Put Up Energy Prices Say Academics
May 10, 2014
By Paul Homewood
http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/north-east-news/newcastle-university-academics-say-energy-7081418
According to Prof Phil Taylor, who leads its Institute for Research on Sustainability, energy for much of the population is too cheap which is leading to waste.
He explained: “The current pricing model does not accurately reflect the high economic and environmental cost of generating, storing and distributing energy. In fact, because of the way energy is sold today, it becomes cheaper the more we use. This is unsustainable.”
An Institute for Research on Sustainability? And we pay for this crap?
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Put the price of energy up and several things happen:
1. More poor die of cold in winter.
2. Manufacturing business moves out of Britain.
3. The bureaucracy expands both to collect and absorb the tax.
I suppose that these bozos have never had a proper job.
Of course energy supply is fragmented – that is what competition is all about. Perhaps these taxpayer supported parasites have never heard of Adam Smith. Its opinionated, politicised stuff like this that is polluting academe and turning research into a money spinning con trick. For sustainability read Agenda 21. For ‘science’ read ‘post-modern science’. Ride the science bandwagon not in the search for truth but for the loot it brings you from the watermelon industry.
Set up a new bureaucratic institution and take the Chair, the honours and the cash. but be prepared to run when you get rumbled.
Perhaps Prof Phil Taylor will confirm that his Uni’s Purchasing Department NEVER attempts to negotiate downwards, prices offered by its energy suppliers.
I have always thought that reducing the price for energy the more you use was wrong, if you wanted to get people to reduced their consumption.
Nick Clegg thought so too during the last election debates, but he soon forgot about it.
People who can’t afford to pay for energy, food, rent etc, are not in that position because those things are too expensive, it’s just that those people are living beyond their means.
It’s should be their responsibility to match their outgoings to their income, and not expect other people to pay though hand-outs.
That’s why the country is massively in debt.
I’ll bet they weren’t always in that position.
They should have saved when times were good.
BTW i’m a pensioner on a small fixed income!
If the country wasn’t paying people not to work, and supporting their lifestyles, it would be able to support it’s genuinely poor,
An economic depression or even another strong recession is a far greater short term threat than a degree or so of warming.
QV. My parents grew up in the depression, and married pre-war. Unlike you, dad went off to war to North Africa in 1940 and came back in 1946 not quite right in the head. Raising a family was a struggle. After they retired, they lived in a small country town with no piped gas. The choice for heating was oil or off-peak electricity. Lacking capital they chose the latter. After my father died, my mother moved into sheltered accommodation in an apartment block. No gas option in an apartment full of wrinklies, elfin safety innit.
I agree with your second sentence but not your assumption. Pre-war, dad had a good job, a young wife and a new child. Post-war things weren’t so good. WWII wasn’t his choice.
I agree that most people who were in the war, didn’t have much choice.
My remarks were mainly aimed at people born after 1945.
” My remarks were mainly aimed at people born after 1945.”
Smug, sanctimoious little chap, aren’t you?
There are plenty of people born after 1945 who are poor, the disabled for example. I am sure you can think of more categories if you try, instead of sneering at people worse off than yourself.
Free men and free markets go together. A free market in energy will benefit everyone. We don’t need academics or bureaucrats deciding the right price or the right fuel. Let consumers freely decide. A lot of liberty is lost when markets aren’t free.
Western Europeans in general and western academics in particular live prosperous lives secure that they will have heat and even air conditioning as well as fuel for their vehicles. They will also have secure retirement plans, a work week of 40 hours or less, and free medical care. So why not raise fuel prices a little to assuage their conscience and their worry about this awful but abstract and nebulous future worry about “sustainability”?
For the poor and less fortunate the world over it is a totally different story. Cheap fuel allows survival and development and advancement to something close to the high standards of living attained by the worriers about “sustainability.” This is a class thing. It is not incidental that the charge is led by the Prince of Wales, a living example of vested and unearned privilege and power. If anything is “unsustainable” in our democracies, it is such posturing by the rich under the pretense of being civic minded.
They can pay more, no one is stopping them
Or is it like all good lefties they want OTHER people to pay more. .
catweazle666 PERMALINK
May 10, 2014 12:33 pm
” My remarks were mainly aimed at people born after 1945.”
Smug, sanctimoious little chap, aren’t you?
There are plenty of people born after 1945 who are poor, the disabled for example. I am sure you can think of more categories if you try, instead of sneering at people worse off than yourself.
Oh come on! That’s not what he said.
“If the country wasn’t paying people not to work, and supporting their lifestyles, it would be able to support it’s genuinely poor,”
He is clearly talking about those who are receiving some kind of government assistance who are or were capable keeping themselves out of position of needing such assistance. If the government did not pay those folks, it would have enough to help those who truly need it.
Unlike you, I am not in the habit of calling people names. If I were, I wonder what name would be best for someone who misses such a clearly stated point?
Thanks for the support.
You obviously get the point of what I was saying.
It’s just that I think that if able-bodied people accepted more responsibility for their finances, we would all be better off.
Unfortunately we are now in a society which seems to reward the feckless.
I have probably been over influenced by the word of Wilkins Micawber, which made a big impression on me, as a working class child and I resolved never to be in a position of depending on others for my financial security:
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.”
Now, as this has become somewhat off topic I will resist the temptation to say any more on the subject.
Reblogged this on Cornwall Wind Watch.
“Environmental cost” is the Malthusian academic’s thumb on the scales. It’s whatever he wants it to be.