well it was.
Legislation to standradise voltages and sokets ws needed to give teh customer a wdider choie of appliance.
Comrade Brown wants us to have the state light bulb instead.
Choice is the enemy of the people.
But I'm not going to sell you my house.
Indeed but the new standards actually need to work...
240V filament lamps of high power (> 200W) IR reflective scrape into Class C. I suspect you're only going to manage Class B by going to a more optimum filament supply voltage (which is of the order 55V for a 100W lamp).
IR coatings only really work where the bulb shape reflects and focuses the heat back onto the filament evenly along its length. That generally requires specific lamp geometries such as the filament positioned centrally in a tube, and lots of halogen lamps are not suitable geometry.
I've only seen them in this country on the 300W and 500W linear halogen tubes (which are then 225W and 375W respectively) made by GE. I asked GE a few years ago if they would be adding IR coating to any more halogens in the UK, and answer was along the lines of probably not, as people interested in lighting efficiency don't use halogens in the first place, so there's not much market for efficient halogens in the UK.
My reading of it is that these are the only existing mains halogens which will remain, as they're the only ones which scrape into Class C (providing you use the IR coated ones, and they're > 200W).
They were alledged to be a significant source of fires in the US, often due to falling over or against curtains. For UL listing, they now need to be able to fall over against a muslin cloth without igniting it. I've not see any such fires reported in the UK, but they were never as common over here in the first place.
The GE ones, 225W and 375W. They are sometimes available in B&Q, but are otherwise pretty impossible to find in any shops, without going on-line to search. They are significantly more expensive than their non-IR counterparts, but still give you a financial saving (unlike the Philips Master Classic technology, for example, which won't pay for itself in energy savings).
Agree completely.
Commercially, metal halide has replaced those in the UK. The only reason it hasn't entered the domestic market is initial purchase price. That's a problem the Chinese are very good at solving for us.
Following up to Frank Erskine
OK, if you are willing to sign up that your house will be demolished when you die and not pass into the housing stock I would be willing to let you do as you like in ignoring standards except for safety ones.
Following up to The Natural Philosopher
this is a bit silly. I thought at first this had been badly handled, it seems its not as bad as I thought (but still effects some areas) all this communist stuff about what is trying to raising efficiency and standards is nonsense.
Following up to Jerry
well yes. I feel in this specific area its not been done perfectly but this has strayed into general libertarianism.
On Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:07:05 +0000 someone who may be M wrote this:-
That I do agree with you about. Given that the EU is largely driving this and given that the EU is essentially an arm of big business, references to Mr Brown and his party political affiliation (which is capitalist rather then communist) tell us more about those making the references than they do about Mr Brown.
Following up to David Hansen
Is it? I can understand claims that the US govt is that but does big business buy EU elections? I tend to see the EU as initially a trade club with political ambitions concealed at the start (hence "common market") and the ambition of politicians (for sometime noble motives of unifying europe and avoiding wars) but now the gravy train of the political classes, running out of control with little democratic input ( example: irish may be asked to vote again till they get the answer right).
I see all references to Brown/Blair as being leftist laughable. Blairs heroine was probably Thatcher. The true left have much more to complain about and in any case left/right labelling is largely out of date. But if people read the Daily Mail etc............
I noticed they were in Makro the other day - at about the same price as a pack of 5 of the normal ones.
I went for the cheaper ones since I was looking for replacement for my tripod work lights - and half the benefit of those in this weather is the heat they produce!
On Fri, 12 Dec 2008 11:07:30 +0000 someone who may be M wrote this:-
I think so.
I didn't claim that they do. However, MEPs are fairly impotent, as we have seen over a number of issues. The real driving force are the civil servants and their puppets the Commissioners. There is a revolving door between these and big business.
Following up to David Hansen
I think so
i think so
right. Surely you would not suggest that somebody would model legislation in a certain way on the promise of a nice cushy job and a pretty secretary? I hope nothing like that happens in UK.
