h/t Breitbart; Boris Johnson’s Green Britain has plumbed new depths of humiliating energy poverty, with the revelation that in 2020 Ovo Energy advised customers to exercise and cuddle pets if they couldn’t afford to heat their homes.
Energy firm blasted for telling customers to cuddle pets and do star jumps to keep warm
Ovo Energy customers have blasted the company that gave out advice like “cuddle with pets” or “hula hoop contests” to keep warm and avoid using heating with prices going up.
ByBen Bloch Tim Hanlon News Reporter
05:48, 11 Jan 2022Britain’s third-largest energy supplier has apologised to its customers after it was criticised for giving advice like “cuddling pets” or doing housework to avoid putting the heating on due to price hikes.
Ovo Energy said it was “embarrassed” at the advice sent out to customers to avoid using the heating amid rising energy bills, reported BristolLive.
The email, seen by the Financial Times, contained 10 “simple and cost effective ways to keep warm this winter”, and they included suggestions like having “a cuddle with your pets and loved ones to help stay cosy” and “try cleaning the house”.
Other advice includes “challenging the kids to a hula hoop contest”, “doing a few star jumps”, and “keep your oven open after you’ve finished cooking”.
The email was reportedly sent to customers of SSE Energy Service, which was acquired by Ovo in 2020.
…
Read more: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/energy-firm-blasted-telling-customers-25910019
There is no doubt in my mind that energy bills in Britain are a genuine problem. Boris Johnson’s green energy policies have inflicted unconscionable suffering on ordinary Britons.
When I lived in Britain, some of my neighbours could not afford to heat their homes – they survived winter every year in freezing cold houses or apartments, by bundling up with warm clothes and blankets, and consuming lots of hot drinks. These people, mostly older Britons who had worked and paid their taxes all their life, and trusted that the government would honour promises to look after their retirement, bore their hardship with fortitude and dignity. The heater always went on immediately when they had visitors. But I bet it went off PDQ when the visitors left.
One day I stopped one of my neighbours as he was leaving his home. The pavements were covered with ice, and he was attempting to hobble out on his cane to walk a mile to the nearest shop for groceries for himself and his wife, because he could not afford a taxi. The pavements were covered in ice because the council had run out of grit – they planned grit supplies based on MET forecasts of a warmer than normal winter. I had already slipped over twice on the ice.
I took care of their needs that day.
Given the inflation busting green energy price hikes of recent years, and the economic impact of Britain’s Covid lockdowns, it must be far worse now than when I left, especially for older people on fixed incomes.
I was fortunate, I could afford to heat my home, I was young and healthy and had a good job. But I could not deny the horror of the thought that one day I might end up just like my neighbours, living out my twilight years in a bitterly cold unheated house, risking my life hobbling across frozen pavements maintained by incompetent local governments, because I couldn’t afford a taxi.
For shame Boris Johnson. You were not Prime Minister on that day I helped my neighbours, but your inhumane high cost green energy policies have made life worse for millions of people who believed your false promise of a better future.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
This is funny. The tables have turned on the usage of the word “unprecedented.”
Sweden to help households as electricity prices soar – ABC News (go.com)
“It’s a crazy situation to be in,” said Hannah Hall who lives in an old wooden house in Kristinehamn, a small town in central Sweden. “I was aware it would be an expensive winter, but it feels unprecedented.”
Hall was billed 10,400 kronor ($1,150) for her December electricity consumption, about tripled the previous year, to heat her 130 square meter (1,400 square feet) home.
Progressive War on the Middle Class: Energy costs skyrocket. The rich don’t care because it doesn’t affect their standard of living in any material way. The poor get decimated, so Progressives will subsidize their energy bill, largely paid for by the middle class. The middle class gets both the bill and to suffer a lower standard of living.
The same logic applies to pretty much every policy put forth by politicians.
It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong. – Thomas Sowell
BoJo and the Tories won election promising to carry out Brexit, unlike former PM Theresa May. Brexit normally should have proven to be a boon to the British economy, free from the onerous regulations of the EU, and able to keep North Sea oil to itself (or share it with Norway).
But BoJo’s nonsensical goals of becoming “carbon neutral” have paralyzed the British economy and led to widespread suffering of the British people without the excuse of World War II that Churchill had during a similar period of suffering, which the British people bravely endured to defeat Nazi Germany. While that was a worthwhile sacrifice, who wants to live in a cold house just to try to cool the climate by a fraction of a degree 50 years from now?
Speaking of Germany, today’s Germany ran into economic decline due to their shutting down of nuclear power plants to rely on wind and solar, the latter of which is in short supply due to frequent cloudy weather and low sun angles. If BoJo were smart, he would take advantage of Germany’s decline to boost his own economy with development of MORE fossil fuels, not less.
