WHAT IF?

There’s a game I sometimes like to play when I’m at a loose end that I call the ‘WHAT IF?' game.

‘What If?’ is the result of an over-active imagination and too much free time on one’s hands. The rules of this game are simple. To play ‘What If?’ grab a cuppa, a comfy seat and choose a scenario. It can be anything you fancy from dropping litter to travelling to the moon and back. Now, spend hours musing over what might happen if the world at large did or didn’t do that specific something. What outcomes could arise?

I find that pondering on hypothetically extreme scenarios staves off boredom in retirement as well as providing much needed exercise for those little grey cells that have no doubt gone into hibernation since I quit the workplace. You can make your scenarios as ridiculous as you like such as imagining what might happen if everyone in the world only wore pink spotted knickers.

After the recent energy ‘pants’ cap announcement, I got to thinking with my ‘What If?’ hat on and asked myself this: What would happen if everyone in the world got solar panels? And in my ridiculous scenario, I mean everyone. Every mud hut, igloo, tree house, cave, skyscraper, shack, tent or any form of dwelling/building anywhere on the globe. Stick a panel on it, generate your own power.

OK so that is complete nonsense because not every structure is built to support solar panels but I mean, think about it. What would happen if EVERY house or building in the UK got solar panels?

Let’s see. In just a few minutes, these are some of the far-out hypothetical outcomes my brain came up with:

• Cheaper electricity bills as you’d only pay a standing charge.
• Increased sale of batteries to store all that power.
• Demand of electricity from the grid reduced.
• Energy suppliers’ profits plummet due to lack of consumption.
• Energy companies go bust.
• Ofgem would have to rethink all its policies and pricing mechanisms.
• Standing charges would rocket to prop up ailing suppliers.
• Smart meters would become mandatory by law.
• Risk of cyber hijacking of smart meters.
• People working at energy supply companies would lose their jobs.
• Increased burden on UK taxpayer.
• Rising house insurance premiums due to risk of roof fires.
• Increased pressures on emergency services.
• Increased risk of cowboy solar panel/battery installers.
• SEG payments stopped due to excess power being sold back to grid.
• Grid infrastructure overload.
• Detrimental impact on power station operation.
• UK becomes major exporter of renewable energy to other countries.
• Government’s excessive renewable energy export income reduces taxes.
• Reduced national dependence on fossil fuel imports.
• Less emissions better for the climate.
• Increased solar radiation as protective 'pollution' layer removed.
• Rise in skin cancers.
• Collapse of global economies dependant on gas or oil sales.
• Increased illegal migration as people struggle in countries facing economic ruin.
• Jobs created in UK solar related industries such as panel servicing or battery replacement.
• World’s supply of precious minerals decimated to produce batteries.
• Used batteries create environmental waste hazards.
• Waste hazards impact eco-systems to cause mass extinctions of species.
• Loss of animal habitats due to mining or land given over to solar energy production.
• Rise in artificially created food stuffs.
• Planet and even possibly the moon raped in the mining of precious minerals.
• Global wars erupt over mineral rights.
• Disruption to financial markets due to over-supply of renewable energy.
• Population over dependence on solar energy.
• Lack of research and development on other energy types.
• Re-nationalisation of electricity.
• AI data centres mushroom.
• UK population re-trains in manual trades.
• Government housing target smashed as no lack of skilled labourers.
• Housing market crash.

And the list could go on and on, limited only by your imagination because when you play ‘What If?’ there are no financial constraints or global politics to consider. It’s all in your head where anything’s possible no matter how silly or improbable.

Of course, the major spanner in the works would be the unexpected arrival of a giant meteorite or the death of the sun. No sun, no solar power.

OMG! What if there was no sun? Here we go again.

ENERGY & EPR PAIN

Depeche Mode once sang about ‘a pain that I’m used to’ and this morning’s energy price cap headlines confirmed that pain.

It’s a pain that I’m getting used to at least 4 times a year because since the ‘pants’ cap was introduced back in 2019, all we’ve seen is our bills steadily increasing as illustrated by this fabulous bar chart produced by Bionic.

The 'Pants' Cap

It won’t be long before each bar is consistently over the £2K mark especially if the trend for non-payment of bills continues or supplier’s start going bust as a result of ongoing wars pushing up wholesale costs. Smaller companies that can’t afford to hedge by buying cheaply in advance are going to struggle to weather this storm. Oh yes and naturally, Ofgem will protect them by pushing the cap upwards.

