MERRY NHSMAS!

They’ve taken my blood, various body parts and now they’ve had my ideas!  

What better way to end the current year than with a few words on one of my favourite ranting topics – the NHS. 

NHS Christmas message

Aside from chucking more money into a service that really isn’t fit for purpose, for several months now the Government has been trawling the nation’s cranial seabed for ideas that might help patch up ailing health and care services.  A consultation web site Change NHS Online Platform was specially set up for the purpose of gathering feedback from all four corners of the land.  

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-issues-rallying-cry-to-the-nation-to-help-fix-nhs

Move over folks, keyboard commando coming through!  Being a frequent NHS flyer, I’ve had plenty of first-hand experience of waiting around in over-heated, under-staffed hospitals in the quest to find a solution to my long-term neck problem.  I’ve been more than happy to stick my oar in and have lovingly wrapped some of my best suggestions in sparkly tinselly paper ready for Wes to joyfully tear open on Christmas Day.

Specially for you Wes

As I see it, the NHS’s new 10-year plan should not be dumping any more care into the community (we all remember where that got us) or going digital as ill people are quite frankly sick of Apps but should instead be focussing its efforts to come up with the best approach that answers these three patient questions:

• 1)    What’s wrong with me?
• 2)    Can I be fixed?
• 3)    How long will it take?

When we’re not well, these are the key priorities swirling around in our germ-filled, pain riddled, I’m-not-putting-it-on minds.  People don’t want to consult Dr Google, wonder if there’s a cure the health service can afford or wait a millennia to get it. 

Pouring billions into meaningless preventative information campaigns is just a waste of time and money.  People are still going to get sick because some conditions like cancer are still going to happen regardless of how many leaflets are printed or how many ‘teaching granny to suck eggs’ lectures we have to listen to.  Rather than doling out paracetamol and plasters, properly fund hospices or interim convalescence care.  But you won’t, will you? 

Meanwhile, as we sit and wait at least 10 years for what I suspect will be a ‘no change there then’ NHS plan, here’s this year’s specially penned Christmas carol to see out what can only be described as another truly horrible year: 

 

Good King Wes has to go out

Visit his friend Stephen.

Ride the rail replacement bus

On roads that are uneven.

Brightly thronged the ‘Spoons that night

‘Cos A & E was too full.

When an old man came in sight

Lost his winter fu uuuhh el.

 

Merry Christmas readers!

Joy to the world

 

TOILET TRAUMA

Too much information and none of it of any use! Have you noticed how useless Google searches have become? I’m trying to find the world’s smallest toilet for my downstairs cloakroom and searches bring up everything but. If I ask for toilets with short projections of less than 450 mm then that’s what I want, stupid machine. I don’t want to see anything else!!

Roper Rhodes Zest - the shortest projection toilet around

Hang on, I’m probably jumping the gun a bit here. I haven’t set my search criteria into context and that brings me back to my earlier post bemoaning all things ‘broken’ or in ‘crisis’. I want a new look downstairs loo.

Dear Santa - I'd like a new loo

When you’ve got a room the size of a shoebox, there’s really not a great deal you can do with it except look for ways to make it look bigger than it is. One way to do this is to furnish it in light colours or with fittings smaller than the norm. Honey, I shrunk the bog! If only….

Now it seems that whilst houses are getting smaller and smaller, furniture and fittings are not. You wouldn’t generally give much thought to toilet sizes but get the measuring tape out and just see how far your loo sticks out. Whoa! Mine’s over 50 cms. Who’d have thought it!

That's a pretty big bog

In a room that’s only 1.64 m long, having a toilet projecting over 50 cms is going to leave your knees knocking against the back of the door. Not a problem for short arses like me but anyone with long legs is certainly going to find it cosy.

Any bigger and you'll burn your knees

In a world that claims to have ‘everything’ what it doesn’t have is back-to-wall toilets that project less than 45 cm. I’m guessing that’s because anything less would equal a hole in the ground or one of those continental ‘squatter’ type loos. You know the sort – a couple of foot marks on a ceramic plate with an aperture to aim for. Yuk! Brings back holiday memories of stinking pitstops at French fuel stations where this type of toilet was the norm. Hold your nose and think of England every time you wanted a pee. Let’s hope French lavvies have moved on from that…

Phew!  What a stink!

And whilst the search continues for a compact and bijoux bog, I’ve been keeping warm this week by ripping up flooring, chipping tiles off walls and steaming wallpaper off ceilings. My downstairs cloakroom is no more.

