Heating this winter to become unaffordable?

[JonB]

Some people are getting the idea...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7325309.stm

Especially:

" Committee chairwoman Phyllis Starkey added: "The government's understandable desire to build improvements into future housing has led it to give insufficient priority to action on the vast bulk of the housing stock."

The Local Government Association also called for a national insulation programme, prioritising vulnerable households and part-funded by energy suppliers. "

On the news today the LGA called for hypothecated windfall tax of 50million a year purely for this. Costed, affordable, practical, and can be started today.

The Treasury will hate it.

[jmb]

Shira has asked me to apologise on her behalf for not following up - she's been unable to sit at the computer for long enough to reply, and doesn't know when she will be, but thanks folks for their messages/PMs.

[Ludwig]

No doubt the majority will expect their government to 'do' something.

Incredible, the sheer number of people who didn't expect this or plan for it in any shape or form.

I didn't expect it so soon, I admit - only found out about the energy crisis last year. Like most people who thought about the future at all but who only consulted the mainstream media, I thought global warming was going to hit us long before any energy crisis.

That said, I've always felt profligate energy use was a very bad idea in principle, for both pragmatic and moral reasons. I remember when I was about 20, watching a TV programme about Phoenix - a huge city in the middle of a baking desert, sustained by energy usage that almost certainly exceeds that of many nations - and thinking, "This is going to end in tears."

I find it terrifying how many people go through life with the attitude, "Oh, we'll be alright." It seems to me that complacency is ALWAYS followed sooner or later by suffering and we've had a worryingly long period of extreme complacency.