Getting hot under the collar about energy price rises

Last Friday, the energy price cap rose by 80%, threatening (and this is not polemic hyperbole) unprecedented fuel poverty for millions of households, and destitution for hundreds of thousands of the poorest households who are already struggling with impossible choices between having heat and hot water in their homes or putting food on the table. Yet Friday’s devastating news was by no means the worst of it, as the energy price cap is predicted to soar by similar amounts in January and again in April. By then it is forecast that the average household could be looking at bills of £7000 a year. We are now reaching the point where, for many people, it will no longer be a question of struggling to pay their energy bills, it will simply be impossible for them to pay. If you take home the average UK annual salary of £31700, you are going to have to juggle soaring energy bills with rising costs of food and other essentials, increasing housing costs as interest rates go up, affecting mortgages, or rising rent bills. However, if you are on a minimum wage or dependent on benefits, the increase in energy bills means that you will just not have the money to pay, no matter how you budget.

This is a truly terrifying development for millions of people, yet the so-called ‘leaders’ of the British Government were nowhere to be seen when the news broke. No British Government minister was roused from his or her slumber to make the rounds of the TV studios and provide even a modicum of reassurance to worried and frightened people left to deal with the consequences of the meltdown of an energy policy which is the brainchild of that government whose leaders were last seen sunning themselves on a Greek beach.

We did, however, get a statement from the acting, or rather play-acting, Chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, saying that people needed to look at reducing their energy consumption. Glossing over the fact that this is pretty rich coming from a man who attempted to claim the heating costs for his stables on his parliamentary expenses (Zahawi’s horses will be warmer this winter than millions of families), it was a gob-smackingly arrogant statement which effectively tried to shift the responsibility for the catastrophic failure of the Conservatives’ energy policy on to those who are suffering because of Tory mismanagement.

According to Dr Sean Field, Research Fellow at the Centre for Energy Ethics at the University of St Andrews: “To put it bluntly – there is corporate responsibility in this, but this has been a catastrophic failure of political policy in the UK for the last 15 years.”

What all the various crises besetting the British state have in common is that they are the result of decades of British governments prioritising short term private profit making over the longer term public good - the promotion of capitalist policies over socialist policies which are for the benefit of the people - you and me. The crisis in England’s water supply is due in part to private companies which preferred to cream off profits rather than invest in fixing leaks and building reservoirs to store the winter rains. Problems have been ignored for decades. Even now the Conservatives prefer to pander to the fossil fuel companies rather than fund the transition to renewable energy and funding the insulation of the housing stock or other long term solutions to the energy crisis. Liz Truss talks about abolishing the Green Levy on fuel bills and her party wants to prohibit on-shore wind farms, because, apparently, those are the problem, not the profiteering of the oil and gas giants.

Remember that the Conservatives permitted the energy companies to give up on gas storage facilities, meaning that the UK is hugely dependent on ‘just-in-time’ gas supplies from Europe to meet domestic needs. This deprived the UK of the ability to store large quantities of gas when the international market price was low and leaves the UK more vulnerable to large rises in prices on the international markets. We got into this position due to a combination of corporate greed and UK government failure. While the international wholesale price of gas was low, it was more profitable for the energy companies to buy on the international markets than to invest in maintaining and repairing the storage facilities which existed at the time and the Conservative Government refused to grant a subsidy to help with the maintenance and repair costs of the existing gas storage facilities. The companies then announced that it was not cost effective to keep the storage facilities open and decided to close them down. The Conservative government compounded its sins by allowing them to do so.

We are now seeing those same companies reporting record profits while the Conservative wring their hands and bleat that “there’s a war on” even as they refuse to impose a windfall tax on the energy companies that could go a long way towards funding a freezing of the energy price cap. In this crisis, as always, the priority of the Conservatives is to protect the profiteering of the wealthy while ordinary people are forced to choose between freezing or starving. This is a catastrophic political and moral failure, the blame for which lies squarely at the door of the Conservative party.