Al fresco lavvies trending now

Burnt up loads of calories nipping upstairs for a ‘jimmy’ and shaved a few quid off the energy bill by generating copious amounts of body heat crow-barring plasterboard off.

Tiles off

After the plumber's visit

MERRY GRINCHMAS!

The spirit of Grinchmas is alive and well in our office where the annual SS (Secret Santa) has been cancelled due to lack of funds and festiveness.

This is who I go to bed with these days

Oh well – I guess I really didn’t need any more bottles of lavender bath salts or awful fizzy prosecco in my life so I’m not that bothered but it’s the message these things send out that really gets me. Not doing a team Secret Santa just means that like everything in this life, people can’t be arsed to make the effort. Humbug!!

Finally, our tree is up. Beautifully decorated with an array of hand-sewn baubles made by yours truly, needlework is something I do when not painting walls or smashing out tiles. These days not much time to devote to the former.

The eco tree - only one half lit up

You’ll notice our tree is weirdly decorated with only the top half lit up. There I was decking the halls when I said to myself – can you smell burning? I brushed aside a piece of tinsel only to notice a small flame coming out of a tiny bulb which had melted in the heat. Quick! Turn the power off and call the Brigade whilst I’ve got the mistletoe to hand. Needless to say, not having the second set of lights will be much more ‘eco’ on the old leccy.

Looking forward to Grinchmas so I can channel my inner Scrooge and shout ‘humbug’ at the cat when it’s trying to cadge yet another belly rub as I dart about the kitchen with hot pans in hand. I’m sure one of these days I’m going to trip over the damned moggy and fracture a hip!

What time is the festive feast?

But there’s another reason I’m looking forward to Grinchmas this year and that’s because I’m off to see my all-time Yuletide favourite – The Muppet Christmas Carol as its coming to Brighton.

Coming to the Brighton Centre

For me, Christmas doesn’t truly begin until I’ve watched the DVD and sung along to all those catchy Muppet songs.  ‘There goes Mr Humbug, there goes Mr Scrooge….’  Come on, sing along now.  I know you know this one. 

So, if you’re feeling a little bit Grinchy, just stick this film on. You’ll soon be rolling in good cheer and merriment, looking for an unfeasibly large goose to stuff in the oven and an impoverished Cratchit to donate all your worldly goods to. 

Aaahh - the true spirit of Christmas!

END TO STORAGE

Year end is fast approaching. It’s now only 23 days to Christmas and shock horror, my tree is still not up!

Unlike many of the neighbours for whom Christmas started mid-November, our Crimbo is still firmly packed away in the loft. Sadly, the festive season is way down the list of priorities as all efforts have been focussed on ending the ‘Being In Storage’ crisis.

After 4 years, we’ve finally kissed goodbye to the storage unit. About time too! When I think of how much money I’ve spaffed on keeping my hoarded tat in a secure store, it sends shivers down my spine and through my purse.

I did a rough calculation the other day, it went something like this:

£135 per month x 12 = £1,620 annually x 4 years = £6,480

Bloody hells bells! That money could have amply paid for a new downstairs cloakroom and carpeted the entire first floor. When I’ve watched every penny closer than a peregrine eyeing up a fat pigeon on a cathedral turret, how could such a financial travesty have happened?

Pigeon pie for lunch

I obviously fell into the same trap that all new house buyers do getting carried away with renovations before shoring up the coffers.

This is definitely a BIG money tip to all you first time buyers out there – make sure you blag any free storage going with friends or family before you consider sticking all your precious possessions into long term storage.

Of course, sometimes stuff has to go into storage. Situations don’t always allow for you and your possessions to remain together so a secure lock up can be a godsend but financially, only do it short term. Definitely explore any loft, shed or garage storage options in your new house BEFORE signing your soul away on a long storage contract.

Anyhow, no good crying over spilt milk. The deed was done. Storage served its purpose, helped us during refurbishment and kept our stuff safe and sound whilst we sweated over our DIY projects. The flip side is that now all that lovely cash can be diverted into the ‘I Want To Refurbish The Downstairs Toilet’ crisis which means I can now buy mince pies, a new loo and some gold coloured taps without feeling guilty.

ROTTEN FRONT FENCE CRISIS

Whilst most people are shivering in their flimsy underpants during Black Ice Friday, I’ve been obsessing over the ‘Rotten Front Fence’ crisis.

