The best-kept secret in the West

Is dog-wagging a form of animal cruelty? I only ask because Mr Wishart uses the phrase in his rather incandescent piece about light bulbs, a piece which takes the "dark mood of talk radio callers" to be a portent of the Government's demise. How would he notice? The mood of talk radio callers is always dark and always twitter and bisted about the Government. Somehow I doubt whether the votes of these barking mad misanthropes are central to Labour's election strategy.

Sometimes I do wonder about Mr Wishart. I would have that thought that he might pause for reflection before claiming that the Government is going to be brought down by its light bulb policy. I wonder more about his blog's regular commentators. Note the remarks of Acid Comments, who already has been poisoned by the mercury in a light bulb, although the bulb did not break; somehow the mercury seeped through the glass and out into the atmosphere, giving Mr Comments a migraine headache, a little-known symptom of mercury poisoning. As Mr Comments recalls, "after I'd finish my dinner I was having collapses, burning sensations, numbness, body weakness, etc." I blame the curry.

Then there is KevOB, who finds energy-saving bulbs to be deficient in red, a colour which makes him function better in Winter. Then there is Rick, who will buy a pallet of old-school bulbs so that he will still be wasting his money twenty years from now. Ha! That will show them! Then there is Warrick, who knows that the new bulbs "don't save you 75-80% more like 50%." There, you see, its a bloody con. Finally, there is Zen Tiger, who thinks the Consumer should choose.

Somehow it always seemed rather obvious to me that one should spend as little money as possible on electricity and that any measure to reduce the country's electricity usage would be worthwhile, on both environmental and economic grounds. But then I didn't realise, before I began reading rightish blogs, that there are people like KevOB who obviously become quite aroused by the thought of a 150 watt halogen; nor had I come across men like Rick who want to spend more, just to show the nanny state that they are free, if impoverished, men.

What they do not realise is that the nanny state is not trying to smother them, but to protect the rest of us from these morons.

Graham Parker and the Rumour: