Summertime blues

As this wonderful summer prepares to make way for the less inviting autumn and winter, a third of UK residents admit to being worried about their forthcoming heating bills. I'm only surprised it is as low as that. Fuel poverty has been on the rise for many years now and was first recognised by the government of John Major which seems a long time ago. The real scandal is that so little has been done to address this problem in the intervening twenty years.

Critics of course point to the age old mantra that "you cut your cloth according to your pocket". This is all well and good up to a point Lord Copper! The harsh reality is rather different. Leaving aside the rest of the population, millions of our pensioners will once more be faced with the very real choice of "heat or eat". Their incomes have not kept up with inflation and nor have they kept up with the spiralling costs of fuel. In my home, we re-opened a real fire in our front room. Had we not done so, I shudder to think how much we might have spent over the last few winters. We were lucky. Not everyone has this kind of option and are faced with the gas or electric conundrum. One of the biggest scandals of recent years has been the way in which internet users are advantaged when it comes to fuel tariffs. I say this because it is well known that many elderly users either don't have internet access or don't understand it. A I approach my second degree, I struggle with the way in which they tie up their deals in knots so that it is nigh on impossible to assess which deal is the best. Standardisation is long overdue. Unfortunately, we can't very well turn back the clock and re-nationalise these companies especially since so many of them are under foreign ownership.

The proportion of net disposable income being spent on car fuel and house fuel is now at an all time high and shows no sign of abating. Last winter, we endured the misery of a broken boiler system and I am glad it is behind us rather than in front of us. The effect on mental health is inestimable. Some would say we have become a pampered nation and to an extent we have. When we had no boiler, we had to adjust our lives accordingly. It wasn't much fun but with an extra layer or two we managed when we needed to. For the non-retired working population, much of this strain on income could be avoided if there was a way to use our cars less. Petrol was £1.18 per gallon when I passed my test 25 years ago. It is now £1.40 per litre (£6.00 per gallon). That is some inflation! A five-fold increase in 25 years is a staggering rise. That said, it is evidently here to stay and, if anything, is only likely to rise. The question therefore, is how to reduce our dependence on our cars?

The town where I live is reasonably rural but only about twelve miles away from the nearest high population. What is surprising is how many people from my town are commuting daily round trips of 80 miles or more. A quick calculation shows that such mileage is costing these people about £50 per week before they start to include the amount spent during their leisure time. Ergo, why are these people not working closer to home? In the age of the internet, we were given to believe there would be an explosion of people working from home. If so, I don't see the evidence. All the roads where I live seem to be permanently clogged up in spite of the spiralling cost of fuel. Meanwhile, the town centres continue their descent towards dereliction. The two seem incompatible. Logic would suggest that now more than ever, we need to be doing everything we can to get behind our town centres. The more they thrive, the more employment they generate. The more employment, the less local people will have to use their car - heaven forbid, they may even be able to walk to work! Thus they will get exercise as well - genius! Or so you might think. As councils up and down our land continue to support the building of new out of town retail developments, they are further exacerbating the impact on fuel poverty. I accept that a town will never be able to employ its entire population but strongly suggest that too little is being done on a local level to promote high street growth. Aside from the positive impact on local employment and fuel poverty, it will also drive community cohesion. As a rule of thumb, people doing their shop at a Tesco the size of a small African country don't tend to take much interest in the person next to them in the queue. In a small town they do though because there is a far higher chance that they know that person. The so called cost savings promoted by these retail behemoths is therefore one of the biggest cons of our times.

If the government of John Major had started the ball rolling and taken sustainable energy seriously, we wouldn't be in the mess we find ourselves today. The big scandal is that the succession of governments since have done so little. The hospitals will once more pick up the pieces of the health repercussions of the "eat or heat" generation and the shareholders of the energy firms will turn up the gas when the wind blows cold.