Even now, the Conservatives remain missing in action, more concerned about their internal party politics than the disaster facing millions. Neither of the two leadership contenders have said what they intend to do to deal with a crisis of their own party’s making. Truss’s camp has hinted that if she becomes Prime Minister she is considering cutting VAT by 5% across the board. However VAT accounts for less than 5% of the typical energy bill so a VAT cut would do little to reduce energy bills to an affordable level.

A reduction in VAT is effectively a tax cut for the better off. If you wanted to put more money into the hands of the sort of people who have high levels of discretionary spending, and the higher the discretionary spending the more money they’d get, then cutting VAT by 5% is what you’d do. It will do almost nothing to help make energy more affordable. To save £1,300 from a 5% cut in VAT, you’d have spend £31,200 a year on stuff that incurs VAT at 20%. There is no VAT on food or children’s clothing. VAT is not normally charged on rent or mortgage payments. A cut in VAT does nothing to help those who can only afford the essentials, yet this is her big idea, her ‘nuclear option’. It’s only nuclear in the sense that it will not solve the problem and will leave devastation in its wake. Truss’s resistance to offering targeted support for vulnerable groups is terrifying and unforgivable. Public anxiety is now raw, the fear is naked.

Adam Scorer, chief executive of National Energy Action, a campaign group, told the financial news site Money Week that cutting VAT will do little to give consumers respite from soaring energy bills because VAT accounts for only a minor proportion of the overall bill. The only realistic solution, in order to prevent millions from being unable to heat their homes is a freeze on the energy price cap ,funded by taxes on the energy companies, as called for by the Scottish First Minister and Keir Starmer of the Labour party. Ideally the energy companies should be nationalised But only the British Government has the legal power and the financial authority to do so and the Conservatives won’t go there. They will protect their corporate donors no matter how many elderly or disabled people die of hypothermia this winter.

The whole debacle is a problem that can only be solved by government. But Truss won’t let humanity get between her and a burning ambition that makes her pander to the worst right wing excesses of the Conservative party. She is going to be a far worse Prime Minister than even Boris Johnson. The only question is how much damage she will do before she, in her turn, is finally forced from office. And she will be, she will be. 

A Dartmoor day and Shavercombe

 A glorious day for a walk on Dartmoor. Starting and ending at the well known ‘honeypot’ of Cadover Bridge. A bit of warm weather and the Janners stream out from Plymouth to picnic, swim in the Plym and enjoy the sun. The crowds can be a little off-putting but, walk a few yards from the parking areas, they disappear.

A little longer than anticipated, the walk ended up being 8.7 miles. The route was quite straightforward - up the south bank of the Plym and back along the north bank. But that simple description doesn’t do credit to the scenery and the history we walked through.

The River Plym, our companion for almost all of the walk. For most of its length in these parts, it has been subject to many diversions as the old tin miners used the flowing waters to wash unwanted ‘overlode’ away to reveal the metal-bearing rocks they were interested in. There is lots of evidence of these activities along our entire route and one can’t help wondering what the river bed would have looked like without this human intervention.

Yes, there is a path there somewhere. Good walking practice at this time of year is always to check your body for ticks if you’ve walked through areas of ferns. There seems to be a lot of the little buggers around this year.

What better spot for our mid-morning stop for tea and/or coffee? Not something that we can usually do.

Looking across the Plym to Ditsworthy Warren, one of the last places on Dartmoor to actively farm rabbits. It was a farm until around 1947 and is now used occasionally by the army for troops on manoeuvres. It featured in the film ‘War Horse’ and has gained a certain notoriety because of this. 

Looking slightly to the east of Didsworthy Warren, the bulk of Sheepstor is visible and the Tor with the point to the right is Sharpitor, which rises above Burrator reservoir. For most of the year, walking straight ahead from this point would result in wet feet as the valley bottom is somewhat boggy.

A Wheatear, looking quite plump, which is good as it will soon be migrating to overwinter in Central Africa.

The Shavercombe Brook waterfall at the top of the eponymous combe. A great place to stop for lunch as it is one of those spots with a ‘special indescribable feeling’. 

Looking back into Shavercombe. It’s a unique spot on Dartmoor and, despite being clearly marked on maps, it is actually quite difficult to locate. Maybe that’s why it’s relatively unvisited.

The Plym looking rather underwhelming after all the recent dry weather. At this point, it is usually impossible to cross without wading through a thigh-deep torrent. Not to be attempted by the sensible and certainly not by a rather ungainly septuagenarian. Septuagenarian? Gosh, that’s a sobering thought.

Some of our group standing next to the largest monolith/menhir in the early Bronze Age Drizzlecombe complex. It's about 15 feet high and is a hefty chunk of granite. Cairns, cists, stone rows, hut circles, monoliths - this area has them all. Of course, back when they were first erected, it is highly likely that the area was still afforested and they were built in clearing or, perhaps, on the edge of the trees. For anyone tempted to visit Drizzlecombe, be aware that access can be very boggy for most of the year and the route would have to be chosen carefully. Mrs P and I have tried to reach them several times from the Didsworthy Warren direction and have given up when faced with having to leap streams and wade through sphagnum bogs. Approaching from the north via the Eylesbarrow Mine area is probably the best bet when the conditions are against you and you want to keep your feet dry.

Two shots of the largest stone row at Drizzlecombe. No-one really knows what they were built for and the usual tropes are 'ceremonial' or 'processional'. Who knows? But it's always struck me that, for the typical double stone row, the space between the stones is rather narrow. So, the procession must have been in single file only! Whatever the reasons, it clearly took purpose, organisation and leadership to build these rows and were not insignificant undertakings.

We are looking here from Didsworthy Warren across the Plym to the slopes of Hen Tor. There are markings of the boundaries of a medieval field system but also, if you look closely, two elongated mounds. These are the remains of the rabbit warrens that the warriners of Ditsworthy looked after. The rocky terrain of Dartmoor is not the natural habitat for rabbits so we don’t see them as often as you might expect. There are hares around as well and they are even rarer to see.

Ditsworthy Warren house. It dates from the early 1800s and is a good spot to include in a circular walk. In the winter months, when the leaves are off the trees, it can look pretty bleak.

And this is what a little post-editing in Photoshop can do. Certainly makes for a more dramatic shot but not particularly realistic. A few tweaks and the blue sky becomes quite menacing.

The Plym, again, with the Warren in the distance. Someone has taken the effort to build a small dam, maybe to hold enough water back to make a paddling pool. Once the river is back in full spate, the stones will be washed away. Which is a good thing because such obstacles can stop small fish migrating up to the headwaters of the river to spawn.

Little Trowlesworthy Tor to the left and Great Trowleswothy Tor to the right. Well worth visiting for the remains of quarries, worked pink granite and the plethora of archaeological artefacts covering a couple of millennia. But not today!

Walking back along the north bank of the Plym. Can you spot Mrs P pushing her way through the ferns? Give it another two or three weeks and the ferns will be turning brown and dying back. The path becomes more obvious when this happens and remains so until the new growth starts next year.

The sound of the gentle tinkling of the Shavercombe Brook. Close your eyes and imagine that you are sitting nearby and this is the only sound you can hear.

Or, perhaps, the accompanying mewing of buzzards circling above. It’s the time of year when the parents  stop feeding the young and they have to start fending for themselves. I think it takes a while for the young to accept the new reality of independent living. Does that sound familiar?

Having had the political equivalent of a major p*ss up in the pub with Boris Johnson trashing the venue in the inimitable Bullingdon style and expecting the little people to clean the mess up, the Tories have now staggered home, still not ready to face the aftermath or deal with the consequences of their bad behaviour. With the likely election of Liz Truss by party members, a woman who was memorably described by former Conservative MP Matthew Parris as a balloon of vast ambition perched on a pin head, what the Conservatives are now doing is deciding that they fancy something to eat after all the booze and have put the chip-pan on - and fallen asleep.  Let’s face it, on her record it’s clear that Truss has no principles or ideology. For her it is whatever gives her power or gets her noticed. Every day is a new day for Truss and what she said yesterday has no bearing on today. A lot like her predecessor as leader.

