The summer’s over, the kids have only just got back to school and we’ve already received our first ‘nannying’ lecture from No 10.  This time telling us not to waste so much energy!

Gordon Brown has called for us all to change the way we use household energy and announced a £910m contribution to free and half-price home insulation for our homes.

After the huge energy price hikes earlier this year (Gas bills are up 31% and Electricity up 22%), we were at least hoping to see some constraints placed on excessive energy company profits as well as some very real help for those least able to pay the extra cost of heating their home.  It’s clear from Gordon’s little lecture that the energy companies are going to get off scot-free and the unlucky consumer will need to insulate their home first to stand any chance of reducing energy bills. 

For those deemed to be in ‘fuel poverty’, where more than 10% of their household income is spent on fuel, these measures will no doubt prove to be nothing short of totally useless.  If you can’t pay your weekly bills, are you really going to speculatively insulate your house to see if it helps to bring down your costs?  Quite apart from the fact that most of the least well off will be in rented accommodation and therefore dependent upon their landlord to make the improvements.  And how likely is that?

As for telling us to turn down our thermostats, switch off the lights, block out the draughts and close the curtains at dusk to save energy, apart from insultingly ’stating the bleeding obvious’ it sounds to me like New Labour just thinks it’s our problem, not theirs!

What do you think?

Mini-Post by Alan Potts