This rotten old fence has got to go

Unlike this new Labour lot, I’ve prioritised my various first world problems then properly worked out my budget for each one. Since the Government decided that throwing cash they don’t have is the best approach to dealing with issues, then I’m taking a leaf out of their book and doing the same.

The Rotten Front Fence crisis is a fully funded project; the result of a few car boot sales, Ebay listings and raids on pension pots. Every penny scraped together from under sofa cushions or yellow ticket savings on the food shop. (Not beans on toast again!!)

Super scrimping paid for this little lot

An Englishman’s home is his castle and as feudal lady of my country pile, you’d think you could do what you like with your fence but not so. There’s those pesky ‘rules’ no-one knows about until they embark on these projects that always crop up to bite you in the bum.

Would you believe, there’s rules that apply to the heights of front garden fences? You can’t just throw up any old fence said the landscaper. You’ll have to ring the Council to find out how high you’re allowed to go. What! Surely, I can go as high as 2 metres without planning permission? Apparently not out front.

Now ringing the local Planning Department is a lot easier said than done. For starters there’s the problem of actually speaking to a human being. If you can survive the complicated voicemail system repeatedly telling you to use the Council’s website and get through to someone without claiming your state pension first then you’ve successfully passed the first test.

The second labour of Hercules is finding someone who actually knows about planning rules and is not going to fob you off with the promise of a call back that never happens.

Once you’ve gotten through to that person, the third labour of Hercules is being prepared to navigate the complexities of the Planning Portal – a website subject to more interpretations than the Big Bang Theory. Planning personnel appear incapable of answering straightforward questions over the phone and will instead fob you off to this hallowed portal, the answer of planning life, the universe and everything.

Of course, mere mortals can’t get a handle on the vagaries of planning rules and their myriad ‘interpretations’ listed on the Planning Portal so eventually you lose the will to live and resort to paying the £118 entry fee to the ‘Do I Need Planning Permission’ process. I suspect this is what all Councils want you to do in the first place, as it’s a nice little earner for them but a very expensive way to get an answer to the simple question – how high can my new front fence be?

It takes around 15 days to get a response under this process, delays which at this time of year can be critical. Icy or wet conditions can properly scupper your project for weeks.

Meanwhile back on my feudal manor, another dragon to slay. This time its utilities. ‘Madam, it’s your responsibility to get all the gas and electrical services traced as we’re not going to be held responsible for pranging them’ said the landscaper. Really? As I’m not the one wielding the jackhammer then surely you can’t be suggesting that I’ll be to blame?

If replacing a fence, be prepared to spend some time contacting Southern Gas Networks or the Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks to ask for drawings or to request pipe or cable tracing. This service is provided free of charge and a human being will actually turn up to spray paint your driveway/garden to mark the location of any utility assets in the vicinity.

This turned out to be very important since plans showed both a high and low voltage cable was running in the neighbour’s garden about 2 feet from the boundary line and the gas service feeding the meter was running along our driveway on the other side.

Needless to say, after waiting for at least 6 weeks for all this palaver to be sorted out, we are now the proud owners of a new front fence.

Preparing to move the gate forward

The existing garden gate has been moved closer to the front of the house making the side of the property more secure and with a slightly higher fence, a bit more private.

New gate and 3ft fence replaced by 4ft one

Certainly a vast improvement on the old fence and sturdy enough to withstand a good battering from Storm Bert.

Finished just before the storm arrived

LOFT ART GALLERY OPENS

The thing no-one tells you when buying a chalet style house is how poorly insulated they are. They’re continually cold, particularly upstairs where bedrooms are often of the ‘room in roof’ variety and severely lacking in proper insulation-backed plasterboard or other means of heat retention.

Not quite an igloo but bloody cold inside

It’s all down to construction methods and materials used back when these types of homes were built. These days property developers have stringent building regs to comply with when it comes to insulation, back then I guess builders weren’t so bothered about their prospective buyers not being eskimos.

No matter that I’ve just spent a small fortune adding extra padding or boarding, the loft still remains colder than Siberia.

Holy moly or rather holey moly. Sit in your loft with the lights out. Go on, I dare you! You can see daylight from a million tiny gaps around the eaves or between roof tiles. It’s no wonder it’s so parky up here when the place is like a giant slab of Emmental cheese. Brrrr!!!

Almost as many holes as the loft

In the ideal world and with money to spare, it would be worth thinking about pitched roof insulation or re-felting but in the meantime prospective visitors to the newly inaugurated loft art gallery will just have to wear a thick duvet-like jumper or fleecy bed-socks.

