It’s a big problem for the National Trust, which rents out 2,500 properties – a large number of which are thatched and built with cob and timber. The charity must upgrade them under the net zero rules at significant cost, and many of the properties are listed or else impossible to upgrade to the required standard.
All must, etc etc. But that’s the problem – some cannot. So, what do we then do with old properties – like listed ones – that cannot be brought up to standard?
Bureaucracies simply don;t do nuance, nor do dictats from the centre. Sigh.
You could just burn down all the old fashioned junk.
Or maybe just scrap the rules.
If you figure out how to do this to the rules, please tell me. I assure you the government bullshit in Oz is at least as bad as that in the UK.
“You could just burn down all the old fashioned junk.”
Don’t tempt them BB. The NT regards its properties as an inconvenience and the volunteers inside them as an enemy to be eradicated.
Is this about bureaucracy or intransigent climate change zealots who think every push back to their schemes is “climate denial”?
Although in this case the bureaucracy is probably infested with climate change zealots so perhaps it is them.
The problem is that politicians aren’t the sort of people that think through the consequences of their actions. And mostly because they come to parliament with no experience of it.
Large businesses do a lot of thinking about the impact of a change on customers, but politicians rarely come from a service delivery background. They don’t get the KISS thing that you learn from working in business. So they will come up with some bad solution, and then with every problem it causes, they come up with more laws to fix the last law.
All this CO2 thing needs (if you want to do it) is a Pigou tax, and if it makes the poor too poor, some extra benefits so they can put the heating on. The National Trust can make them more energy efficient, if they want. But the thing is, making old thatched buildings from 100 years ago eco costs an insane amount of money for little gain. It’s like some bloke that drives a Jensen Interceptor on the weekend spending £30K to convert it to electric.
And in general, the point where you go for energy efficiency is at the point where you have to replace a thing. When it needs re-roofing, you are going to be paying a thatcher for a job, so maybe there’s opportunities there.
Please. Not a Pigou Tax. In practice government will just see it as a revenue earner & set the tax level as what they reckon they can squeeze out of the taxpayer. Never give government an excuse to tax.
Tim’s an enthusiast for Pigou taxes. I’ve repeatedly asked him for an example of where a tax conforms to the Pigou principal. Prices in the actual cost & is revenue neutral. I’m still waiting.
I’m just saying what works, not what any particular politician will do.
The duty on petrol is a carbon tax. It’s higher than where it should be, but if your goal is reducing pollution, what is the better approach, in principle? You would either have to ration petrol, or you ban certain classes of cars, or maybe you spend money putting lots of buses and trains on.
Rationing petrol would just mean people who rarely go out selling their ration to their friends. Banning classes of cars would lead to the perverse incentives like CAFE standards. Politicians putting buses and trains on would lead to what happens, which is buses and trains that are actually worse for the environment than putting every passenger in a taxi. And it would all require armies of bureaucrats to administer, which sticking tax on fuel doesn’t.
Airline Passenger Duty is sort-of Pigou, although it’s charged per passenger not aircraft.
“I’m just saying what works”
But BiS’s point is just that – it doesn’t work. There is no example in the wild of a so-called Pigou tax that conforms to the definition.
This is like saying communism has never been tried, because all the attempts very quickly move away from the definition in practice, or never followed the definition in the first place.
It depends on the definition of “work.” They could prevent the advent of a savior by killing every firstborn. That would “work.”
Is it not recorded that they did try that, but the Saviour dodged it and saved us all?
No example? The UK tax on petrol isn’t Pigou? OK it’s higher than it should be, but it is a CO2/pollution tax.
Forget whether you think we need to reduce CO2 or not. If you want to do it, how would you do it, instead of a carbon tax? Banning large vehicles? Banning petrol cars for electric? Rationing of fuel per citizen?
Taxes on fuel were never a Pigou tax and aren’t now even though the govt talks platitudes about climate change. They were always revenue raising. How do you explain red diesel and tax free aviation fuel otherwise?
I’ve repeatedly asked him for an example of where a tax conforms to the Pigou principal.
Hong Kong Central Harbour Tunnel. Transit taxes were used to manage demand, not to raise revenue. Dunno what the situation is now since the Commies took over.
