Christopher Booker Nails It Again

[Snoopy]

From Yesterday's Sunday Telegraph.

The continuing drama over the EU's drive to force us all to use only so-called "low energy" light bulbs, rather than the incandescent bulbs that many of us prefer, has brought to light a truly surreal legislative blunder. Last week, it was reported that, as from next Tuesday, the public will be expected to report to trading standards officers anyone guilty of selling "illegal' incandescent bulbs. I thought I would check with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs whether such an absurd thing could be true.

No, I was told, it will still be legal to sell existing stocks of 100 watt or frosted bulbs, but it will be a criminal offence to import them from outside the EU. When I asked the legal basis for this, I was directed to various laws, starting with the EU's 2005 Eco-Design of Energy-Using Products directive. When I asked how this had been put into British law, I was directed to a regulation of 2007 which turned out to concern the "eco-design" of fridges and boilers but said nothing about imported light bulbs.
 
I was also, however, pointed to a European Commission regulation (244/2009) of March this year, regarding "eco-design requirements for non-directional household lamps". Wading through a lot of bureaucratic gobbledegook about "non-directional" bulbs used for lighting domestic rooms ("a non-directional lamp", it helpfully explains, "is a lamp which is not directional"), at last I found the explanation for what Defra thinks it is up to ? and its extraordinary blunder came to light.

This curious story goes back to the day in March 2007 when the EU's leaders, including Tony Blair, gathered in Brussels to approve a package of proposals designed to stop global warming. It was soon clear they hadn't the slightest idea how all their quixotic dreams could be put into effect, because these raised all sorts of practical problems which were left to hapless officials to resolve.

On the proposal to ban incandescent bulbs, for instance, it emerged that many light fittings could not take "low energy" compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). A report for Defra the previous year had found that this applied to more than half the fittings in UK homes. So the officials were left to work out how the ban on what were now dubbed "old-fashioned" bulbs could somehow be phased in over several years in a way that was both legal and workable in practice.

Initially they leant on Europe's own manufacturers to stop making incandescent bulbs "voluntarily", but this did not get around the problem of imported bulbs, for instance from China. So their solution, enshrined in regulation 244/2009, was that it should gradually be made illegal between now and 2016 for "non-directional" incandescent bulbs to be "placed on the market", because they do not comply with the EU's new "eco-design" standards. This is the regulation on which Defra bases its claim that, from Tuesday, it will be illegal to import 100 watt or frosted bulbs for sale, with all other "non-directional" incandescent bulbs due to follow between now and 2016.

But herein lies Defra's amazing error. The legislation it depends on to make this claim, regulation 244/2009, refers quite specifically to "household lamps". So the EU has not made it illegal to "place on the market" bulbs which are not intended for household use. Defra thus has no power to ban the import or sale of incandescent bulbs for use in shops, offices, factories, outhouses or anywhere which isn't a "household". And how are shops to decide, when asked for such bulbs, where a customer wishes to use them?

In other words, not for the first time, in its desire to bend over backwards to meet the wishes of the EU, our Government has made a total Horlicks of trying to understand the laws it is so eager to comply with.

[Barman]

Excellent!

What an extraordinarily incompetent bunch of arseholes they are that govern us... 

[Nick]

I noticed yesterday that the wretched Grauniad has launched something called the 10:10 campaign, the worst aspects of which are exemplified here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/sep/01/climate-change-1010

The comments are universally hostile, wich is pleasing.

It is well ridiculed here too:

http://www.countingcats.com/?p=4163   

I merely post this for your amusement 

[Nick]

http://dizzythinks.net/2009/09/miliband-predicts-birmingham-population.html
 

[Snoopy]

Last Sunday's Telegraph carried this:

There was much warmist trumpeting last week, led by The Independent and the BBC, over a German businessman's claim that two of his ships had managed to sail round the Arctic coast of Russia. "A triumph for man, a disaster for mankind" proclaimed The Independent. The opening of "the fabled North-East Passage", it said, is "a vivid sign of climate change in the Arctic".

While other papers speculated that this could slash journey times for container ships to and from the Far East, Greenpeace hailed it as further proof of the urgent need to halt global warming at December's Copenhagen conference.

It was not long, however, before my colleague Richard North, on his EU Referendum blog, tore the story to shreds. The Arctic journey round the top of Russia, it emerged, had been made scores of times before. These went back at least to 1935 when the trip was made by four Soviet freighters. In 1940 a German raider used it to sink seven merchantmen in the Paciific. Since 1979 the Arctic route has been regularly used by ships sailing between Russia and Vancouver.

It turned out that the German shipowner was a rabid warmist. His ships needed the services of a Russian icebreaker and there is no way such a route could be used by any ships larger than 20,000 tons because they need to be of shallow draught and strengthened against ice. In other words, this warmist publicity stunt was no more than a silly-season fable.

It did aptly coincide, however, with the moment when the Arctic ice began its annual re-freeze last week ? earlier than usual. At the end of this summer's melt, the ice area was 25 per cent greater than its record low in September 2007.

In fact for those who share with me a deep suspicion about the European "Idea" and much of the other bulls hit that we are fed by Governments and the media this is a good blog
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/