The Truss campaign is far ahead of Sunak in all the polls of Conservative party members that have been published. Most polls have given her a lead in excess of 30%. There are only two weeks remaining in a contest that seems to have dragged on forever. Most of those eligible to vote will have already done so, and at this point it is vanishingly unlikely that Sunak could catch up, even in the implausible event that all those who are still to vote cast their vote for him.

Truss is so confident that the campaign is as good as over that her team have released details of who she is likely to appoint to her cabinet, so we have some idea of the mess that awaits us. An awful lot of barrels had to be scraped through to get to this lot. Kwasi Kwarteng, Suella Braverman, James Cleverly, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Kemi Badenoch will take key roles in the new cabinet under Liz Truss, according to a report in the Times. All of them are on the far right of a Conservative party that has moved increasingly to the right over the past decade. The far right John Redwood is tipped for a senior post under Kwarteng, the likely new Chancellor of the Exchequer. Kwarteng was one of the authors of the infamous Britannia Unchained polemic. Redwood is currently demanding that state regulation of water and energy companies be scrapped. Just imagine what these companies will do if they don’t face even minimal constraints. The privatised water companies in England are already pumping untreated sewage into the sea, Britain is literally sitting in a sea of shit. Meanwhile the energy companies are enjoying soaring profits as domestic energy bills go through the roof.

To a man and woman, this lot are demented pseudo-libertarian nutters who believe that the problems of the British economy are largely due to working class people not working hard enough. Their answer to the cost of living crisis is tax cuts. How can tax cuts for people who don’t pay tax help people who don’t earn enough to pay tax? They can’t, it’s nonsense. Tax cuts put money in the pockets of the better off. Hundreds of thousands won’t be able to afford their energy bills and we are facing a real threat of black outs during the coming winter. The Conservatives promised that their Brexit would deliver sunlit uplands but what they are delivering is unlit slumplands.

Like May and Johnson before her, Truss has no intention of governing in the interests of the UK as a whole. And is most certainly not interested in any idea of reconciliation with that half of the UK that voted remain, or the half of Scotland that wants independence. Truss intends to bludgeon the opposition into obedience. The European Research Group is now in charge. With Braverman as Home Secretary and Rees-Mogg as Levelling-up Secretary, it can indeed be even worse than the unholy trilogy that was Johnson, Patel and Gove. We are about to experience an even deeper dive into the stinkpit of unthinking Tory bigotry. Truss promises a disunited Kingdom weighed down by the hateful uselessness and vindictiveness of what it pleases itself to call a government.

Suella Braverman is tipped as the next Home Secretary, a woman who makes the current incumbent seem reasonable and empathetic by comparison. And you thought Priti Patel was terrifying. Braverman wants to dump the ECHR, she is heavily involved with Freeports and Charter Cities that will be sold off to private firms who will be able make up their own rules and will not be bound by rules on holiday or sick pay, minimum wages, or the right to unionisation.

Jacob Rees Mogg is likely to be appointed Minister for Levelling Up. That sounds like a joke, and indeed it is, although Truss is apparently deadly serious about it. That’s the Rees Mogg who said that he would not serve in any government except Boris Johnson’s. He has also changed his mind about there having to be a General Election if Johnson was deposed as leader and replaced with someone else. See, you ARE allowed to change your mind from a previously espoused political position. But not you Scotland, not you.

Rees-Mogg, who questioned the common sense of those who were killed in Grenfell, is now to be put in charge of the department managing the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission. It is difficult to imagine a more perfect image of this entire chip pan fire of a government than a performative fake aristocrat in a Victorian frock coat being given the job of improving regional inequality. The idea of Rees-Mogg being in charge of levelling up is as bizarre as putting George Michael in charge of driving lessons. Still, as far as Truss is concerned, Rees-Mogg will be ideal for the job since we all know that to this Conservative party ‘levelling up’ means withdrawing much needed funding from deprived inner city areas and giving it to leafy Tory districts like Tonbridge Wells.

It’s only going to get worse in Liz Truss’s Great British chip pan fire. Buckle up. We are in for a bumpy ride. We should all be afraid, very afraid. We deserve better than this shitshow.