With three cross-harbour tunnels now, the tolls are definitely not designed for sensible traffic management.
Traffic management is performed by the inability to find a cabbie who’ll bloody take you across. So you take the cab to MTR instead.
Tim and Bernie are on the same page. Bernie says, tax rich and productive people. Tim says, tax profitable and productive industries. Either way is a step closer to the ideal of Zero Growth.
A carbon tax isn’t a tax on profitable and productive industries. It’s a tax on producing CO2.
The Northamptonshire shoemakers are profitable, productive, low CO2. The motorsport industry too. The video game industry.
Every industry needs energy but there isn’t a direct link between energy and productivity.
I’m not sure there is a requirement for a Pigou tax to be revenue neutral. Pigou himself said the ability of government to set the tax level to match the social cost is limited. I believe he used the term, “fookin shyte”.
WB, “all this CO2 thing needs is”….. You are doing what Tim has done – tell us we must accept that the lunatics are right and should impoverish ourselves by the most ‘efficient’ method, ie: Stern, instead of simply shouting “you are insane so fuck off” at them.
I’m really just saying that if your goal is reducing CO2, how do you do it best.
The second thing with arguing for a Pigou tax is precisely that it skewers the watermelons and the trainspotters. Trainspotters don’t care about economically efficient transport. They just want their choo-choos. Even if they’re running empty, and everyone else is in grinding poverty to support them. Now, they aren’t going to say that they have a boner for Thomas The Tank Engine, so they say it’s about economic prosperity and the environment.
The value of Pigou is that no-one can defend their boondoggle purely with “denier” talk. Getting into an argument about whether it’s real or not goes nowhere. So, say instead, we 100% agree, hurting Gaia is baaaad. And the best way to stop that is the market finding the most efficient solutions to reducing pollution. Getting Amazon to do deliveries, doing a meeting on Microsoft Teams. New train lines? Tons of money for bugger all savings (if at all).
We’re not at the point yet where we can win on Global Warming Apocalypse is Bollocks. 30% of the public support the utterly insane Net Zero by 2050 thing. 72% are fairly worried about climate change. The key driver will be time. If in a decade, the “science” says that things are getting worse, but it’s still rain stopped play at Wimbledon, more people will see the disconnect between the “science” and reality.
That’s the “give ’em enough rope and they’ll hang themselves” approach. My dad did that with his wife, who insisted on spending his redundancy pay on nice new furniture.
She spent it all and hung them both.
What we actually need is a big, long, cold, heavy-cloud doldrums this coming winter, bad enough actually to turn the power off for loads of people for a long time. Y’know, like the 70s power cuts.
It’s very hard to convince people consuming low-grade news about the problem. Especially when most of them will simply defer to credentials.
I’m not even a “denier”. I don’t know for certain. But things like reporting weather station results from weather stations that closed 60 years ago by ‘modelling’ using other stations is just bad. Using data from weather stations that don’t meet the standard is just bad.
It’ll come to a head when reality bites. The promises of bird choppers making us richer is going to come to a head sooner rather than later. You can’t for long say “we’ll invest in this and get cheaper energy” without getting cheaper energy.
Stand-fast the people in hospital, I’m all about power cuts. Until some people are given it good and hard they just won’t come around.
WB. If you want tax call it tax. FFS don’t call it Pigou. Pigou taxes can be sold as virtuous taxes for the reason they’re Pigou. Taxation can be virtuous. But that has to be proved in each instance.
Fine. It’s a Pigou tax.
They’re not virtuous because they’re Pigou. They’re virtuous because they’re about pricing in externalities, which is the least bad way to address externalities.
We’ve had an initial sample of Net Zero with Trump’s war on Iran. Petrol up from 127p to 159p.
It was about 182p in Cornwall in August 2022 …
185p (June 2022) here in the leafy home counties. And that’s at a ‘cheap’ filling station, I’m sure more expensive was available. Current price here is 157p, but all my tanks are full 🙂
Once, I drove from Suffolk (where I had filled up at Sainsbury’s) to Harrogate (where I filled up again at Sainsbury’s).
