How big of him.....

Mr Osborne is promising £50 off our energy bills. How noble of him.

£50 equates to about a weeks worth of energy during the winter months! Or to put it another way, he is giving an average of 96p per week off our energy bills.

It never fails to amaze me just how completely out of touch these people are with the real world. I'd like to bet that Mr Osborne has never woken up with a duvet frozen solid around him and ice on the inside of the windows.

Insipid little git.

 

I don't have much time for any of them to be honest, but Mr Osborne and Mr Gove have the ability to make my blood boil without even opening their mouths.

 

The fact that they've stuck all the "Green" Taxes onto the bills in the first place seems to glide straight past them and that we're supposed to be "fall down" and be grateful to them is typical of them. The cost of the "Green" taxes on the bills is, overall, much more than £50 a year per individual. But the Energy Companies have been quite clever and diverted the attention of the Public's anger, at least temporarily, from themselves. But the major changes has to come from the Energy Companies in the way they have such a great number of different tariffs which is designed not for the customer's benefit but the Energy Companies by casting a bigger net to capture more revenue for the same article. So okay, the Government is yet again doing very little but claiming it's our Hero and Saviour by reducing the annual Green tax by the huge sum of £50 while still making sure that we're still bearing the cost of being Green in the taxes that are still on the bills, that's nothing new. But lets focus on where the real manipulation of prices and profits is being practiced......the Energy Companies.
I also bridle at the statements that they've reduced the cost of petrol/diesel by not adding more taxes on the Fuel Escalator which is like some one coming up to and saying "I've saved you from pain by not slapping you in the face". The only reason they didn't increase the tax was that they knew everyone had had enough and it was political suicide to do so and had nothing to do with caring about the cost of living.

 

Couldn't agree more @ARMANDII - at least Dick Turpin had the decency to wear a mask

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I wasn't just aiming at the Tories, Pete, the Labour government were the originators of some the taxes that are on the Energy Bills that we get, but the Tories have been adding to/or increasing the original taxes over the time they've been in Government and as you say "have done little to get shot of".

 

Each party will whinge when something is brought in whilst they are not in power, but when they do get in they do naff all about it because they either realise they can't afford to or (more realistically) they find the money handy, and they can blame the 'last lot' for it all.

Let's not forget that the fuel duty escalator originated under a Tory government.

One of the things that really, really hacked me off about the credit crunch and the recession was the blame being laid solely at Labour's door - just how they caused it all to start in America first is beyond me

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Well, unfortunately the Green Taxes were a globally accepted way of trying to stop countries, their industries and populations from polluting. It started in Europe and basically went from strength to strength on the basis of being politically correct. It was never started by a single Government but by the international layers of government after much lobbying by organisations that [bless their hearts] wanted to stop the increasing industrial pollution. Energy saving was a late passenger in the movement but was picked up and carried with enthusiasm in the increasing fervor of international bureaucratic circles who also saw in it a opportunity to gain more tax revenue.

 

Agreed. FC. The catalyst was the collapse of the Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac which was then taken over by the US Federal Government. But the recession's origins are in the questionably legal financial dealings of the Banks globally. They basically told lies about the value of themselves, the property market, etc, hiking things up and up until the companies/persons paying the mortgages, loans, bank charges etc couldn't carry on. So no one Political Party can be blamed for the recession although their opponents will always continue to do so and their opponents supports will continue to believe what their political party/supporting newspapers tell them.

 

The trouble is Armandii, that it was never about the environment and always about the revenue.

Take plastic carrier bags as an example. We all agree that they are harmful, be it the usage of raw materials or the fact that the things don't bio-degrade for 100o or so years, and of course the physical risks to animals/wildlife. The answer - charge for them, take more money out of the taxpaying public to force them to cut down; in turn, the cutting down will undoubtedly lead to the loss of jobs as less need to be manufactured.

However, there is an alternative, and it is already available and in use - fully compostable (and that is WAY better than being just bio-degradeable) bags that are made from natural produce (I believe corn starch is a big component). I already use these for food waste, and they are all but as sturdy as a disposable carrier bag, so why wasn't it imposed that these should be used instead?

There are so many technologies that we should be pursuing, that would not only lead to a lessened environmental burden, but also lead to there being more jobs available. Plants to recover human waste and turn it into fuel for power stations - its already happening, just not on a large scale, but why?

More use could be made of log burning stoves, particularly those with back boilers and filtered/catalytic flues - - heat the whole house, capture the crud from the smoke into a harmless solid (carbon) which could in turn be utilised elsewhere (carbon fibre?), and the resultant ash could be used as a soil treatment. Jobs to grow the trees, jobs to cut them, log them and supply them, and potentially jobs to make stuff from the waste product.

Insulation made from waste glass, plastic or even rubber (tyres etc), as well as insulation made from natural materials such as hemp or wool - jobs to grow the hemp/nurture the sheep, jobs to process, jobs to sell and install, and can only help the environment.

If this, or any other government was really serious about helping the environment, they would be investing heavily in these technologies.