Fifteen years ago, it was the wood burner: an unnecessary middle-class indulgence that, despite causing untold environmental damage, started popping up in homes across the country. They became symbolic of a certain affluence that allows a privileged few to live in optimum comfort at all times. Now there’s a new kid on the block: the portable air-conditioning unit.
Oh, horrors! People might be able to keep cool! This will never do!
At between £300 and £1,000 a pop, they’re not cheap – but they certainly make three or four weeks of good UK weather each year easier to handle.
Great! Right? No. Of course not.
At what cost?
You just told us, love. Between £300-1000.
This week National Grid readied another coal-fired power station to cope with the extra demand placed on the energy networks by offices and homes switching on air-conditioning units.
Well, maybe it's me, but isn't that a good thing? A company reacting to demand from its customers? Planning ahead?
Well, Reader, not in Ms PursedLips' world, it's not...
Just as wood burners are being phased out by law as we start to fully understand the damage they do to climate and also lung health, we now need to consider a ban on some air-conditioning units – particularly when used at the mildest of warm temperatures.
Yes, of course, a ban is the first - and often only - thing these NuPuritans reach for.
When it’s 26C outside, the average British home simply doesn’t need air-conditioning. It might feel nicer, but making you a little more comfortable isn’t the government’s job.
Really? So we can start dismantling the panoply of 'hate crime' legislation then? And all those proposals for limiting freedom of speech on the Web?
Oh, that wasn't what you meant? *shrugs* Can't put that genie back in the bottle, can we?
That hair helmet must be photoshopped on.
ReplyDeleteAnd the head seems too big for the body.
Is it all just a bit of essay writing software?
She does look like a Lego figure, where you can spin the hair around to reveal a different face. I wonder if an alter ego would know a little about the complexities of the environment, rather than a social affairs writer's ban everything reflex.
DeleteYet another Guardian "writer" with Reversed Alimentary Canal Syndrome (RACS) - Words issue from her fundament while the stools ooze wetly from her mouth.
ReplyDelete‘Just as wood burners are being phased out by law...’
ReplyDeleteEr...no they aren’t, at least not in this country. A quick Google confirms that there are no plans to make wood burners illegal, although some new-builds in urban areas are banned from installing them and new stoves must now meet the 2022 emissions requirements.
Interestingly, a number of local papers in different areas reported at roughly the same time that ‘wood burning stoves could be banned by 2027’, even though the only source for this date was a campaign by a pressure group. Presumably Ms Fearn inhabits the same echo chamber as the those responsible for the headline; whether she actually believes it or not, it’s a good explain of how a questionable piece of information (or wishful thinking) can be spread through journalism when it’s reported as a fact.
I think someone should visit and inspect 'her' home.
ReplyDeleteWhy? In almost every instance, the rabid 'activists' against whatever never, ever, do without themselves - no austerity is for others. From the "Just Stop Oil" fanatics who get to the 'protests' from their oil/gas heated/powered mansions in daddies SUV, to the anti-globalist/capitalists who all sport the latest (Chinese made/big-tech) iPhones, to the "everyone should stop travelling to Fiji" from the grifter who had just had her holidays in ... Fiji, the hypocrisy is staggering.
So, by all means call and campaign (and write barely legible drivel in the papers) but ... if you do so, 'you' personally have to do without everything those, 'heinous things/practices' you love to demonise, produce.
So? We'll have an immediate shut-down of power, heating and the 'devilish' air-conditioning in her home (and of course at the Grauniad - Oh please!) shall we?
[I suspect half the UK's 'emissions' could be cut just by limiting this bints use of hair-spray to one a month. Cut back her trowelling on of make-up and the land-fills will be half-empty too - although a paper-bag may be in order (organic, of course)].