Christmas, noise pollution and energy waste

Dec 15, 2018 Letters

Editor,

As the old Christmas Masquerade Band crier proclaims; “Christmas comes but once a year, and every man must have his share….” I’m sure the composer meant both man and woman!
At Christmas, the increasingly commercial Christmas we’ve known for the past 70 years, every person’s share if all is going well, would include more noise than usual – including firecrackers, squibs and loud music – and also lots of twinkling coloured lights at night.
That’s all well and good if one is not such a Scrooge as to regard all of that as “Bah humbug” – but like everything else it comes at a cost. In most cases that cost is repaid by a bit of rest to ease the combined effects of the noise and excessive imbibing, and some belt-tightening come January when that higher light bill is to be expected along with the first of the deferred payments on items bought for Christmas.
It is a bit different when the noise pollution will neither end nor ease up after Christmas. It is even worse when the continuing noise pollution is actually very wasteful in money terms and on top of that, when the money wasted is taxpayers’ money being wantonly thrown away by persons who ought to know much better.
In stating this I am referring to a government office building next door to my home, where two air conditioning units are left on 24-7; yes, the a/c is left on 24 hours a day seven days a week!
We all know that air conditioning can make life indoors in the tropics more comfortable than if there were no a/c at all – but how many of us are aware of the real cost of air conditioning? My home has a/c on the upper level where the bedrooms and the living room are.
When I first moved in I made extensive use of the a/c largely because the lady wife loved the comfort it offered. My monthly GPL bill, without using the a/c 24/7, then ranged between $17,000 and $25,000. It has been a lot cooler these past few months and I’ve been more cost conscious – resulting in my GPL bills ranging between no more than $7,000 and $10,000 each month.
Considering that the air conditioning next door is never switched off, it is my conservative guess that the said government office’s electricity bill must surely be some $50,000 more per month than it ought to be. That in my opinion represents an irresponsible waste of public funds.
The noise pollution aspect, however, is what immediately bothers me most as a citizen resident. The two a/c units make a loud and incessant noise that is magnified at night – and made much worse by the knowledge that nobody is in the building all night long.
At my own office we make it our duty to see that the a/c units are all switched off at the end of the work day. Is it that those who have offices in the said government building are so important that they must walk into a cooled room each morning?
If that’s the case, then surely the security guard or cleaner can switch on the a/c at 0700hrs each day! I hope something is done about this noise pollution before the Christmas weekend shutdown. All I want for Christmas is some quiet late at night….

Ronald Bostwick

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