I have no sympathy for these idiots.
we are demanding a reduction of energy bills to an affordable level. Our leverage is that we will gather a million people to pledge not to pay if the government goes ahead with another massive hike on October 1st
Imagine finding yourself living a comfortable life in the twenty first century, surrounded by plentiful food and energy. Imagine looking at the world and thinking that all of this is thanks to the government. The government! Imagine voting, repeatedly, thinking that it is the government who are most able to ensure your life remains comfortable. Sure, nearly every politician has turned out to be corrupt and useless. Nearly every promise has been broken. But this time we will vote for the right people and it will be better. And we definitely do not need to put up with any down-sides. We do not need to build nasty nuclear power stations or drill for smelly gas. We can just keep buying it from other countries and building windmills.
Imagine not noticing the invention, the industry, the toil of others of past ages to bring us to the point that machinery can feed us, the effort and ingenuity that brings us energy.
And when something goes wrong and there suddenly is not as much so readily available, why, we can just vote ourselves more cheap energy. And if they will not let us vote for cheap energy, we will just refuse to pay. Because we are citizens of the twenty first century and we are used to comfort and we deserve to have it! And it is just not fair if it is suddenly more expensive! The government must not allow prices to go up. Other people must keep feeding cheap gas into my house. Or else!
Would not surprise me in the slightest if these were the same people who got fracking banned, either.
Refuse to pay. Do without. Simple.
Disconections are up, large numbers of customers unable to find electricty supplier. News at eleven.
Those without smart meters will be dissconnected until they accept prepayment smart meters.
Those with smart meters will pay up front or be disconnected.
Those without smart meters: you ration is X at £1/kWh. Beyond that £100 kWh.
Pay or do without. It isn’t hard.
Disconnecting a non-paying customer is a bit like evicting a tenant, though: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/energy/energy-supply/problems-with-your-energy-supply/if-youve-been-told-your-energy-supply-will-be-disconnected/
It seems a good thing to me, really. If they don’t pay their bill, they get their power cut off, and that should help a great deal with the energy shortage that the dumb policies they advocate are causing.
It is worth pointing out that this is a failure to understand that the word “law” has two different meanings. There is the law saying you must go under 20 mph in a school zone. And there is another law saying you can’t travel faster than the speed of light.
The same word “law” means completely different things. The law of supply and demand is in this latter category.
I wonder if Emma Thompson will be flying over to recite her boilerplate words of encouragement.
It’s a tricky one. From a “save the planet” perspective she should really be in favour of the reduced consumption resulting from mass disconnections.
To quote myself from a few months back, we thought we could power our modern economy with windmills, solar and happy thoughts. Lots of happy thoughts.
For example, the prospect of super-duper batteries to store all this “clean” energy is still only that, a prospect. There is this sort of blind faith that something will turn up.
Of course, the darker view is that a lot of environmentalists know that this is hubris, and what they actually want is for Granny to freeze to death or die of heat exhaustion, because of the idea that the Earth can only viably support a small fraction of the current total without upsetting Sir David Attenborough. Death and general cuntishness is a feature, not a bug, of this point of view.
The problem with the post is that the people who will freeze to death this winter are NOT the people who campaigned against nuclear power, or against “fracking”, or campaigned for the “Green” taxes.
To blame the poor for the political campaigns of wealthy leftists is not just.
It is like blaming the poor for the endless housing estates and other developments that are destroying so much good land – it was not the poor who campaigned for Open Borders (it was also not the poor who campaigned for the “Social Revolution” from the 1960s onwards which has destroyed the family and other cultural institutions – leading to people living alone, with only death to look forward to), most of the British poor do not even know what the European Human Rights Convention or the United Nations Convention on Refugees are. And if they did know – they would be AGAINST such things. Try having “plentiful food” without farm land.
There seems to be no way out – for example securing the borders means leaving the European Convention on Human Rights – but the ECHR is “woven into the fabric of British law” many basic statutes (such as the “Devolution” ones) explicitly commit the United Kingdom to it.
It is much the same with the “Green” taxes and regulations – they are woven into DECADES of laws and policies, with official structures (remember politicians are the fairy on top of the Christmas Tree – they are “on top”, but with very limited real power) totally committed to them.
Other than a glass of whiskey and an “accident cleaning one’s revolver” it is hard to know what to suggest.
Perhaps someone with a will-of-iron could shake the nation free of all this – tear up decades of laws and policies (“legally nonbinding” Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030 and all), and dismiss the officials (thus overturning the Civil Service Acts – and the various Acts of Parliament that have created the various agencies and other official bodies) – but it hard to see such a person coming to power.
What is more likely is a lurch to the left after the General Election of 2024 – even more government spending and regulations. Especially as the Credit Money financial and monetary system collapses (“the world will never go back to what you think of as money” – in which case there is not going to be a world, in the sense of an advanced economy, as the Credit Money system is irrational and a barter system can not support an advanced economy)
“But that will mean that the United Kingdom becomes a failed state” – I know that, hence my reference to suicide above. But suicide is a pointless gesture – and the young may get through the hard times (very hard times) to come.
