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Downing Street has suggested people who are struggling to pay their energy bills should consider wearing jumpers to keep warm during the winter.
When asked whether the prime minister thought people should put a jumper in order to spend less money on heating, a spokesperson for David Cameron said: "He is not going to prescribe the actions that individuals should take but if people are giving that advice that is something that people may wish to consider."
The high cost of energy has become a key battleground between the coalition and Labour ahead of the general election in 2015 - after Ed Miliband pledged to freeze prices until 2017.
The prime minister's spokesman made the suggestion after energy secretary Ed Davey said he was sure some people did put on extra clothes to keep their bills down. He told BBC Newsnight on Thursday evening: "I am sure people do wear jumpers, I wear jumpers at home."
"If you insulate your home more you can turn your heating down," he said. And he encouraged people to switch providers if their bills were too high. "They can switch, we have sen a big increase in competition under this coalition government. There are some really big savings to be had out there."
Responding to the jumper suggestion, Miliband said of the government: "Their crime policy used to be ‘hug a hoodie’. Now their energy policy appears to be 'wear a hoodie'."
I've gone through several winters in this country with no central heating, it's really not that cold and you save a lot of money so it's actually pretty sound advice I would say, if a bit obvious.
Well i guess most of the time it's not the advice itself, but more from whom it comes. If rich guys like Cameron tell people who basically live on pocket change to put that good old jacket on it's quite cynical.
Yes it's utterly condescending, but it's not straight out of Cameron's mouth, I think it's a little bit of a case of overreporting.
Really though the main issue is that wearing an extra jumper isn't going to do anything for those that really do run the risk of dying from the cold in winter - the elderly.
Who have a special winter fuel allowance to deal with exactly that.
Yet thousands still die every winter due to the cold, apparently!
Yeah but those people don't contribute anything to the economy. Just like the disabled, and pretty much every group of vulnerable people the government is apparently supposed to 'protect'. Fuck 'em.
You think tories are deliberately killing off the old as part of a campaign against those they see as weak? That's some pretty strong rhetoric there. If you didn't have some evidence to back that up people might suppose you were a total donkey.
Haha, people might be right. That's not what i'm suggesting, but i am suggesting that vulnerable people are right at the top of the money cutting list, for exactly the reasons i've described, they contribute less to our economy, so they are a bit more expendable than others. Nothing about deliberately killing people off. Trust me, i work with the disabled and i have seen this first hand. Its not exactly the Tory government to blame either, its often the local council.
On October 26 2013 07:18 Jockmcplop wrote: Haha, people might be right. That's not what i'm suggesting, but i am suggesting that vulnerable people are right at the top of the money cutting list, for exactly the reasons i've described, they contribute less to our economy, so they are a bit more expendable than others. Nothing about deliberately killing people off. Trust me, i work with the disabled and i have seen this first hand. Its not exactly the Tory government to blame either, its often the local council.
Old people vote more than anyone, young people vote less than anyone its why the old have basically suffered no government cuts at least the conservatives can't afford to annoy the old because thats where all their votes come from, while most cuts go to the young.
Yeah, it's pretty stupid. Brand implies that there are people out there with all the answers. And he implies that he sees all the problems. While acknowledging problems with the system is important, saying that the system must go completely is an entirely different thing.
Obviously big business buying parts of the government is a very real problem, but listening to Brand it sounds like he assumes the problems will go away if the politicians will go away, apparently not realizing there will always be a need for politicians.
The UK would do good with a PR system instead of FPTP though, That would most probably get you closer to where you want to go quite quickly. But the AV system (half-way to PR) was shot down, much due to downright misrepresentation by the politically interested parties in the UK about what AV would actually mean (often claiming it would mean worse representation on average when the opposite is true). So for now Brand does seem to have a point about the UK system - voting doesn't matter too much. Either you vote Tory or you vote Labour, or perhaps Liberal Democrats. But if your view isn't covered by any of those, then you choose the lesser evil between them because hey, what can you do? Voting still matters in this respect, but not as much as it would had more views been represented.
