It has been a long, hard week which only ended at lunchtime today (and the next will start tomorrow, I fear). That is my excuse for not commenting on anything on Blip for ages - sorry. Anyway, by the time we got out for a walk, the light was fading.

Anyone who has tried to take a landscape photo in Britain will know how visually intrusive pylons and telegraph poles are. Every time there is a planning application to build a new mobile phone mast, the complaints are legion, but while ugly, masts are no more ugly than pylons but have the advantage of not being connected together by millions of miles of overhead cables which one just cannot get away from.

With copper wires being replaced by fibre optic, there is no justification or doing anything other than reducing the number of telecomms cables spoiling our views, but we are still left with the problem of getting power to people. Induction charging is betting pretty sophisticated, but still only works at very short distances, so the only option for moving energy (which is, as Einstein taught us, the same 'stuff' as mass) is along cables, and efficiency requires these to be in the air.

So what should we do to reduce these eyesores? Clearly less energy consumption and living closer together will help, but ultimately localism and non-polluting sources of energy are the solution. The more people who put energy into the grid from solar panels and turbines, the less energy needs to be moved long distances from power stations, and thus the fewer pylons and cables we will need.

EDIT: just had this competition pointed out to me by @dailydeluge. I do like a couple of the designs, but we really need to be thinking about the underlying technology rather than just the design.