IT SEEMS strange that one of the sternest critics of selling air conditioning to the UK domestic market is one of this country's own top air conditioning suppliers. It might seem doubly strange that the self-same company was the first ac supplier in the UK to try and crack the domestic market through an ultimately unproductive tie-up with British Gas.


In fairness, times change, as do management teams, their ideals and business directions - which seems to be the case here and it cannot be doubted that the current Mitsubishi UK management is committed to green issues through its Green Gateway Initiative.

To many, of course, it will feel like being shot in the posterior by your own side, when there are already plenty of enemy guns ranged against air conditioning.

What concerns me though is how we can expect to justify the use of air conditioning in commercial premises and then seek to deny it to the domestic householder?

It is a mad world where environmentalism has turned social and political thinking on its head.

A few years ago any western criticisms of an Indian car manufacturer's intention to produce a £1,000 motor car for the less well-off in the world would have been met with outrage by socialists and liberals alike. Yet I heard not a voice raised in support of such a magnanimous initiative.

I'm not sure whether you can be a socialist and an environmentalist but either way there must be some very politically confused people out there.

For instance, where do left wingers stand on the prospect of the 'establishment' discouraging domestic air conditioning? After all, what we are suggesting here is that ac is essential for an efficient working environment but is a luxury that should not be encouraged amongst the proletariat in their home life. Is this not the modern equivalent of 'let them eat cake'?

One influential lobby group has even suggested the use of subterfuge to discourage us proles from contemplating air conditioning in our meagre hovels. This would be achieved by raising the thermostat on the workplace air conditioning in order that the working classes would not notice so much of a temperature difference when they got home.

Ironically, this is the kind of woolly thinking which would have been enough to incite revolution in ages past.

And does the claim that we require cooling for only a few days of the year stand up to critical scrutiny? Could you not just as easily argue now that there are only a few days of the year when we actually need heating? In fact, if increasing global temperatures are a reality then we are going to have far less need for heating and a far greater requirement for cooling.

All this comes at a time when heat pumps, with their inherent ability to also provide summer cooling, have been proven to be more efficient than condensing boilers.

Is it any wonder we live in such a socially and politically confused society?

Neil Everitt

Editor