On Sat, 8 Jul 2006 10:04:33 +0100, David Hansen wrote
(in article ):

On Fri, 7 Jul 2006 15:59:08 +0100 someone who may be Andy Hall
wrote this:-

For me, the main issue is not the marginal cost benefit anyway.

- It is that the bulbs themselves are ugly - either they are fat, have
stupid
spiral shapes or loops.

- The light quality is appalling.

I'm glad to see that you now admit that your arguments against
compact fluorescent bulbs are a matter of personal prejudice. We all
have such things, but trying to justify them on spurious grounds is
not helpful.




It's not a matter of personal prejudice at all.

- CFLs do not have anything like a clean spectrum that is a particularly good
match to anything pre-existing them.

- Eyesight is a very individual thing and people certainly have different
responses to light quality and spectrum.

- They also have different responses to perturbation and flicker in certain
types of fluorescent lamp. Although this does not apply specifically to CFLs,
it certainly does to other types of fluorescent fitting

The point of the foregoing is thus that different individuals will have
different levels of acceptance, for perfectly valid reasons, certainly
nothing to do with prejudice.

The next point is that these things are mechanically and visibly ugly. That
is an opinion, but a reasonable one. Apart from not mechanically fitting
in virtually all luminaires that I have, those that would fit would
completely spoil the overall appearance of the fitting. I am not about to
go out and replace them all when there is little that is suitable on the
market and the cost isn't justified.

Finally, I strongly object to the games played by government in coercing
people into using these things via the use of mandating them in building
regulations and even arranging that the fittings won't accept proper bulbs.
This is an unnecessary intrusion into people's personal space and I won't
accept it. As I already explained, in the event that I bought a new house,
these things would be the very first items to be ripped out and replaced with
proper light fittings.


On the other side of the equation, the cost arguments that you have put
forward are extremely weak; this always assuming that people are interested
in making a minuscule saving on lighting energy use in the context of total
house energy requirement anyway. You go on to attempt to present any
nay-sayers as being prejudiced while at the same time brushing their
verifiable position under the carpet.

If you want to promote this stuff as part of your greeny agenda, that's
fine, but at least be honest about it.