Edit: And for the environment. Beyond government pandering to and being bought by companies every now and again the real change will come through social desire for change. It needs to be a bottom up change, where people actually care enough about the environment to change their daily lives, or put pressure on companies and research institutes to develop new and cheaper technologies for more environmentally friendly production and so on. We're already seeing this change in the western world but it's not enough yet. Changing the government by "revolution" wont change this.
Agreed. Brandt here reminds me of a 19 year old in his second year of political science. Of course there are all these massive problems of corruption and influence peddling, but what is the viable alternative that the 'revolution offers'? The real difficult is that reality is complicated and its a lot harder to get people fired up on a 'limit campaign spending, increase transparency, encourage intelligent debate' ticket then BURN IT ALL DOWN, FUCK CAPITALISM!
There are many viable alternatives. Working out the fine details would always be tricky, but things could be changed if people wanted them changed. And I do not mean AV (which is not half way to PR or anything to do with PR, by the way), I mean something that would actually changed the structure of government.
One tiny example: You could separate the governors from the representatives in order to give the public direct control over who governs. Under the current system the public has no direct control over who has which government job.
Taxpayers will be landed with a bill of up to £250,000 to upgrade a gym for MPs, peers and Parliament staff, new documents show.
Works to Westminster Gym, which is only open to parliamentary passholders, will include creating a room to store towels and developing a new spinning area, where members can train on static cycles.
The reception will be given a makeover with new fittings including display cases, pin boards, shelving and a desk, while a damp problem located near a shower room will be eradicated, according to the House of Commons (HOC) authorities
They add the male and female showers will be extended and improved, walls redecorated and the ventilation throughout the gym will be worked on as part of the refurbishment.
A new fire detection system and ramps to allow wheelchair access to the gym and an accessible shower room to comply with equality laws are in the proposals.
The revamp of the gym, which is in a basement area of the parliamentary estate, is estimated to cost between £200,000 and £250,000, new contract tender documents show.
In March 2010 the ventilation system of the wider basement area, which included the gym, was revamped at a cost of £247,500.
Taxpayers spending a lot of money so the politicians can work, sweat and exhaust themselves before dismounting to find themselves exactly where they started with no hope of ever moving forwards. This isn't a gym, this is modern art.
Something I noticed this week in a bbc news article about financial irregularities at one of the first free schools. Apparently £80,000 or so is unaccounted for, but that is not what caught my attention.
What I noticed is that the land that the school was built on is being leased to the school at £300,000 for 20 years. That means that the taypaxer is locked into a contract to pay £6 million over the next 20 years. The problem I have with it is that the land is owned by the vice chairman of the conservative party. It is all completely legal, but I think it is pretty immoral for the tories to personally gain large financial benefit from their education policy.
Energy giant bosses blamed controversial rises in customers' bills of over 9% on green taxes in a tense confrontation with MPs of the Commons Energy and Climate Change committee.
Tony Cocker, CEO of energy giant E.ON, described government green schemes as a "stealth tax" or a "poll tax", as he called for environmental reforms to be toned down.
Labour committee member Ian Lavery branded the energy giants' price rises an "absolute outrage", while another committee member John Robertson asked: "Do you understand that people in this country do not trust you?"
Sitting alongside the assembled energy giant bosses, Ovo Energy boss Stephen Fitzpatrick said the big firms charged the "maximum they feel they can get away with" and that they had "almost entirely failed" to ensure a competitive energy market.
On October 30 2013 07:47 KwarK wrote: They are making record profits while blaming their expenses for the huge increases in their bills. It's plainly untrue, they are operating a cartel.
I was about to defend energy companies as I suspected that it was just commercial divisions making huge profits. It turns out that I was wrong and other areas are also doing well. I would need to actually spend time looking into it (assuming I could find the info), but I can only guess that they are trying to maintain their profits post 2015, but then the question becomes: why raise prices 18 months too early?
