A view from past times …

 

 

Let’s talk about electricity supply! It provides a fine study on spin and nudge. It demonstrates how TPTB are trying to make palatable yet another instrument of controlling us.

Now that the covid fear propaganda has run its course, now that Macron and Putin have apparently convinced Ukraine to go back to the negotiating table that is Minsk II (paywalled link), there’s the looming disaster which is the rise in cost of living. While the Sunaks of this world juggle their promises, trying to give us back a tiny amount of our money which they’ve extorted from us, TPTB have come up with a nice little bribe in order to make their push for ‘Net Zero’ more palatable.

Here’s how this has been spun by the electricity industry, OFGEM and the MSM which are too cowardly to question this green-blob policy: they’re nudging us into accepting those ‘smart meters’. Recall how anyone who uses electricity in their homes has been bombarded with appeals to install one. Our suspicions that these meters would be used to switch off electricity to households were pooh-pooh’d.

But then, a couple of days ago The Sun reported the latest bribe by the energy form ‘Octopus’ which wants their customers to install the last-generation smart meters (link). Then, the Financial Times reported yesterday that:

“British households will be offered financial incentives to limit their electricity use during periods of peak demand in a two-month pilot scheme to test how consumers can help balance the grid and potentially reduce the need for new power stations. National Grid ESO, which is in charge of managing Britain’s electricity system, is working with household supplier Octopus Energy on what is expected to be the biggest study of its kind into the role domestic consumers can play in helping to balance electricity supply and demand.” (paywalled link)

Ah yes: let the ‘consumers’ show their willingness to accept Net Zero, supporting the reduction in electricity use, by bribing them to do so! “We” must become ‘more flexible’ to keep electricity supplies running, especially since “we” will have to use more electricity by switching off our gas boilers and by running more electric cars. This is how it will be done:

“Hundreds of thousands of households will be paid to ration their electricity usage at peak times amid Britain’s cost of living crisis. Up to 1.4million customers of Octopus Energy will be paid to cut their normal power consumption at certain two-hour periods during the day, including 4.30pm to 6.30pm, from Friday. Officials want to try to reduce the pressure on the electricity grid and limit the amount of new capacity that needs to be build as demand for electricity rises.” (link)

Note that this is about avoiding to build ‘new capacity’ for electricity generation, at a time when ordinary people will need more of it – electric cars, anyone? Instead they try to bribe people to participate in an experiment to consent to control by smart meters by promising ‘free electricity’! And before this ‘flexibility trial’ has even begun running, here’s how government is ‘helping’ the electricity suppliers to achieve control anyway:

“Smart meters are to automatically send energy suppliers half-hourly updates on their customers’ power use in a revolutionary move that will allow “surge pricing” in millions of households’ bills. The energy regulator Ofgem will be granted legal powers in May allowing it to change the way smart meters operate, so that information about usage is sent to suppliers every 30 minutes by default. Suppliers will be able to use the data to change consumer energy prices as much as 48 times per day, allowing them to charge more at peak times.” (paywalled link)

In plain English: bribe 100,000 electricity customers with ‘free electricity’ in a first trial to find out if people are willing to switch off their electricity ‘on command’. Then permit ‘by default’ those meters to send back usage information to allow suppliers to charge more at peak times. Customers who at the moment can ‘opt in’ to these half-hourly usage reports would have to ‘opt out’ – relying on people’s general unwillingness to fiddle with tech set-ups.

It gets better. The industry and Ofgem spokespeople acknowledge that this might end up penalising people for using electricity during peak times, such as “watching television, boiling the kettle or charging gadgets at popular times such as mornings and evenings” (paywalled link) but hail this as the perfect solution to ‘reduce waste’ in household electricity usage, ‘saving billions of pounds per year on all consumers’ energy bills’ while giving priority to industrial users of electricity. And there are more hi-tech ‘solutions’ to look forward to:

“Ofgem believes the changes will save all consumers money and spark a revolution in how power consumption is managed, potentially leading to peer-to-peer energy trading, gadgets that turn on at certain times and the use of electric car batteries to store household power – or sell it back to the grid.” (paywalled link)

Let’s make all those stupid customers waste time and money on more gadgets -run on expensive electricity, one presumes. Let them monitor their usage themselves and try to press out an extra quid or two out of the electricity suppliers’ pockets! They’ve accepted to have their private usage monitored already: result! Didn’t we warn that this would happen? Weren’t we told that no, it wouldn’t?

We’re being ‘nudged’, ahem: ‘sold’ into submitting to more invasion of our privacy, this time by letting government, Ofgem and electricity giants know every thirty minutes about what we’re doing. The most important sentence is right at the bottom of this report:

“The changes do not affect people with standard meters.” (paywalled link)

How long will it be until even the most stiff-necked customer, clinging to their standard meter, will be made to succumb as, in the name of Net Zero, people are bribed to accept their chains? Why does nobody ask why, when our appliances are already energy-efficient, when for example we’ve installed energy-saving lightbulbs everywhere? Why does nobody ask why those ‘savings’ don’t seem to matter all of a sudden?

Isn’t it in fact not about private people privately saving energy as best they can, but about controlling us, making us ready to accept electricity rationing, switching off electricity supplies? Will they stop at that or will we next get food rationing in order to combat obesity?

Most people won’t mind, thanks to tiny bribes taken from what they’ve already paid. Most people have already shown they are eminently willing to be ‘nudged’ into accepting freedom-restricting measures because ‘we’re all in it together’, rules are rules and never mind that the rule-setters will surely be ‘exempt’, again.

As for me – I think I’ll advertise my ‘service’ as ‘private energy consultant’. It should be a nice little earner. After all, the Foreign Office has just paid £467,000 to BAE ‘consultants’ to deal with ‘a hack’ (link, link paywalled). I’ve got many ‘tips’ on how to survive with minimal energy usage, from heating to electricity.

I learned them from my great-aunts and grannies … but that was ‘before smartphones’ …

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