Mad Hatters

It was, as any fule kno, the mercury with which they cured the hats which sent them mad. Mercury in light bulbs seems to also cause outbreaks of crazed behaviour:

MPs have been issued with a 10-point guide on what to do if they find a broken light bulb in Parliament.

And on it goes leading to:

However, the matter may yet eat up further Parliamentary resources as Mr Davies said he was not satisfied with the answer.

He said: "I heard there was mercury in these bulbs and assumed there would be a special way of handling them.

"The response was lengthy but it still didn't touch on the mercury. I may well go back to it another time."

Just to save us all the £300 cost of another Parliamentary Question, yes there is mercury in such bulbs and no, you probably don't want to either sniff it or chew the bulb and ingest it. But any further than that? Well, there are no greater safety precautions that you need to take than you would do with a standard flourescent tube which broke: which do, after all, contain a mutliple of the amount of mercury.

All of which gives me another chance to trot out my favourite line about these new compact flourescent bulbs. Yes, I know incandescents are going to be banned and yes, I know that it will be claimed as a great example of the sort of forward looking law making we need to deal with climate change. All of which is codswallop. My day job brings me into contact with the lighting industry (no, I don't supply anything for CFLs) and in this past year they made some 1 billion of the CFL bulbs. Because the economics of them are finally right, so people are buying them, stores are ordering them and manufacturers are making them.

The switch over was going to happen whatever politicans did: but that's politics, eh? Spot a bandwagon and climb aboard then claim the credit.