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News and Comment April 2022

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15 April (Part 1) - A wishi that Rishi would go

Following up on a blog from earlier this week the otherwise anonymous Martyn makes a comment which I presume is meant to counter my dissatisfaction with Labour’s threat of Net Zero by 2030, but I do not disagree with him at all.
Anon messageThere has never been a good word about Rishi Sunak on BiB and as stated previously, he is a very good reason not to vote Conservative. He, like Kier Starmer and Co, is a politician unable to define a woman. Far worse is that he has no clue as to the depths of hardship he enthusiastically imposes on poor people unable to make ends meet. Sunak should get out of politics for the good of non-millionaires everywhere.

However it should not be forgotten that the seeds of the serious energy crisis were sown by the last Labour Government. Anyone with half a brain could see back then that reliance on the sun and wind for electricity generation and their damned fool green subsidies (*) would get us into trouble. Every gigawatt of renewables should be backed up by a gigawatt of traditional power station whether powered by gas, coal or nuclear but we in Britain didn’t do that. In Germany they mothballed coal fired stations, here we demolished them with explosives.

Like so many things, such as Teresa O’Neill’s bleating on about the local government funding formula being unfair to Bexley, Labour may be the cause of our problems but the Tories have done nothing to correct their errors and in the case of energy compounded them. After twelve years in government there is no one else to blame.

My own efforts to conserve energy have continued this week and Octopus Energy have been busy making fools of themselves - or maybe me or even every one of their customers.

My gas supply has been off at the main valve for a whole week (**) yet the daily charge is not consistent. Sometimes more than the 27 pence standing charge and sometimes less. Octopus have suggested I might be fiddlingwith the gas tap (sleep walking?) in my pyjamas.

The electricity situation is even madder. It is not practical to turn it off completely but I have managed to keep the charges under £2 most days. To achieve that it is essential not to cook in the main oven. That can easily cost best part of a pound whereas something can be microwaved for a few pennies.

What I am finding is that if one reads the daily consumption on the display unit and multiply it by the tariff, also shown on the unit, the resultant figure is always less than the total charge also shown on the unit, with or without the standing charge included.

Octopus have offered an explanation for that. The electricity meter accurately relays consumption figures to their billing system and at the same time sends figures to my home display unit. However it doesn't bother to send accurate figures, an approximation is judged to be good enough and the result must be used as a guide only.

Why would it transmit garbage to me if the correct figure is known to the meter and how does it explain that the sum of seven daily charges is not the same as the week’s total shown by the same display unit? Why is the amount charged always more than the alleged guide figures?  

Octopus Energy has an impressive armoury of very lame excuses.

* Full disclosure. My solar panels pay around £2,000 a year to generate electricity which I use myself to heat the water, run this computer right now and cover all my motoring requirements. Total madness but I take the view that if you can’t beat them, join ’em.
** Do not try this in a family home, it is inconvenient and sometimes uncomfortable. Possibly unhealthy too. No vegetables all week!

 

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