Morning Report today ran an item about a power-saving commercial screened on television last night, urging people to use candles rather than electric lights.
How very Third World. How very depressing.
Geoff and Sean also reported Consumer NZ as demanding that oil companies give a day’s notice of price rises, so that motorists can fill their tanks first.
How very 1984, and guaranteed to ensure prices are not reduced.
And I know now why my local BP station took down its price board. The Mobil over the road has 91 Octane for 210.9c, according to its big price board. The BP has it for 212.9c, but you have to drive right to the pump to discover that.
The front page of the Dominion Post has a big photo of people holding placards outside a jail, demanding that inmates never be paroled. How very Texas. Let’s save money by executing them all, too.
The lowest blow of all came from Jo Coughlan, who I voted for in the Wellington City Council elections last October. She turned up in Courtenay Place to oppose having bus lanes, claiming she could not see the problems buses have there. Her description of bus lanes as “extreme” is disappointing and means that we now have two anti-bus councillors in my ward, the other being the arch petrol-head, John Morrison. Of our three ward councillors, this means only Andy Foster supports public transport, in a suburb with the busiest, best-patronised bus route in New Zealand.
Oh well, at least trolley bus 335 is now in service. That makes five new ones, in only eight months. Goodness, if the rest arrive any faster, the entire fleet will probably get here by the time the trolley bus contract expires in 2017.
13 Comments
June 16, 2008 at 8:24 am
I think the candles suggestion (and the showering together suggestion) are supposed to be funny (and sexy?). It made me wonder whether power saving campaigns lead to increased birth rates
June 16, 2008 at 8:34 am
I saw the ad – it wasn’t that bad… It had a few suggestions on things you can do while saving power, one of which was to invite your friends over and have a dinner party by candle light.
June 16, 2008 at 9:16 am
Just think how bad the national gloom would be if the All Blacks had lost to England on Saturday….
June 16, 2008 at 9:31 am
Things tend to look glum in Winter especially in our house with a SAD sufferer. Skeptics may say this doesn’t exisist but try living with it…That said a sunny day like today puts a better spin on things. we are thinking of moving house just to be closer to to things so we don’t have to use the car as much with petrol the way it is. Also i think you’ll find the death penalty isn’t much cheaper because of the endless appeals and people sitting on deathrow for years. I suppose it keeps people in jail longer (if you think that’s a good thing)
[Poneke adds: Um, it was sarcasm, not a serious suggestion.]
June 16, 2008 at 10:25 am
Power cuts, especially lengthy ones at night tend to lead to a raised birth rate – empirical evidence was the long blackout some years ago in, I think new York, which led to a significant birth rate blip 9 months later.
Re the adverts, given the current fire service campaign on fire safety, I think ads promoting candles are irresponsible.
Am I the only one who finds it outrageous that business are forced to cut back production, consumers are asked to save power – all signs surely of a crisis – yet there is no sign of the government being held to account for it’s failure to ensure sufficient investment in infrastructure.
Please do not tell me it is all down to Max Bradford, as that line is getting rather tired, and in 1992 the Bradford ‘reforms’ were not in place.
There is a crisis in the sense of major uncertainty over supply and we are asked to accept this as normal. Well it is not and we should loudly say so, until something is done about it
June 16, 2008 at 10:30 am
I wonder how the supermarket discount vouchers might be affected by such a Fuelwatch scheme as they have a major effect on prices paid.
At the weekend, Foodtown, Woolworths, Countdown was offering 10c off a litre if you spent more than $100.
Would Progressive or whoever have to give a day’s notice for their promotions?
As for winter power cuts and the birth rate?
I believe that’s how I arrived one September
June 16, 2008 at 10:54 am
Adam
So are you saying that no consumer anywhere should ever go without any energy no matter what the cost of supplying it and their ability to pay? Doesn’t sound very true to your namesake.
June 16, 2008 at 11:49 am
Adam – given the lack of sense in your post I’m not sure it was intended to get a reply, but I’m a sucker for these things.
New infrastructure is coming on line relatively quickly. But there are drawbacks to simply throwing up new infrastructure. Firstly, we have enough capacity already, we just don’t have enough rain and no amount of infrastructure will change that. Secondly, you need to remember that power generation can increase (or reduce) our Kyoto liabilities, so new infrastructure can increase the total cost to NZ.
In terms of your other point, I think you’ve been reading too many of Gerry Brownlee’s press releases. At this point there isn’t ‘major uncertainty’ over supply, we have enough supply for the short term (with the new rainfall adding to that). The problem is the middle/tail end of winter if we get no (or very little) rainfall. Nobody is asking you to accept the current (or hypothesised future) situation is normal. A lack of rain in winter is very abnormal. Fortunately we are now in a much better position to manage this with increased regular and emergency supply, and steps being taken to reduce unnecessary demand (eg lights in unoccupied rooms, and heated towel rails 24/7).
June 16, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Beshakey
On the first point, re rain. The common counter to that would be the system should have enough capacity to cope with such events.
But that ignores the very high cost of such capacity and that demand side restraint is as sensible a response to greater generation and often a much cheaper way to deal with these temporary issues. It’s just that none us really wants to go without and we are prepared to ignore the long term costs.
Incidentally, Lianne Dalziell has announced the details of her enquiry. Expect a lot of questions when the reality of it are compared with her over hyping of what it was going to do.
June 16, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Why doesn’t anybody bother to work out the actual cost of whatever moronic idea they have for saving power?
The cost of running a 20 watt CFL (i.e. brighter than many candles) for an hour is 0.4 cents. A single candle would cost much more than that, and is much more likely to set alight to your house.
June 16, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Power cuts, especially lengthy ones at night tend to lead to a raised birth rate – empirical evidence was the long blackout some years ago in, I think new York, which led to a significant birth rate blip 9 months later.
Actually, this is an urban myth – or perhaps more appropriately, a fantasy – that originated in a series of stories in the New York Times after the big Northeast power outage of 1965. It was debunked in 1966 by a demographer who examined the statistics. All the evidence is available here:
http://www.snopes.com/pregnant/blackout.asp
Apparently it was deja vu all over again in 1977:
“It is widely rumored that the birth rate in New York City went up 35% nine months following the blackout in 1977 (suggesting that people had sexual intercourse during the blackout), but this has not been proven and remains an urban legend (but was nevertheless featured on VH1’s I Love the 70s episode for 1977).”
http://www.answers.com/topic/new-york-city-blackout-of-1977?cat=entertainment
June 17, 2008 at 8:03 am
There was an element of tongue in cheek in my earlier comment. and I am somewhat surprised it was taken so seriously.
June 17, 2008 at 4:14 pm
I feel your general pain.