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Bernard Ingham: A trickle of good news emerges amid a torrent of gloom
AS you may have noticed, I do not believe in always looking on the bright side. I reckon a dose of reality a day keeps the doctor away. So, what, you may ask, am I doing drawing attention to a piece of good news?
Ofwat, the water regulator, has ordered companies to cut their prices by four per cent, or 14, over the next five years to an average of 330. The suppliers had wanted to raise them by anything from 9-17 per cent, plus inflation.
Ofwat, the consumers' friend, says they can't justify that in a recession.
Whether you will feel the slightest benefit from this commendable exercise in restraint is a moot point. But it is much to be preferred to the prospect of council taxes rising above 1,500 a year in band D (from an average of 1,414 now) partly to meet new accountancy rules covering staff holiday pay.
Those of us who pay a lot more than that would have less steam coming out of our ears if we thought councils were there to serve us rather than themselves. I refer to the recycling and rubbish bin jobsworths; the propensity of councils to pay oodles of redundancy money to officials who are then re-employed at enormous expense; and, for example, virtually half of Calderdale councillors taking a 4.6 per cent pay increase while staff are restricted to 0.5 per cent.
You would not imagine that the economy was shrinking at its fastest rate since 1931, unemployment was soaring or that the interest we pay on public debt is going to double in four years – from 25.5bn to 50.5bn.
All that "dead" money will go to bankers, the prime cause of the global recession, before we can spend a penny on ourselves.
There is only one way interest rates are going to go in future – upwards – at a time when the banks are already accused of profiteering at the expense of those to whom they deign to lend.
We are all going to feel a lot poorer before we feel we are even holding our own.
In these circumstances, you might have thought that a government in control of its faculties would be doing its darndest to spare voters unnecessary pain. Instead, just before the predictably disastrous Norwich North by-election Labour threw nearly 1,000 pages of politically-correct White Paper guff at us designed to pile on the prices agony.
I am not saying that this was the reason for their serious Norfolk reverse. Indeed, it almost certainly had nothing directly to do with it because the Government was careful to avoid telling the people they would have to meet every penny of the cost as energy consumers.
Some idea of how we are going to be screwed has been given by uSwitch.com, the independent price comparisons service. Our average fuel and light bill today of 1,243 a year has more than doubled in five years from 580. uSwitch says that if this trend continues – and gas is not going to get cheaper – it will cost us on average 4,185 to heat and light our homes in 10 years' time. But that figure could be as high as 5,000 because, for a start, you have to add on 548 a year for 15 years to pay for the planned 233.5bn energy investment.
Some of that investment is desperately needed – 52.1bn for new coal, gas and nuclear power stations and most at least of the 39.8bn earmarked for upgrading pipes, networks and gas storage.
So, if we are going to keep the lights on and the wheels of industry turning, we are already facing a big increase in energy bills.
But that leaves another 141.6bn of the proposed investment to be accounted for. It is here that the Government – and, to be fair, every other (stupid) political party in this land – is hell bent on fleecing you.
Some 112.5bn is to go on renewable energy – mostly utterly useless on-and offshore wind turbines – another 13.4bn on so-called smart meters whose utility seems grossly exaggerated for political reasons; and 15.7bn on trying to hit unachievable European carbon reduction targets.
All this because our pathetic political class have suspended their critical faculties over man-made global warming, cast the concept of value for money to the four winds and insist we pay for setting an example to a world that will cheerfully ignore it.
Hence my highlighting one bit of good news. Our politicians are determined there won't be much more where that came from.
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Weather for Yorkshire
Friday 25 May 2012
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