OneWorldLightbulbs.co.uk

Project:OWLB

The latest project of mine is developing a website around LED light bulbs. LED light bulbs are the future and if I am honest I am a super fan type geek of them. I bought one of these halogen replacement bulbs and frankly they are just sexy. Even better they use just 3.6w of power compared to the old bulbs which used 50w. Plus they last so much longer as well, the old bulbs you had to replace every year, these may last up to ten years. OK so they are quite expensive but you will soon make your money back especially if electricity prices keep rising. You are also saving the world, less electricity means less CO2, you really cant go wrong.

So the idea is that I am going to build a web site at first concentrating on led bulbs that can replace all your existing bulbs. Much better than Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs they don't contain mercury, last longer, use less electricity, are easy to dispose of and are instantly bright. Its a win / win for the consumer, the difficulty for the consumer is knowing which ones to buy. Hopefully, my new website will solve that as it will contain my personal recommendations which have been tried and tested.

At first the website is going to be links to other stores such as Amazon where you can buy such bulbs but over time I would like to start selling my own bulbs and developing new product lines in this market place.

For now the website is just a collection of amazon product links which will start to build traffic as I develop the site. Next up will be a blog to build up some articles and different pages for different types of bulbs eg, bayonet replacement and halogen replacement.

Watch this space as they say.

Some news articles that caught my eye...

Facebook juror sentenced to eight months for contempt

When jurors go bad...

Yes, this is a story of a juror who thought they knew better than the judge and not only contacted a defendant via facebook but carried out her own internet research into the case.

The whole point in a jury is that you try the case on the information presented to you in court, to do anything else however tempting is just not fair justice for the defendant.

It may seem a bit harsh for this woman to spend up to four months in jail but I agree with the Solicitor General a message needs to go out to jurors that this is not acceptable. The whole foundation of our justice system can be contaminated by actions like this. Every defendant has the right in fairness to them to be tried only on the information presented to the court i.e. past history wont affect the burden of proof.

Banks must ring-fence retail operations, Osborne to say

This is about tighter regulation of the banking system to ensure the credit crunch doesn't happen again. Step1 is that Banks must hold more capital reserves, the international recommendation is 7% and in the UK the chancellor has gone for 10%, reminiscent of Gordon Brown's prudence. Step 2 is that the retail arm of a bank will be ring fenced from the investment arm. In practical terms this means that if a bank does fail the government could save the retail arm whilst letting the investment arm fail.

One criticism of this policy is that the banks will pass charges and costs on to the public. Well in my humble opinion you either make regular small payments or one big payment when we bail the banks out when they fail again. What we need to accept is that safe banking may actually cost us a bit more than it used to. The benefits are that we wont loose our money and we wont have to go through what has been an awful credit crunch again.

Another criticism is that the ring fencing doesn't go far enough, banks will still drain a retail arm to prop up an investment arm. Without all the technical details it may be difficult to work exactly if this might happen, but I look on this as more of a positive. A looser ring fencing policing will mean that the banks are not in a rigid straight jacket and can work within loosely defined boundaries to the benefits of the banks and the customers. For us, the customers, if we leave the banks with some flexibility then the costs for the retail banking side will be slightly lower.

To implement both of these policies seems a very sensible incremental policy change and not a knee jerk reaction that is unnecessary or costly.