JamesPa

Sadly it wont. You can't possibly allow facts and figures spoil an ideological argument, or an opportunity to bash the government whatever the colour, or declare civil servants incompetent. For the avoidance of doubt your argument in incontrovertible, but apparently that no longer matters.

The problem is that they usually stay just on the right side of the strict letter of the law. And thus they will always find a defence and difficult/impossible to pin down. Ive met people like this (I expect you have too). I agree its a Government problem, but thats not the same as being the fault of the Government if its not solved. Its the fault of the scammers and it costs us dearly, whether because of unsatisfactory deliveries or the additional cost of ensuring deliveries are satisfactory. Many problems aren't soluble and this, I fear, falls into the category of insoluble problems. The best we will ever do is keep the lid more or less on.

They bother insulating their houses, We dont (or at least didn't until recently). I suspect thats at least relevant! Which is not to say a heat pump cant cope with an uninsulated house, it can, but just like any other heating it will cost more in this case.

I am sure governments do accept that however it's almost impossible to design a scheme that is incapable of being scammed without having a parallel set of skilled people to supervise every single installation, which would be horrendously expensive, impossible to staff and still not bomb proof. Scammers are very adept! It might actually help if we, the public, stopped blaming government for crimes committed by others and instead started laying blame at the criminals. Until we do the criminals can continue to get away with the perception that the crime is victimless and that it's ok to rip off "the government" (which of course actually means us). The exception I would make to 'stop blaming government' is when there is cronyism involved. That is simply inexcusable.

Not the subsidies that are crap, it's the ! Some human beings will take any opportunity they can to rip off fellow human beings, and doing crap work for government is regarded by many as a victimless crime, much like insurance fraud. If people were half decent things would be much better, but they aren't.

Interesting that the more favourable ratio is principally because gas is much more expensive not because electricity is substantially cheaper! That wasn't what I was expecting nor the popular perception in the UK.

True, but market leading (which is why I signed up for a year). Eon next drive v5 was similarly market leading. Others didn't follow so guess what, eon have cut their lead (to the point where it may even make sense for me to instal a battery). Twas inevitable unless others followed, which they didn't. Good while it lasted though! My guess is that rates will be all over the place for some years, as the companies continually readjust to shifting demand patterns. Eventually they will settle down when demand stabilises in a more or less fully electrified model. That's 20+ years hence and, in the meantime, customers who are flexible will be rewarded. We live in interesting times!

..., and that pretty much sums up the policies embraced by the baby boomers, who are also BTW predominantly nimbys (sofaik) that stop almost anything happening like eg building houses that people desperately need, or infrastructure the country needs. They also cancelled defined benefit pensions (whilst still cheerfully collecting them for themselves) and voted heavily to leave the EU, which pretty much everyone now accepts has done the UK serious economic harm. They now benefit from the triple lock whilst arguing aggressively against any tax rises. Their views also dominate what much of the media say. For the avoidance of doubt I am ashamed to say I am a baby boomer (albeit without the defined benefit pension). I am proud also to say I didn't support much of the above. The upshot of that is, if budgets penalise that group (within reason) to benefit others in society, I cant morally oppose it even though its contrary to my personal interests.

You are forgetting that enrolment into a pension became compulsory some years ago so that won't count as salary sacrifice. Salary sacrifice is widely used to reward high paid people who can afford it. It's a tax dodge (actually I think an employers ni dodge) which is now rightly imho being closed.

I would go totally the other way on this. You have a very limited amount of an essential resource which others currently supply freely. Save yours until you really need it!

I think you have misunderstood this. It applies to pension contributions by salary sacrifice only and what she said is that they would receive the same treatment as any other pension contributions. The devil is in the detail but I think this targets more wealthy people eg bankers bonusses

My understanding is that its not quite that simple. The infrastructure upgrades required are mostly (in cost terms), I am told by someone who should know and who is I believe trustworthy, in the local distribution network and are not to support windfarms but to support electrification more generally. The same person also tells us that there is on average (over 24 hours) roughly sufficient capacity even in the local network which, if we were to manage use better would vastly reduce the upgrade cost. But the electricity/infrastructure companies don't want to do this because they want the profits from the upgrades and thus this is what they lobby for This is, I guess, the inevitable result of privatising a natural monopoly. I dont know to what extent Government is in a position to change this, given that we rely on private investment for so much of our infrastructure, but I also suspect that the public will help out and thus reduce the total cost by buying batteries and when V2G becomes practical. Windfarms and solar are an insurance against despots. Whilst we are dependent on a small number of petro-states for energy they are in a position to control us. At present they are choosing not to do that, because it suits them to keep us hooked on burning fossil fuels. They are dead scared of renewables because anyone can generate energy so they lose control. Nobody in their right mind, IMHO, would remain dependent on a small number of largely despot states for energy once there is an alternative. Better to invest now while we can, rather then regret it later, at least in my opinion.

... this one is going to develop into a crisis because the proportion of pensioners is growing as the population gets older. Eventually something has to give unless we accept higher levels of immigration to bolster the working population, a proposal which is economically sensible but hardly flavour of the month!. There is no way round the fundamentals though, so it will have to be faced. Otherwise all that can happen is a steadily increasing tax burden on an ever smaller working population. Moves to tax unearned income more fairly will of course help a bit with this despite the furore it causes! Unfortunately as you rightly say its political suicide. How that is resolved escapes me entirely. I literally cant see a way unless a government that knows its going to lose the next election makes a bold step to get their opponents out of a hole for the long term benefit of the country.

ECO4 seems to have been a bit of a disaster so perhaps its not such a bad thing that its been scrapped! Its a shame to reduce subsidies for insulation though, perhaps they intend to take the time to work something up which is more robust or alternatively just put pressure on landlords to upgrade (at their own expense) as presumably a high proportion of poorer households are renters. Actually thats already baked in I think to the RRA and the requirement that rental properties are EPC C or better from (date I cant remember). It will be interesting to see how this develops. Ed Miliband looked very pleased during the budget speech so clearly he doesn't feel 'got at' as some suggested he might. 10 pages of discussion on this forum based on a 'leak'. Was it even a leak or just the newspapers making stuff up to sell their bile? SAtarting a rumour is dead easy.

Mine arent bolted down. Unit weighs 125kg so isnt going anywhere in a hurry!