Muppet Miliband’s great push for more renewable energy sources is noble but flawed all the time the cost of electricity is wedded to gas prices. That divorce has long been overdue but I suspect it won’t happen in my lifetime. Any remaining UK industry, already on its knees, will be left without a shirt on its back too before anyone sees sense and de-couples this pricing mechanism.

War is also playing straight into Ed’s hands in that issues affecting LNG (liquified natural gas) are going to give him carte blanche to push up gas bills exponentially especially as the UK imports about 15-20% of the country’s gas supply.

My guess is that what we’ll begin to see on our bills is a continued harmonisation between the cost of electricity and gas. Given time, it’ll no longer be cheaper to have gas cooking or heating because it will cost exactly the same as electric. Good news for UK plc as it won’t need to pay so much for imported gas, bad news for Punter plc as we’ll all be paying through the nose.

Luckily, germinating beans requires zero energy other than that produced for free by the force of the sun’s rays. Almost within days of planting my last lot of seeds, germination has succeeded thanks to a combination of this unprecedented May heatwave and a few scoops of top soil. NO peat-free compost was used in the making of this production!

Hurrah!   Beans have sprouted

Beady-eyed readers may have noticed that instead of using a fancy propagator, I’ve used a re-purposed plastic container following a tasty chicken drummy dinner. And this brings me to a new ‘pain’ that we’re all going to have to get used to – it’s called EPR or Extended Producer Responsibility.

EPR is a new environmental levy about to be foist upon businesses who produce or supply items that create waste packaging. Its intention is that by charging manufacturers for unsustainable packaging, companies will design more recyclable products thus reducing the waste management burden.

Of course, as we all know, any Government levy or tax on business in any way, shape or form is never simply absorbed by companies from their profit margins but is immediately passed down the line to the end user. Expect to see food prices increase to cover retailer’s additional costs of EPR as the Government’s not going to back down over this policy.

So, the pains we’re getting used to: increased energy costs, food and petrol prices, rising inflation and if this heatwave continues – water shortages. 

Get ready for that hose-pipe ban. I can feel it in my water!

SUMMER OF FUN

Woo hoo! A summer of fun! 

Discounted tickets. Free kids’ meals and bus rides. Wahay!

There’s a cost-of-living squeeze that’s tighter than my dowdy denims especially after chowing down on all those holiday cakes/biscuits yet what does this Government do? Rather than address some of the REAL pressures that affect everyone’s lives such as controlling or reducing prices of energy, fuel and food, they decide to cut VAT on the cost of theme park tickets and give kids free bus rides.

Right. So, what about peeps with no kids or who don’t like theme parks? Any help for those punters?

Okay so they’ve temporarily shelved a 5p increase in future fuel duty which is just as well seeing as how the Treasury has been the main benefactor of higher pump prices. What they could have done is immediately cut existing fuel duty by 5p per litre and mandated this reduction across all forecourts instead of leaving it to retailers to pass on which as we all know, they never do.

Alright, so we were given a discount on our energy green levies of allegedly £150 earlier on in the year (April). Well let me tell you how that has panned out for customers of the pink cephalopod.

Green levies are generally part of the infamous ‘standing charge’ that all energy customers pay per day regardless of consumption. With that in mind, if the Government is offering to remove some of the green levies then logically, you’d think that there would be a reduction in the amount payable in daily standing charges because that is where suppliers usually hide these costs.

WRONG!  The pink cephalopod instead applied a small reduction to unit costs. Kerching! With summer approaching and most central heating systems switched off, there is bound to be a reduction in your consumption. So, if a discount is applied to unit rates, how much of that alleged £150 reduction to your bills do you think you’re going to see in your costs after April? It certainly isn’t going to be £150.

If standing charges had been reduced then we might ALL have benefited by the amount proposed by the Government in last year’s budget as energy suppliers could have simply knocked £12.50 off your bill per month until £150 discount had been achieved.

And do I think that reduction to unit costs is going to last right through to year end or at least until I next turn on the boiler? Unlikely because the energy price cap review in July will no doubt push up prices thanks to the war in the Middle East. That £150 ‘help’ off bills is nothing more than a figment of your imagination and clever sleight-of-hand from the Reevemeister.

Let’s turn our thoughts to theme park tickets or tickets to any other attraction that we might be tempted to visit with our little darlings during the school holidays.