Like the Tate Modern but colder

Maybe I should just turn the loft into a giant wine cellar although I doubt any vino laid down in this ready made wine cooler would last long enough to get warmed up by any summer sunshine.

LOFTY AMBITIONS

The sky’s the limit or in our case, the loft is.  Not exactly NASA standards but still high enough for a diddy person like me.  Getting up the loft ladder is certainly one large step for mankind! 

The space race is on to vacate our storage unit before 6 January 25 and whilst this date sounds miles out into the future, in reality it’s only 7 weeks away.  That’s 7 whole weeks of trawling through dusty boxes, sorting the wheat from the chaff to donate, dump or dispose of anything not likely to be needed in our lifetimes.  

Even after 3 years of slow distilling, there are still a surprising number of boxes left in the storage unit in spite of my ruthless culling.  Like gremlins they seem to multiply if you feed them after midnight and who knows what goes on in these storage units in the wee hours.

Now that the loft has been re-boarded it certainly looks more spacious. I started this week sucking cobwebs from the rafters (a disgusting job) and brushing sawdust from the flooring in a bid to tidy things up before getting down to my latest project – creating a loft art gallery.

Loads of space to clutter up

The thing about downsizing is you lose wall space as well as surplus bedrooms resulting in an excess of pictures, posters and photos with nowhere to go. There’s only so many of these you can hang in the habitable parts of the house so the rest are destined for the two walls at each end of the loft.

Hmm - can I do something with this wall?

A couple of cans of bargain masonry paint later and the loft walls are now looking a lot cleaner and spider free than they were a few weeks ago.

Vail masonry paint - an off white/stone colour

The perfect blank canvas for our collection of pictures, posters and photos with nowhere else to go.

All ready for picture hanging

MARS

Mars – the bringer of war, chocolate bar, Bruno or yet another amazing creation by celebrated artist Luke Jerram.

Once again, Chichester Cathedral hosted another of Luke’s incredible planetary art installations and Mars was no less stunning than either Gaia or the Moon.

Gaia - planet earth

The Moon

Wonder in silence at this mesmerising red globe spinning in its ecclesiastical orbit.

Mars - Chichester Cathedral

Ponder on its strange pock-marked exterior, its circular craters could almost have been created by a million pebbles simultaneously hitting the surface of an interstellar pond.

Strangely mesmerising

Beautiful red ambient lighting

What are all these strange rock formations?

Is there life on Mars? And if so, what would they make of all our antics here on earth?

Matt Damon?

I hope Luke will continue on his solar quest and fashion further planets. Imagine how spectacular Saturn might look or a big blue Neptune?

I’m not going to mention Uranus …. No-one wants to see that!

Recommend an evening viewing so if you haven’t already been then please go see it, otherwise catch his next exhibition if or when it comes back again.

Truly stunning

THE 'BROKEN' CRISIS

Funny how everything these days is either ‘broken’ or in a state of ‘crisis’. We’re living through a housing crisis, energy crisis, immigration crisis, climatic crisis and everything from the NHS to the special educational needs system in schools is broken. It’s no wonder people are quivering under their duvets like anxious jellies, ready to jump out of their skins in fright at the latest news headlines. Lately life feels like an endless rollercoaster of fear with humanity lurching from one catastrophe to the next. Ugh!!

Who broke these things? Not me Guv. You could spend a lifetime going round and round in circles looking to point the finger at this or that but you’ll never really find out why it’s all gone to pot.

Life’s been a constant whirl. It’s almost a month since my last post and I too have been lurching from one first world ‘crisis’ to another trying desperately to balance the books for all household projects currently in the pipeline. I sympathise with the Chancellor who is going through the same thing but on a grander scale.

There’s the ‘Lack of Heat Retention Upstairs’ crisis caused by the ‘broken’ loft. The carpenter is up there at the moment busily stuffing joists with Rockwool insulation before fitting new OSB boards in a bid to stem the flow of energy dosh haemorrhaging into the ether from our inadequately insulated loft.

So that's where all that money went

The freshly insulated loft should also herald the end of the ‘Being In Storage’ crisis which has drained more cash out of my pay packet than sewage discharged into Chi harbour. What a money pit these storage places are! In hindsight, if I’d known we’d spend the first three years of our new Chi life using storage facilities, I’d have started by insulating the loft first then refurbishing the rest of the house. Would have saved a small fortune!