Good luck to the young.
Still, to end on an optimistic note, when a few countries, such as Uruguay in South America, refused to order a Covid lockdown NOTHING happened to these governments – no “accidental deaths” of politicians NOTHING. No punishment for violating international policy.
Say the government of Uruguay (or other place) decided to violate international policy on FOOD or ENERGY.
Perhaps nothing would happen to a government that decided to ignore international policy on food and energy.
Maybe poor people are behind this campaign, I don’t know. I’m not blaming them for the high energy prices. But neither does anyone have the right to low energy prices.
I suppose in a just world the campaigners against the causes of cheap energy are the ones who should pay. I’m not sure how to arrange that, but it’s not this.
I am impressed with people who are on the side of business and free markets and building things. As you say, poor people probably generally are. I don’t think the same people, or different people, saying “we are being ripped off and we won’t pay” should get a free pass just because they are poor.
Truss and Sunak – but mostly Truss, given the latter already has some game at spending my money on stuff I never asked him to – are lately being asked to quantify the level of help her or his government will offer to people who are struggling to pay their energy bills.
Which one will be the first to say that pace Ronald Reagan, that Government Help is a contradiction in terms, and is heavily conditional redistribution of tax-payers’ money which is easy to start but political suicide to stop? (I think Keith Joseph called it the Socialist Bribe, but can’t find the quote.)
I’m waiting. The Ghost of Keith Joseph has learned the gift of patience on this one, but not me.
“Of course, the darker view is that a lot of environmentalists know that this is hubris, and what they actually want is for Granny to freeze to death or die of heat exhaustion, because of the idea that the Earth can only viably support a small fraction of the current total without upsetting Sir David Attenborough. Death and general cuntishness is a feature, not a bug, of this point of view.”
The eco-religionists really do believe this, but I don’t think they are the real power behind the eco-loonery. My feel is we are now arriving at the final destination of the Long March through the institutions – the Left have been using environmentalism as cover for the last 3 decades since the obvious demise of their previous shining city on a hill, and they want a catastrophe so they can seize power. They have control of all the State institutions, all they need now is a crisis that is big enough for the politicians (and the masses) to demand the Left’s solutions. When Grannies all over the country die because she can’t afford the electric to heat her house, the demands for the government to ‘do something’ will be overpowering, and surprise surprise all the ‘solutions’ being offered them will be the Left’s wet dream. Nationalisation of vast swathes of the economy, control over individuals via caps on energy usage, reduction (abolition maybe) of people’s freedoms to travel, etc etc etc.
This is my fear – we have been lead down this eco-nuttery road on purpose, which was bound to end in tears at some point, physics dictates that. And the ensuing crisis will give the Left the chance it desires.
Given that both* political parties are in favour of irrational energy policies, and the structure of the energy market means that even if you buy your energy from a supplier who has sensible policies and practices your money may still end up funding net zero boondoggles, and of course your taxes will too, what exactly are people supposed to do to state their displeasure with the irrational energy policies of the country?
* those that can actually win seats i.e. Labour and Conservative in most of England and Wales, Labour and the SNP in most of Scotland
If I don’t agree with Tesco’s policies, or with an advertising campaign by a clothing company for example, I can simply choose not to shop with those companies. This is not the case with the energy market. There’s fewer “suppliers” (i.e. energy retailers) than there were this time last year, much fewer, and the energy sector is highly regulated and interconnected. My choice of energy retailer has next to no effect on the production of energy, because all the suppliers buy from the same highly regulated producers. What exactly is wrong with the position that the Government is, in fact, responsible for the price hikes whether directly or by proxy due to their regulation, interference and policies.
Recently here on Samizdata it was quite extensively outlined by various commenters that solar, including off-grid, is effectively inefficient and impractical, therefore it would seem to be generally accepted by most here that dependence on the grid is necessary. So what practical solutions can individuals actually take about energy prices?
No-one had any sympathy for my fairly hard-hearted position that the cost of living crisis (in the UK at least) was over-exaggerated at least in terms of food. Energy prices have risen far faster and much more than food prices, and with less options for ameliorating the effects, this seems to me the only legitimate part of the so-called “cost of living crisis”, a term invented by the media and initially used (in the UK context) by the far-left media to attack the Government for dropping the temporary Universal Credit “uplift”. I have very little sympathy for the “cost of living crisis”, the only bit that really seems to be a legitimate issue are the rapidly rising energy prices. That’s the bit that Samizdata chooses to dismiss as unsympathetic?
When people voted Conservative in 2019 (myself included) I very much doubt most of them expected that in just three years we’d be facing a situation where energy prices had tripled (or more) and the so-called Conservative government had subsidised the production of CO2 from natural gas while energy prices spiked (adding more demand to an already high demand situation), constrained supply by not approving new oil and gas extraction, and thrown more money at the problem (so-called rebate) which just encourages the “suppliers” to continue to increase the price.