Filter coffee machines will have to turn off automatically to help save energy, under new European Union rules.
All of the devices on sale for domestic use from next year will be required to go into “standby mode” after brewing the drink, the Sun reported.
The European Commission said the changes would save money on electricity bills and were “supported by consumer and industry organisations” as well as member states including the UK.
The problem with this layer of government is that it’s dominated by Adam Smith’s men with a plan. And there’s no area of life too trivial for them to try and plan either.
No, seriously, think about this for a minute. Several thousand people laboured mightily to bring this about. The EU Commission worked on it, proposed it. The Parliament voted on it. National Ministers approved it. Quite literally thousands of people worked to bring this about. We have to pay all of these people very decent salaries indeed as well. Absolutely no one of these people costs us less than £100,000 a year. And yet this is the sort of triviality they turn their minds to? When there are still serious problems, say the existence of Simon Cowell, that need to be attended to?
This is the problem with the EU. It puts in power the sort of cunts who think that this is a problem even worth considering.
Hang the lot of ’em.
What pees me off is the claimed support of supposed consumer organisations. Who the hell are these people who purport to represent consumers? We’re all consumers, do we get to vote for them, do they ask us to vote on their policies so that they know they are representing consumers? Of course bloody not, these bastards are no better than the politicians and bureaucrats, they self-appoint themselves to represent consumers as they are blessed with the knowledge as to what is best for us. By supposedly representing our interests they give a faux legitimacy to a process that invariably is not in our interests.
There’s method in their madness. Turning electrical equipment on and off frequently is the best possible way to shorten the life of the appliance. Turning planned obsolescence into an EU Directive is manna from heaven for multinational appliance makers, creates jobs within the EU, if only disposing of the Chinese-made coffee machines and boosts GDP in an utterly meaningless way. They’re All In It Together and the EU serfs pick up the bill.
How much power does a coffee machine consume when it has finished making coffee and how much once it has switched to standby?
Looking at EnergySave.gov it looks like about 1kw in use but I can’t find official figures when not actually making coffee.
So I went on a Google trip and found this wonderful Home-Barista. com forum:
So it looks like if you make a lot of coffee and they get the standby timeout wrong you could end up consuming more power than just leaving it on.
Manufacturers of other appliances have done this without regulation because it made sense eg my Sky box with its spinning disk has a relatively high power consumption even when I’m not recording or watching a recorded program. I suspect it hasn’t been done on coffee machines for good reason, even though some of them spout the usual eco-responsibility on their web sites.
That would explain why it has the support of industry organisations, K R Lohse.
DocBud: “Who the hell are these people who purport to represent consumers?”
Much the same sort of people as in the EU making these rules, i’d imagine…
If consumers and producers supported this feature it would already be on coffee machines and no damn fool law would be necessary.
That they have to make laws proves that they are lying.
They really do want to make a law about absolutely everything. For example our local politicians are quite determined to bring in laws to keep betting shops away from”poor areasd”. Our local Labour MP describes the shops – which are after all providing a peerfectly legal service to consumers – as “attacking the vulnerable”. So, by wanting them situated in more affluent areas he is equating poor with vulnerable. Our MEP says “there are enough of them already”, a view he holds and so therefore must be fact and there’s no need to let consumers decide. The problem is he is the deputy leader of a national party…er, UKIP
Ironman – “They really do want to make a law about absolutely everything. For example our local politicians are quite determined to bring in laws to keep betting shops away from”poor areasd”.”
This is yet another situation where we used to have a perfectly good solution – Britain had legal gambling but only in clubs, real clubs, that you had to join. So it was not obvious from the outside and there was no advertising. And yes, the aim or at least the result was to keep them away from poor areas and focused on the wealthy.
However the ideologues didn’t think this was acceptable and so the all-too-common alliance of liberals who have never seen a law they did not want to change and large multinationals has seen casinos open everywhere.
What they really mean is they want a chance to shake down the industry for contributions.
The problem with complaining about these sorts of laws is that even if we got rid of the EU, we have too many of these ar$es within the UK as it is. Our own rulers are no better. Our charities are, if anything, worse. See this for instance:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2608573/Four-slices-Walls-bacon-puts-salt-limit-Health-campaigners-urge-company-cut-rashers.html
@Ironman
True. “They really do want to make a law about absolutely everything.” Your UKIP deputy leader included.
But this is rather how we want it to be, isn’t it. People have opinions. People voice opinions. People attempt to get elected on the basis of those opinions to get a chance to turn opinions into policy. And we’re entitled to to tell them to “f**k right off”
Trouble with this particular piece of caca de torro is; it isn’t arrived at by anything even slightly resembling that process. No democracy has been troubled in its formulation. No voters have been consulted. No public opinions have been sought.
