Christian McArdle wrote:

Maybe it is sometimes, but I think its also used fairly enough. Just
how much government control of your life do you want? Where do we draw
the line?

You draw the line where behaviour adversely affects others to an
unreasonable degree.

but that only shows the problem - that there is a very wide spectrum of
opinion on where that point lies.


The constructive path would be to look at why people arent buying
many cfls and address the issues with them. And theres nothing difficult
about doing so.

My belief is that the main reason is because of a combination of unit
purchase price disparity and the stupidity of the average purchaser. I don't
believe that people specifically and intentionally buying vanity bulbs is
the main problem. I think that if vanity bulbs were seriously increased in
price, then the majority, who couldn't tell the colour spectrum of a sodium
light from an incandescent, would buy CFLs and those who want to continue
with halogens can pay enough extra to offset the carbon.

I expect it would work that way. Its a lot of extra costs running the
taxation system though, and would only alienate the end consumers. I'd
much rather see the poor light quality of some cfls issue addressed,
which is their prime problem. And the misleading power equivalance
figures. And tip to base dimension labelling. This approach would
satisfy what consumers want and avoid the extra costs of taxation.

Once again _not_ nannying forces one to look at actually solving the
problem, which is surely a far better option.


And in other areas like part p... I dont even need to comment.

Yes. Part P fails on many counts. It was ill thought out and didn't pass the
test of adversely affecting others. Pure protectionism from vested
interests.

Yes. But... Part P was believed at the time by the govt to be a measure
that would prevent adverse effects on people. My point was that
a) whenever one body regulates others, it will make mistakes.
b) in practice its level of comprehension may be so poor that it is
simply disruptive and counterproductive.

This is just one more argument against governments fiddling with the
minutiae of peoples lives, because they arent really competent to do
so.


NT