To blog or not to blog

Why is Santa flashing at me?

I don’t want to come over all Dickensian with an outpouring of ‘ bah humbug’ but sometimes I really have to wonder what the world is coming to.

niendorf-christmas-lights-klein I know Christmas is supposed to be a time of joy and tradition, happiness and sparkle, but there is one thing that has the opposite effect on me, and that is the terrifying increase in outdoor Christmas lights which seems to be spiralling out of control. In previous years I have been just about able to cope with the odd garden decorated in a single colour and with taste, but it seems more and more that taste is the one thing that these illuminated eyesores leave far behind. This is not what Christmas is supposed to be about. It seems to be yet another Americanism that we have adopted, coerced into by an ever-increasing commercial pressure to buy tat that we neither need nor, if we sat and thought about it for a few minutes, want.

christmas-ornaments I fully appreciate that some streets do it with the veneer of a good cause, as per the example here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/somerset/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8405000/8405690.stm but that is an exception rather than the norm – and if people really want to do something for charity there are fare better, more direct and more appropriate ways.

As far as bringing ‘fun and joy’ is concerned, well, I’m afraid that these monstrosities do the exact opposite for me. The sight of a semi-detached house emblazoned with neon notices wishing me a “Merry Xmas”, fighting for space with multi-coloured ‘icicles’ of light or inflatable snowmen with a 60w bulb stuck up their arses somehow fails to fill me with festive fun. It is, at best, vulgar and at worst totally irresponsible. I’m lucky, we don’t live opposite such a property but I pity the poor people who do. It seems every other house is trying to out-do its neighbours and the result is the visual equivalent of a cacophony of screaming babies, fingernails down blackboards and caterwauling mating moggies. It is a form of pollution as much as sound or smoke or litter and yet, t goldsmith_street_paul_nickson_313x470 o protest against it is mean-spirited and grumpy. I’m not – I love the spirit of Christmas – I just wish that the values we place on this time of year were more about thought and caring, less about commercialism and ersatz glitz.

We have the Copenhagen COP15 Climate Change Summit currently debating the impact that humankind has had on the planet. The Stockholm Environmental Institute at the University of York has calculated that Christmas in Britain generates nearly 40 million tonnes of CO2, over one-twentieth of the nation`s annual output. Roughly one-third of this is due to lighting and nearly half is due to Christmas shopping.

For a topic about illumination, it is amazing how dim some people can be, even such denizens of common sense as the BBC in this article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8412332.stm To paraphrase:

A householder in Lanarkshire is drawing crowds to his quiet cul-de-sac with a festive display that includes 45,000 lights that dance in time to music. David Grant, 49, from Blantyre has spent 20 years building up his “winter wonderland”… He is also doing his bit for the environment by only using low-energy bulbs and not running all the lights at the same time

No, Mr Grant, you are NOT doing your bit for the environment, unless by “your bit” you mean helping to bugger it up completely. You would have far less ecological impact by NOT erecting this monstrous display!

other_side_of_crescent_470x353 The big ecological get-out this year is that people are being green by only using LED lights. What tosh! Yes, they use less power, but they still use more power than ‘no lights’. Plus, consider all the manufacturing overheads, the plastics and glass and metal used (and presumably destined for landfill in a few years time), the packaging and the transportation requirements. Those LED lights were probably produced in China using their coal-burning power stations!

I even read an article where someone claimed that Christmas lights were ecologically sound because they “use electricity at night-time which otherwise would be wasted”. Of course, this shows no understanding at all of the balancing operations of the National Grid or the concept that energy production levels can be increased or decreased according to demand. I’ve been to Hydroelectric Power plants where water is stored in high lakes, released at times of peak demand to generate additional power and then pumped back up to the lake when electricity to do so is much cheaper.

The National Grid provide up-to-the-minute readouts of current UK power consumption at http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Electricity/Data/Realtime/Demand/demand24.htm

Indoor lights are arguably not so bad, as most of their energy output is in the form of heat and any thermostatically controlled room will see a balancing against central heating output – but that is to ignore the manufacturing costs which I suspect tip the balance.

90_05_15---Christmas-Lights--Regent-Street--London--England-_web I know we all like to feel Christmassy, and things like town centre lights all add to that but maybe it is time to change attitudes. I say, “Well done” to Horsham in West Sussex (where the budget for the festive lights has been cut from £70,000 to £14,450) and indeed any council that has taken what is probably a quite unpopular step in curbing such expenses. Oxford Street has, to their credit, adopted only LED bulbs and the lights are powered from solar-charged batteries. I can forgive places like Blackpool, where the illuminations are a key to their tourist industry. I understand their reliance, but not ‘every-other-town-centre-in-Britain’ – who offer the argument that people come to see the lights and it increases retail turnover: No, they will still come and do their Christmas shopping even with just normal street lighting – we manage to buy Chocolate Eggs without ‘Easter lights’ . These are big and unpopular decisions, but we should be able to rely on our leaders to make them for us – THAT is their job. And if we can’t make the obvious and relatively easy decisions to protect our environment, heaven help us when we have to face the really tough issues, like population control! And whilst I am on a kamikaze crusade which is bound to make me about as popular as cold vomit on toast, how about this: if we HAVE to wire up our windows and festoon our fences, maybe the Government should consider slapping a huge tax on rope lights and pre-formed flashing reindeer, dedicating any money made to research into renewables? But of course they won’t – that is hardly going to be popular with the people who buy such things and there IS an election coming up.

I somehow doubt that if three wise men happened to be passing through Salford they would be able to even see a bright new star in the sky for all the light pollution!

We three kings of Salford are
Somewhere above us is a new star
But we cannot see it, where could it be, it
Must be behind that Sant-ar