Me: “Why is Sainsbury’s petrol more expensive here than in Suffolk?”
Yorkshireman: “Because, mate, you have to come farther to buy it. That’ll be…”
I remember 2022 or so scare stories about going over 200p and “needing to upgrade signage”. Checking my spreadsheets I paid 186.9p in July 2022.
We’ve had nothing but denier talk for decades though. That’s the entire way it works. Question whether this multi trillion dollar project including impoverishing anyone is worth the 10 kilos of CO2 it will save over 1000 years – you’re a denier.
Climate change is all about the puritanical aspect. The maximisation of one single metric. No tradeoffs, no 80/20, it is all about total and complete submission to one goal, at any cost.
…politicians aren’t the sort of people that think through the consequences of their actions. And mostly because they come to parliament with no experience of it.
Even if politicians are the sort who think through consequences, the civil servants will do their best to prevent changes they don’t like – eg ‘it’s against departmental policy’, ‘it would be costly’, ‘it would delay x’, and so on and on, relentlessly…
1) “It’s against departmental policy”. So, the minister can’t change that?
2) “It will be too costly”. So the minister can’t say “shut the fuck up and do it”
3) “it would delay x” and if you look at it and see that’s nonsense, the minister can’t discipline them, fire them for being useless?
Either, ministers are lying OR despite being the supreme executive power, they can’t change the state of the civil service. Are we saying that? That the Prime Minister lacks the power to, if necessary go as far as closing down a whole department and sending them their P45s if they’re fucking useless?
Ministers are lazy, disinterested in executive oversight. They like spending their days travelling for hours for a photo op of them at a train yard wearing a hard hat, rather than looking at rail delivery stats and kicking people in the bollocks for failure. Then when it fails, they blame the civil servants. And OK, maybe the civil servants fucked up, but it’s your job, as minister to be on top of that. “How many miles of HS2 track did we do this month?” and if the answer keeps being zero, but it’s supposed to be 2, you kick the guy in the bollocks. After a few kickings, you send him to the gallows and find a new guy. It’s going to be 7 years late at least. It only took Brunel 6 years to build the Great Western Mainline with hand tools.
I’ve heard all of those ‘excuses’, as an observing advisor/consultant. Another one is the very subtle threat of a bullying accusation. The civil service can wear down even quite determined ministers – who, apart from their ministerial brief, have to manage their staff, their constituencies and local parties, keep up to speed with events and government policy….The civil service is the permanent government and out of control. Any policy that overturns a civil service policy – eg Brexit – will suffer the death of a thousand qualifications.
Remember how Maggie secretly lined up extra reserves of coal so that when the miners decided to do their thing they couldn’t blackmail her or the country?
I reckon something similar needs to be lined up – alongside a lot of other things on day 1*, like the ability of a minister to fire civil ‘servants’** on the spot – a reserve army of troops to step in where civil ‘servants’ refuse to obey orders or just get fired. There needs to be a shadow civil service in place. God alone knows how that is to be achieved, and maybe the mere threat of it will be enough. But, obvs, those fuckers need to be shown the back of my hand.
*assumes the Greens and Labour don’t do a deal and/or that the Revenge Arm Party of the British people are for some other reason once more kept away from office.
**servants in the sense that the Dirk Bogarde character was in that film with James Fox.
Yes!!
Remember how Maggie secretly lined up extra reserves of coal so that when the miners decided to do their thing they couldn’t blackmail her or the country?
My memory is that it wasn’t so secret, it quite hard to hide all that coal at power stations.
Maybe you’re referring to the plan not to pick a fight with the miners until they were ready? It wasn’t just about the miners, they had to neutralise Aslef not only by getting the coal stocked at the power station but also by making secondary strikes illegal.
Precisely, Theo. I have also learnt this first-hand.
“I’ve heard all of those ‘excuses’, as an observing advisor/consultant.”
What did the minister say about departmental policy? Did he say “oh OK” or “fuck this, we’re changing policy?”.
“Another one is the very subtle threat of a bullying accusation.”
Unless someone commits a crime, people can shut up. Don’t like it in the civil service department, fuck off. If you want to make a criminal accusation, there will be a trial.