On October 30 2013 08:04 hzflank wrote: I was about to defend energy companies as I suspected that it was just commercial divisions making huge profits. It turns out that I was wrong and other areas are also doing well. I would need to actually spend time looking into it (assuming I could find the info), but I can only guess that they are trying to maintain their profits post 2015, but then the question becomes: why raise prices 18 months too early?
Political support? How else would you garner political support if people don't "feel the effects" until you (as a company) are already fucked?
Also another thing about the first vid does the PM have security around him? Do they usually let people get that close to him.
Nick Clegg has accused Jeremy Paxman of "sneering" at politics and politicians while at the same time happily accepting a large paycheque from the taxpayer.
Speaking during his weekly LBC radio show on Thursday morning, the deputy prime minister also said it was an "abdication of responsibility" for people not to vote.
Paxman recently criticised comedian Russell Brand for pontificating on politics at the same time as not "being arsed" to vote. However the BBC Newsnight presenter later admitted he had failed to vote in one recent election.
In an recent interview with the Radio Times, Paxman attacked the "tawdry pretences" of politicians and said he had found the choice on polling day so "unappetising" he decided not to vote.
Clegg said this morning: "Here's a guy, what does he get paid? A million pounds or thereabouts? Paid for by the taxpayer. He lives off politics and he spends all his time sneering at politics."
"Of course you should vote. Politics is imperfect, but at the end of the day its how we decide how you pay your taxes how you support our hospitals, your schools, whether we are going to war or how we deal with climate change.
"Of corse it is sometimes unedifying, but this idea you sneer at the whole thing, dismiss everybody as being rogues and charlatans and say you are going to wash your hands of the whole thing is a total abdication of responsibly."
Russel Brand really got to Paxman in that interview.
And Clegg is being an idiot. Not sneering at politics would be an abdication of responsibility.
If you start from the assumption that most influential politicians are essentially honest people who have the best interests of their voters in mind you are so far from reality that it's impossible to reach any useful conclusion.
You can debate whether the best way to change is to vote smarter or not vote at all. But this is a question of tactics and mostly unimportant. The first thing to admit is that the system is not working for a large number of people and it's not working because the people who wield power have very different values and morals than the rest of the population.
On November 08 2013 04:24 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: Also another thing about the first vid does the PM have security around him? Do they usually let people get that close to him.
According to this they breached his security to get that close to him but the guy works for the BBC so I assume must have had some pass to be there in the first place?
The European Union needs to integrate further politically in order to survive and should push aside Britain as the "problem" country risks blocking such a move, ex-German chancellor Gerhard Schröder has warned.
Schröder, who was Germany's Social Democrat chancellor until 2005, said that the City of London had derailed many of the EU's financial reforms that were needed in order to steady the eurozone after the financial crisis.
“The failure to implement steps that were decided four years ago by the G-20 in Pittsburgh to restrain the financial sector, has much to do with the City of London,” he told an economic forum in Bregenz, Western Austria.
“Those who are willing to have more integration should not be bound by those who are not.
"The problem has a name, and that's Britain. As long as the British block these moves, nothing will happen," according to reports.
The European Union needs to integrate further politically in order to survive and should push aside Britain as the "problem" country risks blocking such a move, ex-German chancellor Gerhard Schröder has warned.
Schröder, who was Germany's Social Democrat chancellor until 2005, said that the City of London had derailed many of the EU's financial reforms that were needed in order to steady the eurozone after the financial crisis.
“The failure to implement steps that were decided four years ago by the G-20 in Pittsburgh to restrain the financial sector, has much to do with the City of London,” he told an economic forum in Bregenz, Western Austria.
“Those who are willing to have more integration should not be bound by those who are not.
"The problem has a name, and that's Britain. As long as the British block these moves, nothing will happen," according to reports.
EPT
