Let there be light...

Just now, Britain is remembering the Blitz, it being exactly seventy years since Luftwaffe bombs rained down on this island. The events sparked off another way of life. People became au fait with bomb shelters – Londoners translate as Underground – and going to work in damaged buildings that managed to stay ‘open for business’. A night of uninterrupted sleep became an aspiration rather than a matter of course and an entire generation grew up having been, or having played host to, evacuee children. Our inconveniences today don’t even compare with the sufferings of those times but it seems Britain is headed for a new type of blackout.
In order to save money, local councils are cutting down on street lighting, possibly shutting off one in five streetlights, and saving hundreds of thousands of pounds annually in the process. Great, but who will it leave in the dark, and when? Householders fear security risks if their street goes too dark and in rural areas where streetlights are already few and far between, pedestrians already run a higher risk from traffic after dark.
My concern is that yes, we do need to turn down the lights but it must be done equitably, in appropriate areas and for the right reasons. Light pollution is already a buzz phrase in many urban areas, since bright lighting in town centres cancel out the glorious, celestial overhead display. These are possible targets for the borough councils’ light brigade. A spokesman for the Institution of Lighting Engineers has said it is perfectly possible to save on lighting by dimming street lighting when it is least needed; i.e., at evening dusk and at first light in the morning. Good thinking, and such changes will have to be carefully orchestrated so that no-one loses out. What we do not want in a new era of light fascism, with lighting hours being conserved for the showier, ritzier parts of towns and villages, while the sink estates and more downbeat areas are left to moulder in darkness, becoming magnets for criminal and other, questionable activity. This would be especially ironic since it is most likely lack of resources that makes them ‘no-go’ places in the first instance. At the end of the day – and all through the night – we do not need light inequality to join the line-up of inequities that already plague our lives.