When we purchase these tickets, do we ever see a full breakdown of the cost? Does your receipt show the base cost of entry with 20% VAT added on? I don’t recall ever seeing this in the past but then I’ve never really paid attention to it. Without this breakdown, how are you going to know if merchants are passing on a VAT reduction?

Say, for example, that you want to buy a day pass to Alton Towers. Currently, the online price for one of these is around £39 which is quite a chunk of money to pay for a bit of summer fun.

This ticket price would break down as follows:

Cost of entry - £32.50
VAT 20% - £6.50
Total Price - £39.00

Now let’s imagine that Alton Towers is going to pass on the Reevester’s VAT reduction in full. The price of summer fun would now look like this:

Cost of entry - £32.50
VAT 5% - £1.63
Total Price - £34.13 – wow, that’s almost a fiver off!

Ever the cynic, I can’t actually see museums or attractions passing on this discount because let’s face it, they’re having to pay more for energy, wages, etc so what I think will happen in this example is that the basic cost of entry will increase by £5. When lower VAT is then applied, the overall ticket price remains exactly the same. What this means is that the proposed Government discount is being given to help struggling businesses and NOT you.

To test out this theory, I’m going to keep a beady eye on ticket prices of a few local attractions/theme parks to see whether or not their online prices go down.

Again, the key thing about this perk is that the Government has once again left it up to the merchant to pass on the discount. Somehow, I can’t see struggling businesses giving punters reduced entry fees and free kids’ meals (a double discount for families) when they’re being squeezed hard like everyone else.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch. And besides, most kids don’t catch buses because their parents prefer to drive everywhere in their humungous Chelsea tractors in case their legs drop off.

I may sound like an old killjoy but remember - the money to cover all of this ‘free’ summer fun will no doubt have to be found in the next budget so don't be surprised to see taxes going up.  It's a repeat of  'Eat Out To Help Out' and look what happened there.

PRIME SUSPECT

I’ve been away for one week and look what’s happened - the Government’s imploded! Collapsed in on itself like a deflated bouncy castle. What’s this country coming to?

Not-quite-out-on-his-ear Keir is yet to set out his resignation timeline but his days are clearly numbered. More’s the pity as although he’s got the personality of a cardboard cut-out, what this country needs is a steady, boring type at the helm and not some gobshite renegade that will further trash our already precarious economy. If he goes, the chancellor is sure to follow as her popularity is on a par with gloopy semolina pudding.

In bygone times, your neck would have been on the block

Given the choice of the three successor stooges available – Rayner, Streeting, Burnham; a combination that sounds like a firm of dodgy accountants, I can’t see anything but a titanic disaster coming our way. Get your lifejackets ready for the autumn budget. It’s going to be a choppy ride.

Politics has become like football with prime ministers or premiership managers ten-a-penny. What’s needed to stabilise the state of this flailing nation is consistency, not continual leadership changes or in-party bickering. It’s the Tories all over again!

And as for that Zack Polanski, don’t get me started. There’s not enough cyber space available to fill with my thoughts on his crazy policies particularly those on illegal migration. 

Yeah Zack, let’s just open the floodgates to every Tom, Dick or Harry who wants to fleece the taxpayer of every hard-earned penny. We’ll give them all a big welcoming lily liberal hug then shower them with free taxis, hotels, healthcare, etc, etc. Then we can all stand back to watch as this island slowly sinks to the bottom of the Channel under the weight of over-population. Over my dead body. Vote Green? I’d rather pull my intestines out through my belly button!

It’s going to be an interesting political summer for sure. However, of greater importance are my veggies or rather, lack of. Has anyone else noticed that seeds this year are not germinating very well? Even the Ancient Mariner whose fingers are a damned sight greener than Zack is struggling to make any sense of the non-appearance of his runner beans.

Only 4 bean seeds have germinated

My dwarf beans have failed to materialise and the tomatoes I have managed to get to germinate are struggling to say the least. What pathetic specimens! 

Why aren't my tomatoes growing?

The only thing that’s gotten off to a good start are the carrots and chard which are happily thriving outside.

Carrots doing well

Hate to say it but my guess is that this situation is largely due to that awful peat-free compost we’ve been forced to buy in the interests of saving the planet. I’m now mixing my compost with either top soil or soil from the garden in a bid to try to improve growing capability.

I've stuck some new seeds into a tray of dirt positioned on a sunny windowsill. Let’s see if this next lot of beans will do any better now that I’m back to nurture them into existence.