So who's paying for this bit of ecobollox ... ?

Why wasn't he coasting down to hit 30 at the sign, rather than later?

I dont think so.

yup.

Dont think so. Another urban myth.

No, its mostly by simply not farming every inch, and leaving stands of trees to develop on scrap land - like motorway junctions.

Yeah, then we all die and it starts all over?

T i m

Cheers. ;-)

So not a cost at least then (ignoring the actual production and ecological cost differences etc).

T i m

It's not just a theory. I refer you back to a longer article I wront 3 years ago...

They've stopped posting out boxes of them, after some followup research showed most of the recipients simply shoved them in the cupboard and never used any of them, and next most common was trying out just one and finding it was too dim, and shoving it back in the cupboard with the rest of them, and households who buy their light fittings from Ikea and don't have a single bayonet cap lampholder in the house, and finally people who couldn't get them to physically fit in their fittings.

Altogether, a stunning failure, but one which with even a tiny little bit of better planning by someone with a clue (i.e. not the government), could have worked much better.

Well I know you don't think so, but what does that change?

The first coal-fired steam locomotive was Stephenson's Rocket, the crucial innovation being the use of a blastpipe to encourage draught on the fire. It's possible that Hackworth's could have burned coal earlier, as they also had blastpipes, but there's no record that they did so. Similarly Marc Seguin's locomotive with the fan-assisted draught.

Tesco's full-size muti-tube CFLs seem reasonable, but their SES candles lasted a couple of weeks and were barely detectable when they were on.

carbon.

We are still in the last ice age. The world has been an awful lot warmer for very long periods of time in the past. The ice ages are relatively short.

Do nothing, climate change happens: - we run out of fossil energy - we lose big time

Do nothing, climate change doesn't happen: - we run out of fossil energy - we lose

Do something, climate change happens: - the affects might be reduced - we migrate to a sustainable way of life - we win

Do something, climate change doesn't happen: - we migrate to a sustainable way of life - we really win

They are available but relatively expensive and not very common. Anything over 11W needs to run cap down to avoid frying the electronics. I imagine many shops are wary of people being unaware of the need to be cap down and returning 20W lamps which fail rapidly when used as replacements in pendant fittings.

Is this true of all of them? I thought it applied to the sticks, but there were now spirals that were deliberately arranged to cope with this.

Well the 25W Crompton spiral I bought earlier this year had a warning on the box to not use it cap up. No problem in this case because it was for an uplighter.

The free bulbs should all be 25W soft-tone round-top in BC & ES (equiv to 60W).

The soft-tone shell costs you some watts, but avoids the UV "bare tube" issue and creates a more pleasant light for living areas (basically like the incandescent philips soft-tone).

The wattages are more practical for real-world equivalence - go by the box figures and it's simply a joke.

It would get much better market uptake - avoiding the "that feeble thing couldn't light up Gordon Brown's head".

Of course electricity companies prefer not building new plant, so shovel out ridiculous 4W 5W 7W 9W 12W bulbs. They are quite useless and the light can be very harsh on the eyes compared to a proper soft- tone shell.

It's not true at these power levels at all. It starts to become a concern over 25W, which are pretty impossible to find in the UK without going to mail order, and getting some make which won't know how lamp life is calculated in the EU.

Lamp life of GLS BC lamps has to be measured cap-up, and that's also true of CFL retrofits. This is probably the reason you don't see many above 25W. (This doesn't apply to ES lamps though, and that's probably why I can buy a 30W ES CFL in homebase, but not a BC one.)

Ooo, where can you get 4W BC CFLs from as the 8Ws we have on dusk_to_dawn auto switches in the front and rear lobbys are way too bright. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

How'd you know they didn't Dave ? The coal's been under the ground for millions of years not thousands, and not all of it is a mile down ... ;-)

Arfa

CPC have some 3W BC candle (ish) lamps at 95p in their latest flyer part no LP0264703

Bob

We put jumpers on as well but even so the heating is now starting to kick in fairly regulary and the oil consumption is now at double the summer use per week but still only about half that of the winter use level.

I don't think it's relevant. The amount of heat given off by a tungsten lamp will be lost if you open the door. It's a tiny amount compared to that required for space heating.

(22,000 * 20)/1000 = 440kWhrs @ 10p/unit = £44.00

• £5 bulb = £49.00

(22,000 * 60)/1000 = 1320kWhrs @ 10p/unit = £132.00

• 11 bulbs @ 20p = £134.20

Because for the 35 years that we have both lived here, the 30mph limit started at a sensible place just outside the village limits, and where there was no habitation. Then, a few weeks ago, they decided to revise all the limits, and their positioning, and have now moved this limit back a ludicrous distance until it starts probably a quarter mile outside the village on a piece of road that was formerly limited at 50mph. When you've been used to driving on a particular piece of road in a particular way, for

Arfa