Listening to what is said

I'll start with a report from GMTV about the upcoming sales ban on incandescent light-bulbs, or at least that's what it sounded like; in a blink-and-you'd-miss-it the clarification was for 100W bulbs.

So to a hardware store we go and there the reporter tells us about banning frosted bulbs and being "encouraged" to use these energy saving ones. Okay see that word right there - encouraged? Now imagine I ran a retail store and had two main entrance/exits and I wanted to encourage people to leave via the one on the right. Well I could place the till closer to it, I could put up signs pointing to it; or I could do the equivalent of what's being done here and simply lock the left-hand door. Yeah that's not encouraging people to use the other door that's providing them with no choice.

So questions were raised to the Energy Minister about how said bulbs don't turn on immediately and take time to warm up, and the response was waffle about modern bulbs and how they "turn on instantly after a second or two". See what I mean about listening to what is being said. Heh no I won't be obtuse I know what was meant was that the bulbs turn on to instant brightness after a second or two without the lengthy warm-up. However one of the sofa bound (Richard?) pointed out that the bulbs were also dimmer and didn't give off the same quality of light. The response to that was also enlightening coming from a Labour (for the people) minister - "Those were obviously cheap bulbs".

Yep that's right folks we now have a new social measure, no longer will you need to check for flying ducks on the wall just check out the quality of their artificial lighting. Honestly, people aren't buying these bulbs because the equivalent priced versions aren't as good and then after banning the ones we want to buy a Minister has the cheek to say it's all our own fault for buying the cheap ones.

Oh and of course this isn't a Westminster initiative this comes from the EU and in a sparkling bit of coincidence our relational structure is laid bare again when I switched over to the BBC and found a brief snippet about selling films.

Turns out the 1984 law that allowed retailers to be fined if they were caught selling films or games to anyone under the age restriction placed on them is invalid because Parliament failed to inform the EU about it.

So here's how it goes - we're the 5 year old being told by a big brother/sister to stay away from the linen cabinet so much so that we now actively detour around it until our parents notice and proclaim "Well I never said to stay away from it".

Now I'll turn to the Daily (we're definitely not the Daily Mail) Express who seems to delight in contradictions not only from day to day but in one single issue.

A front page splash tells us why Anne Robinson might be the "antidote to ageism" yes that's right folks she had that plastic surgery to make her look older; just to hammer the point home turn over a couple more pages and we get a list of gadgets that could "roll back the years". So ageism is wrong, but there's nothing wrong with trying to look younger?

Wow next thing you know they'll be printing stories about how awfully thin some celebrity is looking next to an article about how much weight some other celebrity has gained.