Then there’s the ‘Rotten Front Fence’ crisis caused by next door’s invasive ivy, years of underfunded waterproofing treatment and poor installation in the first place. If ever there was something that is truly broken then look no further. It’s only the ivy and copious amounts of Cuprinol slapped on since we moved in that’s holding it all together. I’ve booked the landscapers for the end of November then I can kiss goodbye to another £1,500!

On it's last legs

And finally, there’s the ‘I Want To Refurbish The Downstairs Toilet’ crisis. Imagine peeing whilst squatting on an iceberg – yes that’s our downstairs loo. As cold as a penguin’s chuff. A room that no-one really wants to hang about in longer than necessary except the other half who spends half the day in there reading the Spectator whilst keeping Dyno-Rod in gainful employment.

Time for a toilet tune up

Having taken a hammer and chisel to the wall tiles, the room is now as broken as the NHS Dental service although at least there’s a definite fix for this issue. More about that project in later posts.

I've broken it

So as the festive season approaches, my bank account is emptying faster than Santa’s sack, my patience is wearing thin and the constantly boiled kettle has depleted the National Grid. Soon there’ll be a global tea shortage as I’ll have drunk most of it in a bid to keep my crisis battered self from going completely bonkers!

ENERGY - RANT CONTINUES

Pinch and a punch, it’s the first of the month!

Another day closer to poverty

Pinch on your ever decreasing household budget as new higher energy prices kick in from today and a punch in the eye from your energy supplier because they don’t have to put up prices unless wholesale costs rise but they all chose to do so because they’ve been given carte blanche by Ofgem.

My purse is so bare that even the moths have left as there’s nothing left to munch on!

This restaurant's closed

The energy price cap is supposed to be the maximum suppliers can charge if the cost of underlying gas or energy prices increase as a whole. It’s not supposed to be a mechanism for them to automatically put up prices if the underlying prices haven’t increased but I guess they do. Why wouldn’t you? This explains why collectively they’ve rinsed us all,  making billions of pounds in profits in the process. Bet collective supplier profit figures are never published by Ofgem are they?

Collective energy supplier profits

Today an articled headed ‘Energy Bills rise by £149 for a Typical Household’ appeared on the Beeb web site. This article stated that in specific terms the latest price cap change meant the following:

Gas prices are capped at 6.24p per kilowatt hour (kWh) – (OVO are charging me 6.33 p per unit)
Electricity at 24.5p per kWh – (OVO are charging me 24.67p per unit)

Standing charges - have gone up to 61p a day for electricity – (OVO are charging me 67.53p) and 32p a day for gas – (OVO charging me 34.57p)

What this means for punters like me is that whilst the unit cost has increased only fractionally, standing charges levied by OVO have gone up by around £33.48p per annum.

And what are these  increased standing charges really paying for? Paying to re-hash the National Grid? Paying for the closure of cheap coal fired power stations? Paying for the broken electricity pricing market? Paying for all that free wind/solar power that isn’t connected up to the Grid? Paying to keep supplier companies afloat that shouldn’t have been allowed by the Regulator to enter the industry in the first place? Paying for failed Government policy ie privatising energy when it should have remained in control of the State? Paying for all those people who’d rather buy the latest smart phone than pay their energy bills?

Is it fairer to pay for Government net zero policies from energy bills or from general taxation? A question I often ask myself but never receive a sensible answer to.

Most people would have thought that general taxation should have included an element ringfenced to pay for the nation’s transition to net zero but think about it. Everyone needs somewhere to live (owned or rented) and that somewhere uses energy so a large majority will end up paying an energy standing charge at some point regardless of age or circumstances.

Not everyone pays income tax. In fact, without access to any statistical data, I’d hazard a guess that collectively there are far more energy consumers than there are income tax payers. ONS – do you have any figures? It makes sense for the Government to allow policy charges to be recouped from energy bills because it’s likely to generate far more revenue than increasing general taxation which no-one wants.

People moan like banshees when energy prices are increased but after a few days adjust to the inevitable and just get on with it. Typical human behavioural response when confronted with any change to the norm - most adapt and survive, there’s only a few that go under.

In a few days’ time when all this media ‘furore’ has blown over there’ll be another scandal for the population at large to feel outraged about. Wonder what it’ll be this time? Free KFC given to vegetarian migrants? Keir Starmer’s pants donated by Brillopad? Smart phones that spy on your toilet habits? My boss just called me a lazy good-for-nothing tea-swilling smelly old minger so I’m taking them to tribunal? Whoops, that slip’s going to prejudice my case ….

