To think in a cold damp climate there is only so much we can possibly change?

[SamBeckettslastleap]

Fuck you Jeremy.

I have layers I have hats, we have covers on the sofas to hide under. I'm not even cold with these measures.

But the house is damp, every morning I am wiping water and mould. I've had to put the heating on to try and stave it off.

Don't tell me to cut down my meagre use when your friends light tennis courts and heat swimming pools.

"We as a global population need to move away from fossil fuels urgently, especially coal, or most of humanity will suffer, sooner than we think, due to climate change. That is science, not ideology. We cannot control what China or Russia do but we can control what we do. And it can make a global difference: the rampup of solar energy demand in Europe through subsidies did bootstrap the demand for solar panels from China that are now being installed all over the world."
So China wins again, eh? They can pollute as much as they like, whilst making and flogging solar panels.......win win for them?
And in dull damp old Britain, sodding solar panels don't work well in winter. Many, many of our homes in the Uk are old, very old. And designed to standards of the day that they were built. In order not to get damp problems, they actually need a howling draught running through them. They were designed for open fires (preferably old fashioned coal) for heat, with the added plus of the fires pulling air through for ventilation. Insulating them without causing other problems is difficult if not impossible. Whilst I don't dispute man made global warming, there is also very much the possibility that we are in a warming cycle that we have no control over either? Didn't the Romans grow grapes here centuries ago? And when the cycle turned to cold, didn't the Thames freeze over regularly?

I'm not saying that we shouldn't do what we can. Turn the thermostat down a bit and all that. But it's unrealistic to think we can make that much of a difference when other much larger countries are not playing the game. And I'm sick of paying for all the green crap that isn't really green. Like smart meters. You have one if you want to, your supplier will install it for free. But it isn't free, we are all paying through our bills. Me, I'll stick to reading the old dial meter and keeping my ancient brain in shape by doing some maths.....

Plus they're whinging on now about how "unproductive" people on long term sick are! Errrrm... If people are constantly cold and not eating as much nutritious food then they're more likely no have health problems aren't they f*ckwit? Plus tories have succeeded in their quest to underfund the NHS for decades - do you reckon that might have impacted long term sickness too? 🤔

"Never mind that, shut up and go to work! And put on a jumper too, while you're at it".

QS90 my local radio has been telling me all week how gardening and cooking clubs are going to bring down the NHS wait list by nearly a million next year, so all those cold longterm sick just need to wait for a club.

Another brilliant strategy from the winning minds that made Britain what it is today.

I bet Putin is laughing in his sleeve at this. He knows he can't drop the bomb but he sure can switch the gas off and watch us all freeze.

Faster adoption of renewable energy will enable us to wean off expensive polluting fossil fuels. It will absolutely save us all money in the long run, and slow down climate change. Net zero is absolutely part of the solution not the problem.

Sorry for anyone in cold houses with mould. It's a disgrace in 2022. I am furious with the govt, the energy companies and their shareholders.

How so? My renewable energy from bulb has gone up just the same as everyone else's. The cost of wind must have gone up 🤷‍♀️

@Cassillero I said in the long run. It costs money to build wind turbines and solar farms, but the costs should definitely decrease over time. Unlike coal and oil where you have to keep finding new sources

@Cassillero electricity in UK gets priced at the “marginal cost of production” which means that so long as we need some amount of electricity from high-cost sources, all electricity cost ps that much.

what should happen right now is that low cost generators should make very high profits and reinvest them into new low cost capacity, ultimately driving the high cost generators out of business.

While this is happening we need government to tax people who can afford it (like me) and use the proceeds to subsidise energy for people on lower incomes. That is unfortunately not what they are doing. But the fault lies with tax policy, not the drive for more renewables. Prices would be even higher if we had not built out so much wind and solar.

While this is happening we need government to tax people who can afford it (like me) and use the proceeds to subsidise energy for people on lower incomes

I don't necessarily agree with this. In Scotland for instance, they seem to class anyone earning circa £45K as wealthy. Realistically, many families earning that or not much over are already going to be struggling to pay their own heating bills.

Also, I bought the oodie, several pairs of leggings, several pairs of thermal socks and the fingerless gloves. In total, it cost me over £150. Not just a matter of pulling clothes I already had out of the wardrobe.

On top of that, the thermal blanket was a frivolous spend a few years back (it matched the new colour scheme of my living room). If I’d had no money, I wouldn’t have bought it - I barely used it until this year.

Therefore, in my case I only have clothing/equipment allowing me not to feel cold with the heating off because I as a reasonably well off person could buy them (also I’m single - I only needed warm clothes etc for one person).