“The civil service can wear down even quite determined ministers – who, apart from their ministerial brief, have to manage their staff, their constituencies and local parties, keep up to speed with events and government policy”
If they’ve got staff, delegate. Have someone who does the surgery with Mrs Miggins, takes down details and tries to solve it. Cut out all the useless crap like state opening of parliament. There’s a half day you can have back.
It’s all possible. You just need people with the strength and the will to do it.
It’s all possible. You just need people with the strength and the will to do it.
Yes – and a lead from the top!
Perzactly. When my roof was end the end of its life, *that’s* when I stuffed it full of insulation when I replaced it, putting extra roof lights in as well reducing ‘leccy for lighting usage. When my windows were past patching up to keep them from falling out, *that’s* when I replaced the whole lot with double glazing. In timber, proper sliding sash windows, as the building warrented. When I got fed up with restarting the boiler every morning, *that’s* when I replaced it with the most efficient I could afford on the date of installation. You don’t rip out perfectly good systems just to replace them.
Yep. When we moved in nearly 16 years ago the guy who services our oil boiler swot it was very old but could last a while. He recommended waiting until it failed and he’s being saying that every year since.
Because servicing it is easy money?
Our Potterton gas boiler predates our living here, so over 30yo. I asked the fitter who services it every year whether I should think about replacing it. His answer was that if he could have any boiler he wished for, it would be a Potterton: “They’re bulletproof, and parts are still easily available.”
I would simply grant an opt-out. The criteria for that being whether it would be loss-making to get through the planning and then installing versus the increased rental value from a lower energy house. And let the owner decide that, erm . . .
Ah, but think of the cost of getting that opt-out. The bureaucrats would need to be consulted on each one with application and committees deciding on the applicability of each, followed by the appeals process where the lawyers could get their customary cut.
I was thinking of a simpler system:
A bit like the Justices for Tax application form for a Mark of Fair Tax
Bureaucrats aren’t known for wanting simpler systems. There is nothing in it for them.
As a recent study discovered, those who
investedwasted thousand of pounds installing heat pumps and improving their insulation simply go on to use more energy than they did before because their properties are now more ‘efficient’.To nobody’s surprise because that’s what happened with lighting, for example. The production of cheap to run LED lights means we can have more and better lighting for longer.
BiND, No matter how efficient things have become, I still cannot get out of my head my Dad saying “turn the bloody light off, stop wasting juice”
Addolf, I know what you mean. I have a couple of LED light strips in my carport which I leave on at night now in case I get a call or want a late night smoke. 12W, costs about 10c a day even if I never turn them off. But the ghost of my father won’t shut up about it!
My dad was the same, always complaining about having to follow us around turning off lights.
Oddly enough, I seem to have inherited a regressive gene from my dad that makes we want to behave like Warden Hodges
“It’s like Blackpool illuminations in here!”
But it is also the case that LEDs are far more efficient (about 75% less energy). You can be quite wasteful and not be turning out LEDs as you leave the room and it’s still more efficient than incandescent lights.
There’s obviously something to Jevon’s Paradox, but not that simple. I’m quite green now. Not because I’m a treehugger, but just the incentives in other ways got me there. It’s nice that I am saving energy getting wine delivered instead of driving to Bristol, but I mostly do it to save £10 in fuel and some time. And I might add another bottle to my order. But the extra bottle isn’t close to the energy of driving a car.
I’m also in to getting my wine delivered, its not just the cost of driving in to town. There’s the time element but I also reckon the I can get better quality wine for the price I pay in Tesco even on their best club card discounts.
Tesco wine, with a few exceptions, is not good quality – eg Tesco Finest Signargues Cotes du Rhone Villages. Generally, Aldi, Waitrose and Majestic are much better.
I think the public have been so indoctrinated some of the footsoldiers actually believe all this crap. I think it’s important to realise that most politicians are very stupid and will believe something as crass as global warming but someone like Miliband is off his head and should be-I was going to say padded, but on reflection-locked in a room with 18″ iron spikes in the wall…
AIUI, landlords can register for exemption if:
1. Mandatory improvements (e.g., solid wall insulation, new windows) would unacceptably alter the building’s character or appearance.
