This was a diary story in The Times, so it may be a little exaggerated or embellished.
Energy-efficient bulbs in traffic lights do not give off enough heat to melt the snow that falls on them, so in America the snow clearers have one more job – cleaning it all off by hand. They should press gang Green campaigners into doing the job.
The campaign to force us all to use energy efficient light bulbs has been a classic example of how not to do it. Usually technical advances succeed on their own merits – everybody wants to get on the bandwagon, for the comfort & status on offer.
Instead we have been nagged & confused, seemingly by evangelists from the knit your own yurt & yogurt brigade, without any good word of mouth at all. All you hear is expense, not enough light & delay in coming to full power. And if the figures on More or Less are any guide, they will not even save many of us any money – it’s like the official inflation rate, an average which does not match any one households pattern of purchases.
I speak as one who was trained from my earliest years NEVER to leave the lights on in an unoccupied room (unless it was the fluorescent bulb in the main living room which should be left on for short periods because it took more to fire up than to stay lit), nor, for safety reasons, to leave electrical equipment switched on while totally unattended. I still stick to those rules, except that I now leave the light on the stairs on, partly for safety reasons, but also because it makes a noticeable difference to the temperature, takes the chill off so there is no need to leave the radiator on.
I did buy an energy efficient bulb for the reading lamp, feeling I ought to find out what I was really in for if push comes to shove. It certainly makes it hard to read the newspaper, & does not take the chill off the room, meaning some other source of heat is needed. Now I am torn between just switching back or leaving it to see if it really does last as long as is claimed
