Stick ‘em Up Your Monbiot

This story comes as no surprise to me…

Large numbers of Chinese workers have been poisoned by mercury, which forms part of the compact fluorescent lightbulbs. A surge in foreign demand, set off by a European Union directive making these bulbs compulsory within three years, has also led to the reopening of mercury mines that have ruined the environment.

Doctors, regulators, lawyers and courts in China - which supplies two thirds of the compact fluorescent bulbs sold in Britain - are increasingly alert to the potential impacts on public health of an industry that promotes itself as a friend of the earth but depends on highly toxic mercury.

Martyrs for the cause of Gaia (may organic granola be upon her) and the lining of her Goreacle’s pockets (for His good works and his yacht). And hey, they’re only Chinks and there’s like billions of them so it also helps China reduce it’s carbon footprint and gets them on track with the targets of the Optimum Population Trust. It’s win/win EuroGROLIES get to feel smug and people in a far off land (of which we know little) die or as the Greens might put it “permanently reduce their carbon footprint to zero”*. Jonny Porridge must be priapic with delight.

The risks are illustrated by guidance from the British government, which says that if a compact fluorescent lightbulb is broken in the home, the room should be cleared for 15 minutes because of the danger of inhaling mercury vapour.

That’s scaremongering elfnsafety bollocks (during my science education I’ve seen a few dropped thermometers and I’m still alive) but mercury is extremely dangerous if you are handling it all the time.

I hate compact fluorescents. I hate the light they give, I hate the time-lag in starting-up, I hate the flickering when they’re on the way out, I don’t believe in actual use in a real home they last as long as they are claimed to, I hate the fact that they result in us land-filling all sorts of shite**. I am also unconvinced of their “energy economics”. Sure they’re more efficienct but (a) how much more energy goes into their manufacture than into making an incandescent? (b) how much of an incandescent bulb’s energy goes to waste anyway. It is “wasted” as heat but seeing as they are mainly used (here anyway) at night and during the winter then doesn’t that save the central heating a bit of effort?

But what really gets me is that CFs are a dead end. The future of lighting (and TV come to that) is LED. The Greens are always backing the wrong horse. Catalytic convertors rather than lean-burn engines? Playing Windy Miller rather than building nuke stations? Objecting to a Severn Estuary tidal barrage because of it’s effect on the habitat of wading birds***… The truth is they are romantics, not rationalists and utterly, utterly deranged. Does Prince Charles look like he’s playing with a full-deck? Does he fuck. Now I’m not holding a candle (in the wind) for the late and much lamented Princess of Wails but a choice between her and Vanilla? They are this millenium’s version of demented hair-shirted and wild-bearded mystics wandering the desert spouting whatever lunacy takes their fancy. The amazing thing is people listen to them rather than tar and feather them and ride ‘em out on a rail. It appears it was ever thus. They are all either utterly unhinged or complete charlatans. The worst are probably both.

*Well apart from the gases of decomposition. Those poor dead oriental fuckers are gonna have to offset that. I mean the Goreacle offsets his flights on Learjets. It’s only fair.
**I know they ought to be “disposed of responsibly” but give me a break here that just doesn’t happen. I know the EU directive on disposing of electrical appliances (I’m an IT guy - I have scrapped more electronica than I care to mention. I also live in Cheshire which due to that directive boasts amongst its many charms a fridge mountain). When I lived in Manchester the fridge once went tits up and I had to roll the fucker end-over-end out into the back street. The council only took it away after two weeks later, in the dead of night, I stuffed it with newspapers and old aerosols and torched it. It went up like Dresden in ‘45. They took it two days after that. Fridges burn like bastards because they’re mainly plastic and insulated with polystyrene. Now don’t tell the rozzers because the Levenshulme Fridge Arsonist is probs still on GMP’s ten most wanted for environmental hate crimes.
***Fuck ‘em. The Victorians would have done and they built this country. Well the Victorians wouldn’t have fucked them exactly. They would have stuffed them and had ‘em under glass domes in their drawing rooms as conversation pieces. The more I turn into a grumpy old git the greater respect I have for the Victorians. They managed to re-gauge the entire Great Western Railway in two weeks! Railtrack/Network Rail have spent ten years and billions fecking about with the West Coast line and it’s still fucked and Virgin’s Pendolino tilt trains can’t tilt. They had a can do attitude. What the fuck is wrong with this country these days?