament, that Britain should take the lead in introducing a 
significant restraint on our freedom.

It is destined in one way or another to cause most of us considerable 
inconvenience and aggravation - all to achieve virtually no practical 
benefit at all