Timothy Murphy wrote:
wrote:
I would have thought governments should subsidize these bulbs,
if they are seriously interested in keeping their Kyoto promises.
So they take our money then reduce the cost of the light bulbs to us
with it. How handy. Dont forget all that wasted paperwork, regulation,
accounting and so on - they'd end up costing us more not less. The
price ticket would be less but we'd pay more than the difference in
other taxes, so we'd pay more overall.
This seems to me absurdly pessimistic.
I agree there are other approaches, but any price subsidy only costs us
more not less. Why folks arent taught that at age 8 I dont know.
Governments have promised (in effect) to reduce energy consumption,
so it is up to them to work out how to do it.
This seems to me a very simple way to make a non-negligible impact.
At the minimum, VAT could be removed on energy-saving bulbs.
Also, the government could insist on energy-saving bulbs being used
in institutions it controls or has influence over.
The problem with this government, and the British people, is they seem
to think that forcing others to do things they wont themselves is the
way to go. It seems obvious there are at least 2 problems with this
model. Taxing filament bulbs would be a better option, and still leaves
everyone the optoin of doing as they choose instead of being
frogmarched by the semi-competents that think they know best and think
they have some kind of mandate to force us to live by their half baked
rules. Like part P. And the same will be happening to plumbing and gas
soon.
NT