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More Light Pollution Woes - "lorry park 'ruins night sky' for Kent residents"


saac

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It's time I think that avoidance/mitigation of corporate light pollution needs to be enshrined in law and taken more seriously than it appears to be at the moment. What with climate change, plastic choking the seas, cataclysmic loss of habitat and extinction of species, it feels  like day by day we are marching towards some horrible dystopian future beloved of sci fi movies. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-57299121

Jim

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I have to agree.  At a simple level I think if you are lighting up the sky then that energy is actually not lighting up what is intended and as such it's a waste of both natural resources and money.  We don't really live in a world where either should be considered acceptable.

James

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8 minutes ago, JamesF said:

I have to agree.  At a simple level I think if you are lighting up the sky then that energy is actually not lighting up what is intended and as such it's a waste of both natural resources and money.  We don't really live in a world where either should be considered acceptable.

James

Well said.

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What's most annoying is they're undertaking a lighting survey after it's been built. It's hard to undestand that a very well paid planner/architect/team didn't consider the nuisance value. Or maybe they did and hoped complaints would be few. Baffling considering the extra cost to redesign and rectify the lighting.

Edited by ScouseSpaceCadet
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Build in haste, repent at leisure...

Actually it is more likely to be:

Build in haste, commission a study, do nothing.

I vaguely recall a government minister saying the was going to be "world-beating lorry park" or something similar.

Edited by Ags
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Rather depressing. Unfortunately if you canvassed opinion on this, or any light pollution issue, I'm sure the majority of the public would be quite ambivalent. Just not enough of us out there I'm afraid. It's a rather sad fact that lighting something in the most garish fashion has always went hand in hand with human success. As mentioned, we are living through times where energy efficiency is the buzz word of the age which makes situations like these nauseating for me... 

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Until the folk responsible for these projects are subjected to a project on their doorstep that affects them as in the same way, they will neither care or understand.

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21 hours ago, tomato said:

Yeah, IMHO a much bigger issue for stargazers near this facility than Starlink satellites.

Not just stargazers. It'll affect all locals, and wildlife.

My wife and I will be moving to Kent by the end of this year, thankfully not anywhere near Ashford.

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13 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

'feeling safer' is not the same as actually being safer.

There's a term for this: "security theatre".  Street lights are perhaps a good example.  As are many of the measures taken at airports after 9/11.  They're designed to make it look like something is being done and to make people feel more secure without necessarily achieving anything real.

Personally I'd prefer to see the money used to address the root causes of people feeling insecure rather than treating the apparent symptoms which may well just move the problem elsewhere.

James

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Fear of crime is a big thing in government and policing circles. You only have to look at the surveys they put out to see how much weight they put on it. Lots of questions around how vulnerable people feel.

Once people feel less vulnerable, targets have been hit.

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I don't understand why this lorry park has to be lit in the first place.  Any moving vehicle will have headlights.

If it is to deter theft from the parked lorries, they are just helping thieves to see what they are doing.

Carole 

Edited by carastro
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I think that modern day humans are scared of the dark, really scared of the dark, there must be big bad murderous beings lurking in the shadows of their gardens, under the eaves of their homes, so you can bet on your life that your new neighbours  will be installing 'security lights' that will ruin your dark skies and flicker on and off at the slightest breeze all night long.

Same people that ignore their elderly neighbours smoke alarm going off or complain that your car alarm went off and work them up.

 

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On 04/06/2021 at 11:34, carastro said:

I don't understand why this lorry park has to be lit in the first place.  Any moving vehicle will have headlights.

If it is to deter theft from the parked lorries, they are just helping thieves to see what they are doing.

Carole 

Big vehicles, HGV , Bus and Coaches,  are very dangerous at night for humans to move amongst them, to light them enough for safety reasons means floodlighting them.  But these lights can be switched off if the lorry park is locked up at night, infared lights and camera sand some modern digital cctv can 'see' very well in the dark to deter thieves.

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11 minutes ago, Cyril said:

Big vehicles, HGV , Bus and Coaches,  are very dangerous at night for humans to move amongst them, to light them enough for safety reasons means floodlighting them.  But these lights can be switched off if the lorry park is locked up at night, infared lights and camera sand some modern digital cctv can 'see' very well in the dark to deter thieves.

I was under the impression that most long distance lorry drivers (i.e. all those travelling to and from the continent , and being held up  in the Kent lorry park built for the specific purpose of holding them while their paperwork is sorted ) sleep in the beds provided at the back of their cabs ? So this is not a deserted overnight car park type facility at all, and I doubt (within the limits of their tachographs ) the drivers wok office hours either, I bet it's a busy place round the clock, every day of the year.

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I have full smpathy for those near by, terrible.

Light pollution spoils our fine hobby, it has done for me and still does at home,
but we adapt and make it work.

One thing I have noticed is the sudden need for wild overlighting in the urban environment for no good reason.
Go out to the countryside and its quite the opposite mainly, well until a townie moves in and the BOOM overlighting strikes.

LED lights were intended to make lighting cheaper and fuel efficient,
however the 'Now' generation have spoiled it by just putting in more lights as they are cheap to run.

 

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My ten-penneth ....

This has no upside what so ever - it only has a downside for every living creature including ourselves. Even if you forget about the nature that this directly affects you have to consider the human cost too and the harm that unnatural light does to our natural rhythm, health and well-being.

In my opinion we are already past the point of no return with our planet and it is only a downward spiral and has been for years.
We are polluting everything and no one is cleaning it up, just passing it to the next incoming politicians/generation.

RIP Earth.

I once heard - "There is no plan B, as there is no planet B."

Kind regards to you all
Matthew


 

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