2. The cheapest recommended improvement exceeds the £3,500 cost cap.
3. The improvement would reduce the property’s value by 5% or more.
Still a damnable nuisance, but I’m sure the NT “climate emergency” fanatics will enjoy the processes…
That’s encouraging Theo, but I thought the cost cap was £15k?
You may be right; but the exemptions above are for listed buildings only…
Yes, and how much money will they spend registering and defending it against the bureaucracy’s attempts?
I don’t really have a lot of sympathy for them – they’re choosing to live in a building governed by a bureaucracy, so it would only be a matter of time before they have problems. Rather like Steve Irwin’s death, sad but inevitable.
Though I don’t live in Britain so I don’t have any idea how much of a “choice” this is. Perhaps the whole area is “protected” and there really isn’t an alternative.
…how much money will they spend registering and defending it..?
It’s not the cost but the time. One of my properties is Listed Grade II and in a Conservation Area; another is in a different Conservation Area. I wanted to shape a medlar tree*. All trees in CAs are protected; and a neighbour who dislikes our gardener suggested he would report him if we didn’t get permission. So we applied and there was no charge. But we had to complete a four-page form, describe accurately which branches were to be removed, take and edit photographs and draw a diagram. All that took a few hours…and ‘just'(!) six weeks later we had permission.
* Chaucer refers to the medlar as the “open arse tree”…see image for the reason…
Mandatory improvements (e.g., solid wall insulation, new windows) would unacceptably alter the building’s character or appearance.
Between tenants when I was doing general refurbishments I dry-lined the thin walls in my flat. I had a Enviro-wotsit survey, and they downgraded it because of the solid walls. “But those walls are dry-lined and padded with insulation”. We don’t know that, gov, we go on visual inspection. So, regardless of all the works you do, youre certificate will still reflect the structure of the building, not the reality of it. It’s like measureing poverty, the measurement is of the base state before you hand over wodges of money, so the wodges of money make no difference to the declared measure of poverty.
We don’t know that, gov, we go on visual inspection.
Would they have accepted a ‘certified’ contractors invoice?
So the cunts were unable to tap walls with their knuckles, then?
They’re government-sector workers, so yes they’re that thick?
They have rules they have to follow in the (IIRC) rdSAP system. If they can’t actually see it (like they can by sticking their head in the loft to see the insulation), or see official documentation (e.g. installer’s certificate), then they aren’t allowed to include it.
it’s a load of crap, it’s been complained about since … well when it was introduced. And it’s going to be changed. Unfortunately, I have a feeling the new system will be worse !
Then explain to me how it was that in my 12-apartment 60s block, one of the least-improved flats has an EPC C partly because of its cavity walls? In a block with solid walls? EPC assessed by a chap called Mohammed.
What if the government tells you to do something and you just ignore them?
I mean in general. While not as bad as Germany, we do still have a surfeit of idiots who think “rules are rules”, and busily do stupid, pointless or wasteful things even tho nobody is actually pointing a gun to their heads.
But what if we treat them as suggestions instead, like speed limits and COVID lockdown measures? The regime doesn’t need policemen if you put one in your own head.
Ignore their “laws”. Use a VPN. Burn tyres. Deny everything and force them to prove everything if you’re caught. Two Tier Kier and Ed Miliband are not legitimate rulers and we don’t have to render unto them if we can get away with it. Since our courts no longer apply laws to immigrant rapists, anti-Semitic saboteurs and Black Lives Matter rioters, they have no moral authority to compel you.
Just Stop Obeying.
Using the police to enforce apartheid in South Africa resulted in a culture of contempt for the law, which remains very much alive today.
What are rules?
Rules are generally agreed-upon guidelines, instructions, or principles that prescribe how people should behave, act, or proceed in specific situations in order to ensure safety, order, and fairness…
Step.Away.From.The.Dictionary
Why? If meanings are fluid, communication falters and then collapses.
That aspect of rebellion is going to be removed at the corporate / device level.
For example, Apple lost its legal fight with the UK government and had to compromise. So although your iOS device itself doesn’t have a backdoor for Sir Kier to sniff, the encryption used for syncing to your iCloud / Apple Account is much lower grade than the rest (currently) of the west. Your data can be intercepted, or accessed from Apple’s servers.