If only Comrade Brown were as concerned about the efficiency of government...
Society at the population densities we have are a compromise between individual freedom and regulated behavior.
You can regulate by making antisocial things expensive, or by paying a lot of little men in uniforms to go around arresting people. After their neighbours have informed on them.
In this case the antisocial thing is energy usage. However of all the things that use energy, the humble lightbulb is perhaps the least of out worries, apart from TV's on standby, which are so infintesimal as to be laughable.
Big uses would be the office lights in govt buildings left on all night for security, the streetlamps at 4am when there is no one on the roads..the traffic lights likewise operational when no one actually needs them..the buses running round our streets with no one on them..did you know that the *average* fuel use on a LONDON bus, is only half that of a single passenger car? Mum in her people carrier with 4 kids in it represents less fuel...per passenger mile.
Its very simple. Tax electricity to the same exten as road fuel, or tobacco, if you want to. Then let people make their own choices. The people who leave a bunch of halogens on all night are subsidising your social security handouts.
The choice is between taxation, and a police state, with taxation at an even higher level to pay for all the policemen!
Why should I have to pay for a bunch of petty bureacrats to tell me what I may and may not do?
Make the cost of climate change reflected in te cost of fossil fuels. And the whole thing needs no regulation at all.
THAT'S efficiency.
If electricity were a pound a unit, do you think people would leave lights on unnecessarily?
trebling fuel costs in the USA has reduced the gasoline consumption by
15%. Thats 15% of about 30% of the nations total energy use. 5% of all energy!if we all switched of all our lights permanently, we wouldn't save that much.
Comrade Brown loves Eurocommunism.
He;' onl bug business' friend as long a they pay enough for him to complete his work of transforming the UK into a police state. As soon as he gets the chance, he will nationalise all the banks....oh. He did that already.
Perhaps if you bothered to find out how the EU works for yourself rather than take your information from the 'Daily Torygraph' or 'Daily Maul'...
Following up to The Natural Philosopher
they always are, low taxes mean winning elections
yes
or by consent
i think thats true, it could be a token effort
LOL so is that fuel per passenger on the bus?
probably not acceptable as poor people often heat and cook with it
i really dont see regulating light bulbs as a police state
because most people will not make responsible choices left to self interest.
except for arranging for the costs to hit the price
no
about time, are you going to give credit for high UK prices?
yep.
You see I didnt disagrree with a lot there, except the "comerade" and "petty bureacrats" terminology. Brown is no communist and people running public services are mamagers unless you want to make then sound monsters or wasteful, better to make a case in logic and drop the perjorative terminology. It makes for clearer, fairer thinking.
Thatcher was a fascist by inclination. The histories of Fascist and Communist regimes are little different apart from the ideology they used to sell their control, and the particular element of society that got beaten up in the process.
Communism beats up the entrepreneurial bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia. Fascism beats up the peasant labourer and the manual worker, but apart from that they are both ultimately systems that impose a particular political correctness, and destroy society by encouraging neighbour to spy on neighbour.
Both are governments of a minority by a minority for a minority. They are characterised easily by the way in which their top level members portray themselves: AS leaders. Never as public servants. Ultimately the arise because the population at large has a problem, and instead of tackling it, they take the lazy way out, and elect someone to solve it for them.
In this particular case, if you want to save the planet, stop eating, drinking, buying and burning and wasting quite so much. Stop borrowing money and learn to do something more constructive that making rules for other people.
And make some for yourself.
No. Saving energy is no harder than saving money. You just need to get out of the habit of spending it.
Having unlimited free credit, and having unlimited cheap energy are the problems.
The solution is not to remove anything you might spend it on, from the market, by decree.
It is to raise the cost of it, so that people do better financially, the less of it they use.
Are you talking about Blair/Brown or Thatcher/Major?...
Typical un-thought out Thatcheright bollocks. :~(
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