Thousands of EU officials spent tens of thousands of hours and millions of Euros to make a law that incandescent light bulbs should be banned and CFL light bulbs used instead. While they did this the market is deciding otherwise and capitalism comes up with an alternative – LEDs. Cheaper, more long lasting, more reliable, and without the toxins in the bulbs.
Bloody typical!
I’ve got a whole jar of toenail clippings in the bathroom.
And while I’m waiting for some guidance on what to do with them, the buggers waste their time on crap like this!
Isn’t it rather reassuring that the world is in such a great state that our bureaucrats have time to work on this kind of thing? No wars brewing on the bordersof the EU, that kind of thing? Oh, wait…
Once again we see what happens when people are so innumerate that they can’t grasp orders of magnitude. Let’s use Bloke with a Boat’s figures and assume that idle power is 50W = 180 kJ/h (which at 12p per kWh is 0.6p per hour). If I come along and the coffee in the pot is lukewarm but otherwise drinkable, the first thing I am going to do is pop it in the microwave for a minute. That’s 1000W for 60s = 60000J. Do that three times and the cost savings, nugatory though they may be, are entirely wiped out. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It’s an EU-manufactured response to an energy crisis almost wholly engineered by the EU.
BiS
My point is twofold:
First, I positively welcome opinion and comment. Yet, as soon as they become politicians they need, NEED, to turn those opinions into Laws.
Second, UKIP, as briiliantly described by Nigel Farage in another post here today, started as the party that properly articulates liberal conservative values and applies critical reasoning in a way too few Conservatives do. But soon we get malcontents and simple idiots jumping on board saying stupid things about Hong Kong brothels, betting shops etc and getting their voices heard in a way they wouldn’t in established parties; sort of Richard Murphy with PR so-called electoral mandates.
And by the time you get round to drinking the coffee, it is cold.
@Ironman
Oh, I do so agree with your view of some of the people who’ve flocked to the UKIP banner.
I’ve been having a lengthy e-mail exchange with someone who’s not only an ardent supporter but has been suggested as a candidate. On some of his views, I’ve told him he really belongs on the left wing of the LibDems or perhaps ought to get a subscription to Marxism Today. Or heavens preserve us, become a Tory. The one thing I don’t hear much of is any understanding of what liberalism is. Conservative or otherwise.
To add to the above:
I do think this is a problem with a movement which doesn’t seem to have much of an intellectual base. UKIppers know what they’re agin. They seem to have little understanding of what they’re in favour of. I don’t have to agree with the left to understand what they’re rational is. UKippers don’t seem to have acquired one.
@BIS
I presume that you mean their rationale, rational and left don’t belong in the same sentence unless the former is preceded by ‘ir’.
“Remind me how this stops Germany invading France again”
It doesn’t of course. It’s not about Germany invading France; it never was.
It’s just about power and meddling and bossing people about.
@BlokeinSpain: “And we’re entitled to to tell them to “f**k right off””
Well no, that’s where your argument falls down; because all the other people we might elect instead have exactly the same views and priorities.
It simply doesn’t matter who you vote for: the result will be higher taxes, more regulations, more EU, and more bloody windmills.
surely it’s the difference between common law and Napoleonic law again? We have a system that lists a small number of things you can not do and allows you to do anything else. “They’ have a list of thousands of things you can do, but if it is not on the list it is banned. The latter of course requires a vast bureaucracy and the exercise of penal control over people which is why bureaucrats and control freaks want it.
@ Mark T, not quite true.
Whatever has to be banned/forbidden/unlawful/etc… otherwise you are free to do whatever.
That we are going towards the situation you describe is true however, and the UK bureaucracy has not much to learn from the EU one in that respect.
In the UK, s172(4) is a good example of something that is illegal in France or Germany.
Indeed, not a few UK citizen have to thank the ECJ for upholding some basic rights.
Bureaucrats (and politicians) share basic “qualities” the world over, and the only solution is to restrict their powers via a constitution.
Some EU bureaucrats are confused about how filter (drip) coffee machines work and what they are for, as are some commenters here.
A hot plate in the bottom of the machine heats water from a tank which passes up the machine to drip on the grounds in a filter. This seeps through and falls into a glass jug. The glass jug sits on this same hot plate, keeping the coffee hot.
There is no difference in operation during brewing or warming, just the water is heated inside the hot plate, rather than kept hot by it on top of it.
The whole point is to have a supply of hot coffee at any time, maybe for hours after it was brewed. A timer cut out rather defeats the intended use of the product.
An espresso machine, on the other hand, just heats enough water for the next shot of coffee. Mine has an auto shut off, which is fine, because I drink the coffee as soon as I make it, and if I want another I make it when I want it, turning the machine on again.
Drip coffee is often horrible, and the longer it’s been kept hot, the more horrible it gets, though this doesn’t seem to bother Americans or Germans.
Presumably the EU legislation was proposed by French, Italian and Spanish espresso drinkers, trying to stamp out awful drip coffee.