No doubt as an unspoken part of the settlement, Apple has jumped the gun and enforced operating system age verification on UK iOS users. If your Apple Account is less than 18 years old and you don’t have a credit card associated with it, you have to scan in a driving license or a limited number of other government IDs. Without this your iphone reverts to child-mode with highly restricted web access, settings control, plus (client side) monitoring by Apple.
(And as if by magic, a really, truly horrid nasty hack has emerged where your iphone can be compromised just by visiting a webpage. Only cure to this major worldwide security danger that should defo have an emergency dedicated patch? Install IOS 24.1 which has age verification and client side spyware (even if it isn’t yet activated in your country))
Do not think that Android phones will be different. Age verification is also coming to personal computers. It seems almost certain that it will also come to VPNs, at least commercial ones.
The internet as we know it will be gone by 2030. You’re either going to be monitored by the government or you’re going to have to swim in the shark infested waters of nerds, hackers and criminals.
Fuck.
That aspect of rebellion is going to be removed at the corporate / device level.
For example, Apple lost its legal fight with the UK government and had to compromise. So although your iOS device itself doesn’t have a backdoor for Sir Kier to sniff, the encryption used for syncing to your iCloud / Apple Account is much lower grade than the rest (currently) of the west. Your data can be intercepted, or accessed from Apple’s servers.
No doubt as an unspoken part of the settlement, Apple has jumped the gun and enforced operating system age verification on UK iOS users. If your Apple Account is less than 18 years old and you don’t have a credit card associated with it, you have to scan in a driving license or a limited number of other government IDs. Without this your iphone reverts to child-mode with highly restricted web access, settings control, plus (client side) monitoring by Apple.
(And as if by magic, a really, truly horrid nasty hack has emerged where your iphone can be compromised just by visiting a webpage. Only cure to this major worldwide security danger that should defo have an emergency dedicated patch? Install IOS 24.1 which has age verification and client side spyware (even if it isn’t yet activated in your country))
Do not think that Android phones will be different. Age verification is also coming to personal computers. It seems almost certain that it will also come to VPNs, at least commercial ones.
The internet as we know it will be gone by 2030. You’re either going to be monitored by the government or you’re going to have to swim in the shark infested waters of nerds, hackers and criminals.
And don’t expect Nige to help.
We have a surfeit of curtain-twitchers who will shop you…
My reply to this “disappeared”, which has my tin foil twitching.
Expect two if it is undisappeared.
My invisible reply focussed on the problems of resistance to restrictions on electronic communications, as touched on in Steve’s post. Maybe my CIA connection isn’t enough to get me past the filters . . .
It’s interesting that the coulro-establishment is so desperate to control what you can say and see on the internet, no?
Not a mark of confidence.
Worldwide, too. There’ll be no remotely convenient way of getting around it.
We choose one of those old buildings – preferably the biggest. Then we herd into it the Guilty Men, then we set it on fire.
If we can’t do it literally could we at least do it metaphorically?
What if climate change will stop if we sacrifice Two Tier to the nature gods?
Only one way to find out
Perhaps we should try Albo here in Oz??
You what?!
Timber, cob and thatch are really good insulators, far better than brick or slate. And windows in very old houses are smaller.
But old houses have draughts because the joinery was crap or has warped over time. Fixing the draughts is not a multimillion pound project.
The NT is simultaneously talking out of the side of its mouth and out of its arse. Just put a sock in it.
Older houses need draughts for ventilation, especially in the UK’s damp climate. They’re not supposed to be Tupperware boxes turned petri dishes. Look at how much trouble was created by people thinking cavity wall insulation was a good idea.
“Ventilation, ventilation and ventilation!”, as the nudists say…
As Sir Sidney says in Carry on up the Khyber
“All personal equipment should be kept clear of dust and rust and allow the free circulation of air.”
Which was is you?
Or were you behind the camera?
Neither. Naturists are nutters.
A bit of black mold just thins the weaklings out of the herd.
