Get your hands off my light bulbs, Big Brother

Call me old-fashioned, as Dame Edna says, but I don’t fancy spending my remaining years in semi-darkness because this poxy government has performed yet another knee-jerk reaction and decreed that all incandescent light bulbs will be phased out, whether we like it or not. A warning bulletin from Defra informs us that should we be careless enough to break a long-life bulb, we must immediately vacate the room in which the tragedy occurs for at least 15 minutes. Then we are not allowed to vacuum up the broken glass because that will spread mercury droplets around the entire house. Instead we must don rubber gloves, sweep up the glass and place it in a sealed bag while making sure not to inhale any dust (does glass make dust?) before disposing of the toxic waste in a proper container. That is if by that time you haven’t lost the will to live. What joker writes this stuff? Can it be ghosted by Ed Balls to justify his surname?

Let me sketch a Monty Python scenario for you. Picture a typical British family gathered together in the gloom and squabbling over the best way to assemble a flat-packed Ikea dining suite they have just bought. Suddenly the two expensive energy-saving sources of illumination which, like the Third Reich, have not lasted for a thousand years self-destruct simultaneously (as is the wont of light bulbs). This calls for urgent action and the father is fit for purpose; he orders everybody out into the street where, unfortunately, one of his brood is immediately mugged by a binge drinker out on bail for a previous offence. Unaware of this new tragedy, the father risks dying from mercury droplet poisoning, dons rubber washing-up gloves, sweeps up the debris but, stupidly, puts the resulting toxic debris in the recycling bag intended solely for green wine bottles.