The Tories used to be the party of economic prosperity and support for businesses and jobs. When are the Tory MP’s going to realize that BoJo’s “global warming” policies are killing them politically, and have a vote of no confidence?
The same people who cannot see the extraordinary irony of that situation
How was Brexit ever going to be a boon? It was the only trade deal enacted with the aim of making trade harder. The British government decide to leave not only the largest free trade zone in the world but also the customs union all of which means more paperwork and higher tarifs for exporters. The claim that improved trade with Australia would make up for free trade with Europe which is a short train ride away was always nonsense. Plus of course the UK was always able to keep the North sea oil to itself.
It’s a boom by freeing Britain from the suffocating EU regulations.
It doesn’t help matters that it is entirely common for British houses to lack insulation of any kind. This makes them drafty during the winter and far more expensive to keep warm than they ought to be, especially given the fact that winters in the UK aren’t particularly cold.
Mate, try Australia. Insulation here is nonexistent.
The labor government tried to get it sorted a few years ago. There was so much incompetence that people actually died because of their idiotic governance. That takes some skills, causing deaths by trying to insulate people’s houses.
BoJo is an alcoholic. Period
His mind is not, is never, “On The Job”
Check out the front page of UK BBC news right now. His life revolves around booze.
Google him to see a whole string of drunken arguments, with women, extending back for the last decade at least
That amount of booze, any amount in fact, brings on chronic depression, leading to magical thinking but esp the tendency to over-react in otherwise trivial situations. i.e. He panics easily aka paranoia
If that doesn’t describe BoJo’s response to C19 here in the UK, please tell what does.
He and vast numbers around him, cabinet, senior civil servants, MPs, advisers of all colour also alcohol dependant and are thus: Totally Unfit For Purpose
Sack the lot of them with immediate effect.
Again, in parallel with soil erosion, is something I’ve saying on here for years.
Even worse, BoJo’s chronic depression and paranoia affects his pronouncements of Climate Change and what he imagines the UK should do about it
Hiss electric car and heat pump dreams are exactly that = Dreams
BUT, he is Prime Minister and nobody to date has had the guts or the power to rein him in. He is, buoyed up and egged-on by his eco-warrior princess is completely out of control.
If any ordinary citizen behaved like that in any public place in the UK, they would be promptly led away ‘to the cells’ for a few hours to sober up.
PS Maybe someone has already said but the energy company involved rapidly retracted their advice and apologised
no matter, in this case the inability to recognise a party in a garden and “bring your own bottles” will mean booze is the final downfall at No10.
Good riddance Bojo! Couldn’t happen to a nicer person eh?
You would think, wouldn’t you, that high ranking politicians would have advisors to give them serious advice about PR and optics? You’d think.
Eric,
who was the prime minister when you were in the UK? I doubt that Boris was PM when you the events that describe happened? Fuel Poverty in the UK is long standing and a lot of it can be traced back to Thatcher’s privatisation of energy companies.
It cannot be as bad as in the Netherlands. Taxes on natural gas exeed a 100% uplift. Or as in my case I pay 23 ct (new contracts go for over 120 ct) for the gas and 60 ct tax. per m3. Thank God the new gouvernment is considering nuclear power because solar and wind in our crowded little country just consume too much area and are more of a burden than a solution.
“For shame Boris Johnson. You were not Prime Minister on that day I helped my neighbours,”
FYI, thanks to partying with booze, some relief can be had, he is unlikely to remain much longer as PM.
show the lying toad the door, with princess Nut-nutz, and see how they would like to be frozen out!
BoJo is being controlled from behind by his wife, Princess Nut Nut. While everyone in the UK was in lockdown where gatherings of more than 5 people was “illegal” he and her attended a garden party at 10 Downing St with 40 or more people.
The incident is being investigated even though there are pictures available of the event. When BoJo is asked about it he just laughs.
Even more people in the UK are having to chose to eat or heat.
I thought pets were more “polluting” (CO2) than a SUV?
Thing is, though, the Brits have always been a hardy bunch and have always lived cold in the Winter. Thirty years ago, my friends there would turn the heat on a little for guests, and turn it off after. I had a storage heater there in the 90s that only ran at night, when the electricity rates were lowest, and it would bleed heat in the morning. Everyone wore sweaters at home.
Of course, if BoJo wasn’t a moron, he and the rest of the country would welcome a little global warming.
‘Try cleaning the house’- what are you insinuating, Ovo?
The comedian Andrew Lawrence gave his thoughts about Ovo’s advice on twitter @andrewlawrence . Well worth looking out for as long as you’re not of a sensitive disposition. I was going to include a link but I suspect Anthony would remove my privileges.
To keep warm you simply tear up old newspapers and stuff that between your body and your clothes. Excellent insulation just don’t get too close to any fire.