About 30 years ago I visited some friends who were living in MOD accommodation in the UK. They had a terrible mould problem in their bathroom which they attempted to cure by warming the room with a paraffin heater burning 24 hours a day. I tried explaining why this might not be a good idea but the advice fell on deaf ears.
Thatch is an excellent insulator. Properly maintained, I believe it can match a slate roof with loft insulation. Cob, however, is a poor insulator but an excellent provider of thermal mass – ie it stores and releases heat rather than preventing heat transfer. The brick and stone walls of one of my houses are two feet thick: once warm, it stays warm with relatively small inputs of heat, but leave the heating off in winter and it can take three days to take the chill off the rooms.
PS my Listed grade II Georgian 3/4-bedroom 2 bathroom terrace with gfch has an EPC of F. My c.1845 3 bedroom cottage with 2 bathrooms with double-glazing and (inherited) ashp + solar array has an EPC of C. The former costs c.£1600 pa to heat & light; the latter costs c.£3400 to heat & light – because electricity is so expensive!!
But they aren’t on the clipboard of the assessor drone.
Let’s face it, the least energy-use dwelling is one occupied by very robust people with good nightvision who like to eat raw. But there’s nothing on the clipboard that includes sleep with the windows open, boiler’s broken and leccie’s not even connected. By rights that should get an A++.
EPC’s are also a potential killer for what’s left of our small to medium manufacturing base that is somehow still standing despite ruinous energy costs (and the often ignored sky-rocketing insurance premiums due to the disproportionate increase in materials and other reinstatement costs).
Having been in the industrial and commercial property industry for half a lifetime I now reckon around 75% of units will fall below a C rating in 2030. It has already been an absolute nightmare getting 20th century stock up to the current minimum E rating. There’s only so much you can do with double glazing and sodium lighting. Many people believe the government won’t come down hard on non-compliance. Maybe that’s true but they won’t need to as new and continuous occupation cannot be legally granted without the magic certification.
It’s as if there’s a concerted effort to sabotage our industrial base through over-regulation and counter-intuitive economic policies.
There is a good piece doing the rounds where the excellent Konstantin Kisin refers to the madness of slightly reducing the UK’s already irrelevant contribution to global carbon emissions (well under one per cent) by outsourcing manufacturing to countries with far inferior environmental practices and then incurring the cost and undeniable pollution of having the goods shipped back to us by oil-guzzling tankers.
It’s as if there’s a concerted effort to sabotage our industrial base through over-regulation and counter-intuitive economic policies.
Well, duh. They don’t have any plans for you to still have a country anymore, I think it’s pretty obvious the regime in Westminster is the enemy of the British people. We’ve known this since we found out they were sponsoring the mass rape of working class children by Muslim gangs.
Sooner or later, as the socialist ratchet tightens, they’re going to try to force you to do something you cannot do, and demand you pay sums of money you don’t have.
They’ll force you to rebel, or die.
So why wait?
Would that concerted effort be by traitorous, internationalist communists (but I repeat myself) by any chance?
In next months local elections the batshit crazy greens, who stand four-square behind the destruction of British industry ASAP, are going to win a shedload of seats even in areas without an opportunistic (and temporary) Muslim block vote.
They’re not international communists, they’re homegrown (and more pertinently state educated) Brits.
I keep saying we should ban the Greens.
They will do the same to you if they take power. People don’t have the right to organise to burn down our society, and should not be respected for doing so. Just ban the Greens and use their hate speech and anti-extremist legislation against them to jail their leaders and terrify their activists.
It’s a lot nicer than helicopters.
Banning the Greens won’t make the Green ideologists go away: it would make them only even more irate and self-righteous…and more violent.
Rarely, when the commie mind-virus dominates the popular mind, the helicopter solution is the only workable solution. But we are still a long way from that – yet.
They’ll just rename.
What you have to do with Greens/Corbynites is to go after the source of wealth. And that is big government. Civil servants want people like Corbyn to win, so they get bigger pay rises, so will support him. Annihilate their jobs, government spending. People have to get private sector jobs, they’ll soon want smaller government.
It’s why the Tories are such utter wankers. They couldn’t figure out that huge government meant funding their opponents. Burning large amounts of the state to the ground and handing money back to workers would see a right-wing party get a huge popularity boost.
