Yet another irresponsible Daily Express 'article' about how to save energy. This time you could save '£1100' a year

[cakeorwine]

You know the score. An expert sends them information. They don't read it. Or check it. They just print with click bait headlines. They never learn.

So this time it's fridges (again) and replacing your gas central heating with plug in electric heaters.

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Research carried out by a company who shall remain nameless suggests households swapping from gas central heating to a plug-in electric heater could save a household £21.91 per week, amounting to £1,139.32 a year.

Its experts said: “At a cost per room of £1.19, it could still be cheaper for you to heat up to 19 rooms, each with its own plug-in electric heater than to heat your whole home using gas central heating.”

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I don't even get what they are saying here. What kind of plug in heater is this? Is it thermostatically controlled? What if you have them in every room?

And then the fridge again.
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As an example, the average weekly running cost of a fridge freezer, an essential item, has leapt from just under £10 a week last year to now cost over £17 a week on average.

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Fridge freezers have never cost £10 a week, That would be £520 a year.
And they definitely don't cost £17 a week - that's £2.40 a day. 8 kWH a day. 2920 kWH a year. Which is the typical UK energy consumption of electricity in a house.

Typical fridge freezers use 300 - 400 kWH

I know, I know. Don't read the Express. But people do. And some people will believe this stuff.

It's irresponsible.

I feel another complaint again - but what's the point if they keep doing it?

@cakeorwine why do you buy and read such a vile racist BS rag?

Anyone who buys the Express, and even worse, believes anything they print, deserves all they get TBH.

It is irresponsible but Mumsnet is full of shit rubbish also, people need to only look at proper websites for this sort of thing like Which.

I can't see anything racist and vile about the article though.

Same as on here really.

No I get it OP. Yes, we know it's shit but it's a still a paper. And outright lies shouldn't be allowed. We need a proper press. Honestly about 90% of the issues in UK politics in about the last 50 years are because the press hasn't done it's job.

I don't buy it. It's online.

I take a look to see what people are being exposed to. It's always interesting to see what other people are reading and how they are forming their views.

Even hypothermia and food poisoning?

Cakeorwine is doing heroic, though Sisyphean, work here. The question is how to move beyond whackamole on individual articles to actually get someone at the top to issue an edict saying "you need to do better than multiplying X by Y and printing whatever bollocks shows on your calculator as long as it's a big scary number." The time may have come for an Independent Press Standards Organisation complaint. And a letter to More or Less.

Do you think maybe someone talking shit on a forum is different to a national newspaper publishing spurious advice though?

It's irresponsible when the press (and people do read it and believe it) publish false information like this - it gets people to turn off their fridges and God knows what their heating advice means

It is Whack a Mole.

And then they appear in other papers.

As in this Hello magazine one

www.hellomagazine.com/homes/20221121157636/the-household-appliances-using-the-most-energy/

Fridge and freezer - £3.26 per day
On average, fridges and freezers will account for around 13 per cent of your household’s energy bill, according to Energy Saving Trust. The average fridge/freezer will stay on 24/7, with a wattage of 400, using around 9.6 kWh of energy per day.

Which is wrong on 2 levels - either it uses 13% of household energy or it uses 9.6 kWh per day

No it isn't any different, these forums and SM are there for the clicks so the more rubbish posted on them the better for them. People turn to forums and SM more for advice than newspapers

The thing about MN is that if someone is talking bollocks a more qualified person will probably come along and tell them it's bollocks, and usually get backup. Even if the thread ends in a score draw any reader will realise that this is disputed territory. Printed news stories, or even online ones, carry a spurious air of authority, and they're not meant to just make shit up.

I'm also absolutely certain that if someone was saying the same bollocks on MN then cakeorwine would be on their case in a trice. The fact that bad things happen in two different places doesn't mean that you should just shrug either of them off.

Ahh the little heater that supposedly heats up a room. If you watch these things on YouTube it’s basically a hairdryer in a different box 500watts usually. So if a heater of 1000watts heats the entire room in 1hour. the hairdryer would take 2 hours and still cost the same amount of cash to do it. Garbage

I agree with you OP. A big issue is since 2010 saw cuts across government, councils and other bodies (thanks, Tories!) the amount of reliable, proven public info has reduced, leaving even more of a vacuum for the bullshit papers like the Mail and Express to fill.

Most of what they print is unsubstantiated garbage but their readership view them as an authoritative source.

That's what I think it is - and I have seen those YouTube videos. Having 1 in each room would be expensive

Also they could be put together just a little bit better, not the best engineering