That One About Politicians and Their Lips Moving Again: Chris Huhne’s Green Shirts
TODAY’S edition of politicians are not like you and me comes from Chris Huhne:
Households currently pay £89 a year on their bills for the green energy drive, but this will increase every year to reach £280 by 2020, according to the Government’s Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC).
The ‘taxes’ will provide almost £8billion a year towards the £200billion cost of vast wind farms, nuclear power stations, a new pylon network, and to put up solar panels.
But in a bizarre statement, energy and climate change secretary Chris Huhne told the House of Commons that his policies mean consumers will actually be better off.
He said: ‘By 2020, we expect household bills to be 7 per cent – or £94 – lower than they would otherwise be without our policies.
‘Britain’s homes will be cheaper to heat and light than if we did nothing.’
The big lie here is that he’s talking, with certainty, about what prices are going to be in 9 years’ time. This simply is not possible, it’s a gross effrontery for anyone, politician or not, to stand up and try us anything in that level of detail for that far in the future.
But there’s something else wrong with what he’s saying too. You might wonder how energy can be more expensive and yet we’ll all be paying less for it? Well, OK, maybe you too can make the obvious connection: he’s simply assuming that everyone will use much less of it.
The energy you do use will be more expensive because of all this greenery and therefore you will use less of it and so spend less. In short, he’s deliberately making energy so expensive that you won’t use any.
There is another possibility I suppose. Given that the wind doesn’t blow every day and the UK is not exactly blessed with sunshine all the time, perhaps he’s just calculating in that if we rely upon renewables then we’ll be having power cuts all the time? Electricity might have become more expensive but if there isn’t any that you can buy then you’ll not be spending much money on it.
Posted: 24th, November 2011 | In: Money Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