The Green nonsense is why we are short of oil and refining capacity here in Oz.
As you’ve guessed, when it was suggested that Albo give the nod to trying for a new oil field in Queensland, he said we must go through the proper channels.
“Sooner or later, as the socialist ratchet tightens, they’re going to try to force you to do something you cannot do, and demand you pay sums of money you don’t have.
They’ll force you to rebel, or die.
So why wait?”
It comes down to timing. We’re in that difficult period where it may be too late to change things (2029 might be the last roll of the dice) but it’s still too early to shoot the bastards*
Those who start agitating against the establishment now will get the book thrown at them for trivial offences and the jails will be purged of murderers and rapists to make room for those who rail against the government.
So, essentially, until the numbers are far in excess of the governments ability to cope with through anything short of martial law, it’s still too early.
Any democratic government that uses martial law against its own electorate has already lost the plot anyway, since declaring martial law is a coin-toss.
It would turn parts of the UK into a re-enactment of Belfast 1969.
* – Claire Wolfe
I’m not saying go outside and throw shit at Two Tier. I’m saying we need to stop the mindset of trying to make Clownworld “rules” work, or debating shameless liars like Two Tier or Miliband, and look to how we can put a stick in their spokes at every turn.
These people are not our political opponents, they’re our enemies. They will leave you dead in a ditch without a pot to piss in if you let them. The attitude of the Reformquista must therefore be: nothing they do is legitimate, everything we want is mandatory. Why? Because we can’t compromise with people who want us impoverished, invaded, and stripped of all rights to speak freely. We tried being good boys who respected institutions, it got us nowhere.
I do expect to see more civil disobedience (hopefully peaceful!) in the lifetime of this parliament. But in the meantime, let’s not forget that Britain doesn’t just need a change of the party in government, we need root and branch regime change, Truth and Reconciliation, and vigorous criminal prosecution of the people who have brought so much poverty, misery and rape to our shores whilst filling their own pockets. Every debt must be paid.
Those who start agitating against the establishment now will get the book thrown at them for trivial offences and the jails will be purged of murderers and rapists to make room for those who rail against the government.
What, like now? Obvs, don’t do anything stupid. But they put a man in a cage for saying “It’s OK to be white” so the hour is pretty fucking late.
“Fuck off, Beaker” should be engraved on our hearts. That’s the attitude required in our desperate national circumstances. Rearranging the deck chairs in Downing Street won’t save our country, only a radical break with the failing status quo can do that.
It was interesting the other day seeing a clip of him looking nervous as a crowd shouted and seethed “traitor” at him. It seems to me that he is so utterly loathed that he’s going to find it difficult to lead a normal life again. If it turns out he’s used the courts to quash what should be public information in order to protect his political position, he may have to leave the country.
It seems to me that he is so utterly loathed that he’s going to find it difficult to lead a normal life again
Let’s hope so. Remember the Left thought it was hilarious to throw milkshakes at Nigel Farage?
Two Tier and co. deserve to be publicly humiliated, because they’ve inflicted terrible harm on our country.
In a helicopter on a short flight, one hopes.
Good!!! I was afraid you were going to send him here!
The Irish have been doing some ‘civil disobedience’ = blocking ports, lorry go slows blocking motorways, tractors and Semis parked up in Dublin. The the government sent in the Garda and the military, just like Canada without the bank accounts being frozen. And not one word on the MSM in the UK, I wonder why?
Don’t want to give us any ideas obviously……….
p.s. some vehicles were given diplomatic immunity and allowed through – Guinness delivery lorries.
So, what do we then do with old properties – like listed ones – that cannot be brought up to standard?
You can’t upgrade it; you can’t rent it out; you can’t sell it; eventually you can’t use it for anything. So it becomes a stranded asset which decays until it falls down, perhaps helped on its way by an arsonist.
That seems to be the standard procedure, anyway.
The Downland Museum is a possible use for a few of them, but the only solution for the rest is to pretend that they don’t exist so the army of clipboard-wielders don’t need to inspect them.
The clipboard-wielders will be happy to dodge the extra work!!