Eco-fiddling.
This one made me chuckle.
A colleague aquired a new flat on the South Coast not too long ago. At purchase time, much was made of its eco-credentials and the builder had got a nice bung off the government for complying with all the latest arsehattery.
Fairly recently, a bulb blew. He gets out a spare bulb, goes to put it in and finds it doesn't fit. It turns out that in order to qualify for the eco-fiddling grant it must be possible to only fit low-energy bulbs as replacements. To accomplish this, the whole place is equipped with the new "standard" socket which has three bayonet pins at 120 degree intervals instead of the usual two at 180.
Now the horror story. The only people making these "standard" bulbs are Philips, who are currently charging "still cheaper than hiring an electrician to rip out the socket" prices. Over 30 bloody quid a bulb! For a very ordinary CFL with three pins on the end instead of two.....nice work if you can get it.
I wonder how many expensive lunches Philips had to buy to get the (previous) government to sign up to that?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
