1:49pm Thursday 11th September 2008
By Tim Quantrill
The good news is that today the Government has committed a large amount of money to improving the insulation of people’s homes across the country in their latest move to ease the credit crunch - the bad news is that this is a long-term plan and the vulnerable in society like old age pensioners and the poor face a miserable winter trying to pay escalating fuel bills.
At a time when the private companies which supply our gas and electricity are raising their prices to customers by huge percentages and hundreds of pounds, they have been increasing their dividend payments to shareholders by tens of millions of pounds.
This is one of the ugliest and unfairest faces of capitalism which is pretty ugly and unfair at the best of times - the people who can least afford to pay are the ones who end up paying the most while the rich carry on getting richer and the social divide between haves and have nots widens.
Moves to increase the availability of social tariffs, cutting bills through home insulation schemes and boosting micro-generation schemes are welcome but they are all of future benefit. If the Labour government had brought them in when it gained power, as it should have done, or even two years ago then today’s situation would not have been half so bad and the medicine we have to swallow now for our addiction to oil and gas not nearly so bitter.
A billion pounds is a big figure but it just will not be physically possible to inspect, assess, agree to work, supply the materials, train the workers and actually install all these energy-saving measures across the hundreds of thousands of homes that need them now. It is not a quick fix.
Gordon Brown did introduce the winter fuel payment and that has helped cut deaths and reduce people’s worries a lot, but with these exceptional increases hitting the public’s housekeeping budgets, what is needed now is an exceptional gesture from the Government to show that it cares and is prepared to help. Redirecting some of those huge profits from the oil and energy companies - plus, it turns out, the Government’s own renewables payments income - in a windfall tax would help those in greatest need.
Mr Brown’s talk of cutting our dependence on fossil fuels is all very fine, if a rather too little too late, but having allowed speculation to build that there would be a special extra fuel payment this year only to rule out "short-term gimmicks" like that last week seems very cruel.
In the longer term those grants to lag lofts, fill cavity walls, exclude the draughts and replace inefficient heaters, fires and boilers will have the required effect of cutting people’s bills and the amount of fossil fuels we need but the short term should not be forgotten either.
I am managing to cut the distance I drive, mainly by using the train more to get to work, but the wet summer has not exactly been encouraging in getting me to walk and cycle more (or in the latter case get on the bike at all).
Green or Obscene - the mileage counter
Miles by car: -742
Miles being driven: -67
Miles by aircraft: -2060
Miles by train: +640
Miles on foot: +157
Miles by bike: +0
Miles by bus: +9
Miles by ferry: +10
Total: -2053 (running total: -3294)
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