Light bulb tax

Surely it would be better to make the energy saving ones VAT free instead of whacking tax on normal incandescent bulbs.

You can get energysaving incandescent bulbs tho, check out OSRAM IRC bulbs which are the best right now in terms of efficient and lifetime. If you know what you are doing, you can get them to give off a low colour temperature (yellow glow).

What next? More road tax if our cars have halogen bulbs instead of the more efficient but vastly more expensive HID bulbs?
 
Mik3 said:
They can stick it where I stick my TV licence reminders. I hope this is a joke.
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Thats just wrong :/

and now my coments on this tax

Down lights 4TW :cool:
I just got to get me ahouse with down lights :p

What would LEDs be like? They look much prettyer then Energy savers but will they still give off that crap lights that messes with my eyes and does my head in that the Damm energy savers do?
 
Zip said:
What would LEDs be like? They look much prettyer then Energy savers but will they still give off that crap lights that messes with my eyes and does my head in that the Damm energy savers do?
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Well, there aren't really any high power leds right now, but they're getting better all the time. I think the highest you can get right now is 10w or maybe 15w, but you can use a cluster of LED's together. The good thing is they last for ages... 100,000 hours is quoted, and even then they don't blow like a normal bulb, they just dim. The bad points is thay they are expensive and they also need special PSU's to drive the LED's. In a few years these costs will go down, and we will be seeing a lot more LED being used in home lighting. You can also have funky coloured ones that can give off red/yellow/green/blue light without the use of filters which might be of use to some. :)

EDIT: At the moment, they are more efficient than almost all incandescent light, but are not quite up to the efficiency of the better flourescent tubes, but I doubt they'd tax LED's tbh.
 
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crashuk said:
yer after everysingle news paper has been printing in for the last week.
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That isn't what you said ;) You said the BBC wouldn't run such a story.

Also the Telegraph article you linked to, and the BBC article, both have the same date...
 
I use an energy saving bulb in here. I agree, the light isn't too pleasant plus it takes a while to reach full brightness and never seems that bright. Its probably worth it though, they are a lot more efficient and energy supplies will not last forever; we need to extend them till we can be supported fully by renewable sources. I think the order for efficiency would be ordinary bulb, halogens, LED, flourescent (least efficient first)?

I have a 3W LED here. The light is pure white and probably too clinical/cold looking, but "warm white" exists for this reason. About 20 of them would light a room nicely I reckon. To power them, a computer PSU (adapted to remove the fans) and PWM controller for dimming. Since they are small, they need not be placed in the centre, rather they can be dotted all over the ceiling or around the cornering to give a better spread of light. You could even add in diffused blue to create a more daylight look, controlled by it's own dimmer you could mix it to your taste :)
 
sounds like a good idea to me. If people wont try to prevent global warming, then stick the possibility of tax in their face and they'll soon change their mind :p

I saw on tv that one council is proposing parking tax or something, with the price dependant on the size of the car. Hopefully that will reduce the amount of people with them stupid land rovers.
 
agw_01 said:
They'll be taxing toilet paper next.
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My ass they will!

Anyway, lightbulb tax is good, I hate old bulbs, not only is their yellow light headache-inducing but they are also a bugger to change when they die because you have to let it cool down and if you grip it too tightly it breaks in your hands :o

Energy saving daylight glow > *
 
Another idiotic green tax.

If people actually believe that having an energy saving lightbulb makes any difference on a global scale then they are deluded.

Buy them if you like the light, and the fact they last longer. But stop acting so damn smug when you buy the things as you think your saving the world.

I sell these things a lot, and the majority of people that buy the traditional bulbs are the ones that can't afford the energy saving bulbs.
People that get the energy saving bulbs tend to be a typical snobby middle class person who has just parked outside in their big 4x4.

If labour really wanted people to buy the energy saving lightbulbs they'd reduce the price, not make the alternative more expensive.
 
MonkeyMan said:
People that get the energy saving bulbs tend to be a typical snobby middle class person who has just parked outside in their big 4x4.
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It's like the place where I work, which has a fancy 'environmental policy' which proudly proclaims that they are environmentally friendly in their processes blah blah blah...

...yet the same company leaves dozens of power guzzling CRT monitors on 24/7 without using the power-saving screensaver. They regularly leave loads of lights on, and the heating or air-conditioning on full blast all night and weekend when there is nobody there... all of which is wasting a tonne of energy, not to mention money.
 
MonkeyMan said:
People that get the energy saving bulbs tend to be a typical snobby middle class person who has just parked outside in their big 4x4.
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Whoops, just remember that big snobbish 4x4 probably produces less harmful emissions than a ford escort/older mondeo + a lot of the bigger engined mondeos/ similar cars. Stop being brainwashed by the papers (and by the sounds of it your envious anti-snobbish attitude) and think/ find things out yourself.

If people actually believe that having an energy saving lightbulb makes any difference on a global scale then they are deluded.
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I agree with you there though. Personal electricity consumption (especially in the UK) is tiny and almost worthless in the scale of things. Think of the amount of times you have driven past a large company building at midnight/early in the morning and seen all the lights on with nobody there. Think that all the computers are probably on as well then you see how all the electricity is being used. Thats without even starting on other countries (the US uses 25% of the worlds energy for 5% of the worlds population!).

We should be saving energy by turning lights etc off but if the government really wants to be heavy on energy saving they need to have a go at the big businesses, not that that will never happen...

Dont even get me started on the made up figures the government spews out about leaving things on standby... :mad:
 
Amp34 said:
I agree with you there though. Personal electricity consumption (especially in the UK) is tiny and almost worthless in the scale of things. Think of the amount of times you have driven past a large company building at midnight/early in the morning and seen all the lights on with nobody there. Think that all the computers are probably on as well then you see how all the electricity is being used. Thats without even starting on other countries (the US uses 25% of the worlds energy for 5% of the worlds population!).

We should be saving energy by turning lights etc off but if the government really wants to be heavy on energy saving they need to have a go at the big businesses, not that that will never happen...

Dont even get me started on the made up figures the government spews out about leaving things on standby... :mad:
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It is laughable isn't it. The government could choose to ask business to cut some of the massive amount of energy they waste, but instead they ask us not to leave our TVs on standby which uses almost no energy worth speaking of.
 
Even if th UK did reach its targets for being more green and energy efficient - what about the rest of the world? We could have the 'cleanest' and most energy efficient country on the planet, yet unless all countries do the same then the global issues remain.

I don't think China or India will be following the same policies.

The proposed taxes for a 'greener' country just seem to be an excuse to get more cash out of the money earners in this country when overall we know damn well that whatever we do in th UK will not make a bit of difference globally (well maybe a little but...).

Although there is all this debate about these taxes, are any of the proposed changes definitely going to be put forward?
 
Amp34 said:
Whoops, just remember that big snobbish 4x4 probably produces less harmful emissions than a ford escort/older mondeo + a lot of the bigger engined mondeos/ similar cars. Stop being brainwashed by the papers (and by the sounds of it your envious anti-snobbish attitude) and think/ find things out yourself.
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That was just an of the cuff remark, to show the typical customer. I really couldn't care less what your car does to the environment as long as it's not stupidly bad.

I just don't like 4x4's as I can't see past the damn things! :D

I'll happily admit that I'd probably be seen as a snob by a lot of you guys, but at least I don't pretend to be saving the world everytime I buy a damn lightbulb.

I'm just fed up with all these new green policies that just seem to rake in cash, and hurt the people they are claimed to help. E.g. People who can't afford modern efficent cars, or even fancy energy saving lightbulbs.
 
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