I know that cheaper versions of the things I bought are available but if people can’t afford even the cheaper versions, what are they supposed to do?

A dehumidifier uses energy so will warm the room, also whenever moisture condenses it releases energy (latent heat). So for every watt of energy your dehumidifier uses you get much more in return in the form of heat. It's a really efficient form of heating.

My elderly PIL who can actually afford to heat their home are sitting in the cold in fear of these terrible headlines about energy rises. There will be many people like this. Please stop.

They aren't in SA.

I've just read in the Daily Fail that there is going to be a £25m public information campaign to tell us how to cut down on energy use. FFS. More of our money wasted. These millionaire politicians are so out of touch it beggars belief. Do they think we aren't all cutting down already? Too far in some cases, we've already got people in freezing moulding houses and the winter hasn't started yet.

I can't believe people fall for this propaganda. We had an energy crisis long before the Ukraine war and the Government has used the war as an excuse as to why in the 21st century we are going to be having blackouts and to blame for things like rampant inflation (which was caused by too much money printing and the Tories privatising everything for their own profit so we are reliant on foreign countries for absolutely everything).

The Government could scrap green taxes, start fracking, open up coal mines, build new nuclear power stations but they don't because they are completely ideologically driven to the cult of net zero. They would rather people freeze now and life is miserable for the majority so that at some mythological future date there might be some sunlit uplands (but only for the children of the rich and powerful). In the meantime, nobody seems to be highlighting the fact that in order to produce wind turbines, solar panels and lithium batteries, a lot of very climate-unfriendly activity is needed to dig up rare earth metals, meaning lots of mines and child slavery going on. It's all nonsense.

Many people on this thread are either trying to be careful already or just can't afford energy bills so have so have cut back to the absolute minimum. However, there are obviously many people out there who are on average or high usage.They need to look at a tiered level of billing, eg say first 150/200 electrcity units pm at a lower rate to help everyone, anything else over a higher rate than it is - hopefully that'd encourage those using more to cut back. Vulnerable and elderly could still be supported to a certain extent.

I agree. What are they actually proposing? Don't they think we would've done these things before? I'm not prepared to be cold, in my later life. I had a comfortable childhood, Dh was cold. He says he refuses to spend his 50's and 60's being cold.

The way he's framing it as "use less energy and stick it to Putin" is so bizarre. As has been pointed out in this thread, energy pricing was an issue long before the Ukraine invasion so jingoistic "take that russkies!!" rubbish is such a transparent ploy to wriggle out of taking responsibility.

Check the backs of your wardrobes and under your beds. I’ve lost clothes to mould in the past when I didn’t put any heating on at all.

I don't know if it's that great, I think they have it on the Cranbrook estate near Exeter and have had nothing but problems with it.

I am a home owner and am not immune from problems with mould. Leaving windows open a crack does help and we have dehumidifiers in some rooms (the plastic ones with the toilet cleaner-like thing in them that collect water, not electric ones).

Also did a meter reading this morning and it was the first one since we put the heating on. Hot water was costing around £25 a month in gas. This month we've used £100 of gas, that's an hour a day for hot water and 4.5 hours a day heating.

This is ridiculous, £25m on a campaign to tell you how to be cold the right way 🤦I wonder if those proposing and writing the campaign are sitting in cold and damp and mouldy offices doing so?! Or if part of that money goes towards heating the offices they're working in to keep them nice and toasty?

There's another thread at the moment running about tenants not heating the property enough and therefore there's a mould problem - regardless of the ins and outs of that particular issue, this is going to become an issue for tenants and LL's and I can foresee LL's writing clauses in about minimum heating requirements - discounting a lot of people who can't afford it from renting some properties, that should help the housing crisis.

And when there's a load of people saying their houses are damp and mouldy from taking the advice to put a jumper on and turn the heating off (and of course those that don't have a choice) we'll have been doing all that wrong too according to the government.
They're just so used to making decisions that benefit them and shit all over the rest of us, and then swerving any responsibility by claiming we're all lazy and don't try hard enough they're actually starting to believe it.

We set our boiler to the "eco" thermostat setting. We had been keeping it at 17 degrees but went away for the weekend so lowered it to 14. Came back and - after two nights - there was black mould starting to grow around every window in the house, plus some patches on the walls around the windows.

It's actually in our tenancy agreement that we have to "keep the house heated to a constant (unspecified) temperature to prevent mould".

So yes, while we are reducing our heating usage compared to last year (last year we had the thermostat at 19-20 degrees most of the time iirc), there's only so low we can go without getting mould, breaching our tenancy agreement, and harming our own health and belongings.

And that happened on a weekend when we were out of the house, so not cooking, not drying laundry, not breathing out water vapour all day and night...