Going blue with cold over the green cost of keeping warm

VERY important advice has recently been issued about keeping warm this coming winter by urging people to heat their homes adequately to prevent some of the thousands of avoidable deaths which occur each year from being cold. Phew! After reading this advice it will certainly ease my worries, I don’t think.

The Cold Weather Plan for England says people should keep their homes warm, with living room temperatures of 21ºC and the rest of the house heated to 18ºC, as below this level of heat “may risk your health”.

The plan was issued by Public Health England (PHE) in collaboration with the Department of Health, NHS England and the Local Government Association which said there are “too many deaths each winter”, with over 24,000 each year in England and Wales.

Dr Paul Cosford, director for health protection at PHE, says that it is essential in cold weather to keep yourself warm.

Most of us very clearly understand all of this; most of us have no difficulty in operating the heating thermostat; most of us know that a fire, of whatever kind, makes us feel nice and snug and comfortable. What makes us worried sick and takethe risk of being too cold, is worrying how we can pay the bill when it comes through our letter-boxes for the energy we have used.

A survey of 2,000 people showed that paying this winter’s utility bills topped the poll as the nation’s biggest money fear with “green taxes” seen as totally unfair, unnecessary, an abomination, and imposed to satisfy a minority. And, if we are worried now, the future is much grimmer, as green subsidies, which are currently £2.35bn per annum, will rise threefold to £7.6bn by 2020-21 and by simply astronomical amounts by 2030.

Those landowners operating wind farms, who already receive hundreds of thousands of pounds of income each year through subsidies, are members of a very favourable club who are not worried about their fuel bills.

Perhaps I am being premature in criticising this latest advice; perhaps there is a second, imminent report informing us how to deal with the coming energy bills; perhaps we will be told the Government will pay; 
or a fairy-godmother will do 
so, or we will just wake up 
and realise all these added “green” subsidies have just been a bad dream and will be immediately refunded, and the world isn’t ending after all. I do now, however, believe that cloud cuckoo-land actually exists.

From: Trev Bromby, Sculcoates Lane, Hull.

REGARDING greedy power companies, it seems no one admits, or realises, that the newly-imposed standing charge dwarfs the 10 per cent increase being gobbled up by the big six trough-dwellers. What can our present leaders do?

1) They can show some initiative, then order a freeze and/or reduction in power charges forthwith.

2) Start up a government-backed power company and undercut the trough-dwellers – thus putting them all out of business.

This returns power to the people through the back door. That will sort out gas and 
electric.

Then, start a fairness campaign against the money-guzzling water companies.

From: H Marjorie Gill, Clarence Drive, Menston.

WHY do some people scorn the idea that wearing warm clothing and other practical activities are necessary?

As the earth’s resources are finite, surely it is extremely suitable to explain to people that they can’t dress for the weather they wish it to be?

It is still within living memory that few people had central heating and in those days 
women wore warm underwear, thick stockings, petticoats, blouses with either a twin-set or perhaps a hand-knitted long-sleeved jumper underneath substantial woollen jacket and skirt.

Men, of course, wore long-johns under their trousers and singlets under their shirts and suit jackets. Most people wore long coats outside as a matter of course.

From: Sue Cuthbert, Newton on Rawcliffe, North Yorkshire.

WHEN this coalition Government came to power, did I imagine something said by David Cameron? I seem to remember him saying that “the vulnerable will be protected”.

One of the first things done by this Government was the reduction of the pensioners winter fuel allowance of £125 per person to £100.

Their excuse was that the extra £25 was only a temporary measure and that the Labour government would have done this anyway.

Now that fuel prices are going sky high, will they give us pensioners our £25 back?

One of the next things done by the coalition was the reduction of tax paid by the rich to 45 per cent. Really rubbing our noses in it!

It seems to me that the rich, the powerful and the damn well greedy are being protected at the expense of “the vulnerable”.