£50 fuel bill reduction

How generous our government is.

After years of annual above-inflation price rises, the government flails around thinking of what to do. Neither the Labour Party nor the government appears to have any clear idea of how to rein in the feral multinationals, nor the avaricious energy companies.

So, erecting impotence into policy, the Labour Party offers 20 months price freeze, should it be elected. The government counters with a £50 reduction in energy bills.

The small print ?

The reduction will be available in full to dual-fuel customers. The rest will get less. And those, like me, who depend on oil through a lack of a gas supply rather than through choice, well, who knows what we will get.

Let's work with the maximum: £50.00. 365 days in most years, so that works out at less than £1 per week, less than 14 pence a day.

Call me Mr Grumps, but that seems a pretty insulting reduction to me. 

Worse. The latest price rise this autumn means that in my bill my winter fuel allowance PLUS the reduction will not cover the increase alone.

The government just doesn't have the will to fix this problem. Look at the years it has taken to wake up to the problem. The Labour Party, too. And what is their big idea ? A temporary one-off reduction of a handsome 14 pence per week.

If the problem is going to be fixed, it will take us, the customers, to fix it.

Here's an idea. If we divvy up the days of the week to a bunch of surnames - eg surnames A, B, C, D take Monday, E to I take Tuesday and so on, we can arrange for each group to live without energy for that day each week. At a stroke we reduce the energy companies take by a seventh. That's got to hurt. Stepping up to two days a week might be necessary. But we could beat them at their own game if we got together.

Come on. Unplug your stuff. Let's take them on. If we don;t, nobody will. That's for sure.