So, add together these two things.
1) We\’ve got a recession and shops are going bust all over the place. There will be, therefore, any number of places that can be taken up on month by month or even week by week rents.
2) We\’ve got the ban on incandescent light bulbs. But this isn\’t a *legal* ban. This is a *voluntary* ban. One that current retailers will of course obey, for they have long term interests. But an upstart working on monthly rents and for the short term wouldn\’t give a shit about such a *voluntary* agreement.
Thus, buy a few containers of incandescents, take up a month by month shop lease and start selling.
I know where to start looking for them wholesale (I am, after all, already in the light bulb industry) and I\’m also pretty sure I can get such a plan into the newspapers.
So, anyone interested in having a go?
Physical shop? Pah. Can’t you just set up a website and rent some warehouse space? I have an empty barn!
Tim adds: Erm, yes, that’s a good idea too.
In years to come, we’ll have to smuggle them in. But it’s a great idea. I think it’s worth a try. I also think people could sell them on the streets like fruit sellers.
Already exists;
http://www.lightbulbs-direct.com/product/1009/gls-100w-bc-pearl/
Run the business online – load the barn up with a hidden cache stored for the time when they have to be smuggled in. The it’ll be easier to distribute then if they’re already past the border checkpoints.
Of course along with the inevitable ban there’ll be a requirement to change the size of sockets to make the old incadescents unusable.
How much does it need? :o)
Government inspectors will be employed to drive past people’s houses with a spectral photometer in order to make sure their bulbs are EU regulation light sources. Welcome to the EUSSR.
Once you’re up and running you could stock up with patio heaters and gas bottles as well, which the big garden centres have ‘voluntarily’ stopped selling, presumably you can get job lots of these for very little once the big garden centres start going into administration.
Oi! I’ve got an attic full of the bloody things – don’t you mess up my market.
How long will it be before shops voluntarily stop selling meat, cigarettes and alcohol. It’s like the puritans are back. I hate these ‘voluntary’ agreements. They enable government to bully in new proposals without any debate or legislation. It’s removing accountability. I think if the government wants to ban something they should have to put it to a popular vote rather than just leaning on business.
Great idea. From such things, small fortunes are made.
What do you mean “like” the Puritans are back? It’s not “like” – the Puritans are back. Since the Roundhead-in-Chief became Prime Minister they’ve emerged en masse like weevils from a tapped ship’s biscuit.
e-bay is your friend…….
Yes Kay Tie. You’re right. It is like a mass gathering of the Roundheads’ social club, isn’t it? Cromwell ruled for seven years. We still have some way to go.
“a mass gathering of the Roundheads’ social club”
Social club? Wicked boy! There is no clubbing. They gather in a conference. Gordon sits on a spike, and Harriet sits on Gordon (two spikes would be an extravagance).
Does Gordon not have a spike for Harriet then?
“Does Gordon not have a spike for Harriet then?”
Would you?
Ugh. I just got a visual image that made me queasy. Yeugh. Let’s not take this any further.
*quick rush to bin to vomit copiously*
Doesn’t bear thinking about, does it?
“Cromwell ruled for seven years.”
But we mustn’t forget what happened after that…
What, you’re going to dig up Gordon Brown’s corpse and hang it?
Tim adds: Tsk: We’re very strong on civil liberties around ehre. Fair trial on treason charges first, if you please.
We will dig him up… But let’s bury him first! Cromwell’s son tried to take over the franchise. You don’t think Ed Balls could be the love child of Gordon and Polly, do you?
“You don’t think Ed Balls could be the love child of Gordon and Polly, do you?”
No, no – tch! Even the ancient Greeks knew that vermin generates spontaneously from rubbish.
Vermin is too nice a word to describe Balls. I think parasite is more apposite, don’t you?
“You don’t think Ed Balls could be the love child ”
How could the parents of anything that looks like him, ever have fallen in love? Least of all with one-another.
Forgive me, but I was always under the impression that the whole point of sexual attraction, was that it would result in continuous improvement of the race, and the gradual extinction of specimens like Ed Balls.
Nature has a way of throwing up the occasional disaster in order to remind people to be careful who they mate with. Often these genetic accidents are hideously ugly and mentally impaired. I hope that answers your question.