ENERGY - STRINGS ATTACHED

October is being blown in on a watery wave of squally rain and gusty winds. Temperatures are dropping like flies and I’ve already lit a cheeky fire in the stove to test everything’s working after the sweep’s recent visit.

Not more rain!!

October is not the only thing heading our way. The annual autumn price cap increase is also rearing its ugly head bringing higher energy prices to our doors. Ofgem claims the price cap is a way of protecting us all from unscrupulous price increases but secretly I’ve always thought that the price cap is a way of making consumers cover the cost of energy supplier ‘hedging’ by making us all stump up the extra for their inability to buy cheap energy in advance when wholesale gas/electricity prices are low.

In the same way as I’ve been busy stocking up my Doomsday cupboard with bottles of vino, cheese nibbles and marzipan or packing the freezer with venison and Viennetta ice-cream whilst pre-Crimbo prices are cheaper, energy suppliers should be doing the same. Provided you have the cash, there’s really no excuse for not buying gas or electricity during the summer months when it costs less ready for onward delivery in the winter months.

But that’s an aside, the real reason for this post is not to highlight the inadequacy of these two-bit players in the game of energy but to look at deals on offer by energy suppliers to ‘help’ protect us against price cap increases.

Now my mail box has been buzzing with offers of fixed price energy tariffs from Ovo, my energy supplier but the one thing that makes these offers unattractive is that they come with strings attached rather like an old-fashioned marionette puppet.

Who is being protected - you or them?

Of course, I’d love to fix my energy prices now to prevent having to pay even more in January but to get this benefit, I don’t want to:

a) Get a smart meter
b) Pay by direct debit

These are the 2 strings attached to many fixed price energy tariff deals on offer.

My question to Ofgem or any energy suppliers out there reading this post is simply this – why should there be strings attached for consumers to obtain better protection against price increases?

My own answer is that these deals are being used as the ‘carrot’ to enable energy suppliers to meet smart meter installation targets set by the Government thus avoiding hefty fines if they don’t.

Want to lower your energy prices?

Yesterday I listened to Martin Lewis’s podcast explaining why smart meters don’t work and after reading the last tabloid horror story about how one customer was billed thousands of pounds in error due to faulty smart meter readings then struggled to get a refund, my reaction is sorry but no thanks. You can keep your smart meters, ta very much. I’ll continue to provide my own readings via the online portal.

Always listen to Martin

The second string is not so much a ‘carrot’ for consumers but advantageous for energy suppliers who can pump up your DD extortionately without so much as a by-your-leave. Again, lots of tabloid horror stories about people on the breadline being forced to pay as much as £300 or more per month because their supplier had increased their direct debit.  Then they were unable to obtain refunds for huge credits.

In case you are not aware, direct debits give financial power to the institution who sets them up. They don’t even need your permission to change payment amounts as you when you sign up to a direct debit then you’re giving them the go ahead to make whatever changes they want. Companies are obliged to tell you that there is a change to your DD payment but only cancelling a DD will prevent it from being increased.

Standing orders vs direct debits

Believe me, I’ve been on the phone in tears with past energy suppliers trying to haggle down my monthly direct debit and all pleas fall on deaf ears. They are not interested in how you juggle your household budget.

Standing Order payments on the other hand give financial power to the person who sets them up. In the same way as a direct debit, you can instruct a regular monthly payment from your bank to your energy supplier but it’s YOU who is in control of the payment amount. You pay what you can afford each month NOT what they’d like you to.

Naturally, energy suppliers don’t like this. They want your money up-front. They don’t want customers to pay on receipt of bills or by standing order so the trade-off for retaining control over your financial affairs is that you have to pay more for your standing charges or gas/electricity consumption costs.

The lure of paying less for your energy by having a direct debit may work for some people but not for me. I’d rather keep control of my household budget to live within my means than have money whipped out of my bank account thus pushing me into an overdraft situation each month.

In its recent consultations over the future of energy standing and consumption charges, Ofgem said pretty much nothing in respect of customers who pay up front by monthly standing order. Their attempts to level the charging playing field have focused largely on pre-payment customers but no-one is championing the cause for standing order customers except me. I’ve emailed Ofgem feedback on their consultations until I’m blue in the face but again, it falls on deaf ears. Monthly standing order customers are basically subsidising everyone else’s bills by paying over the odds.

Ofgem - did you hear that?

So next time you receive an email regarding fixing your energy tariff, check the small print for strings attached. Ask yourself this – is it better to pay more but be the master of your own energy destiny or pay less and be an energy puppet?

Don't be an energy puppet!