Smart meters are a symbol of the elite drive to nudge Britain into submission
By Paul Homewood
Great piece by Allister Heath:
If you want a perfect vignette of the madness that has engulfed modern Britain, look no further than the nightmarish rollout of smart meters.
What should have been a sensible, rather trivial upgrade has turned into a flashpoint of the culture wars, an allegory of all that has gone wrong: the breakdown in trust between Middle England and technocratic elites, the decadent, ruinous absurdity of our energy policy, the perversion of technology and market mechanisms to undermine genuine capitalism, and the imposition of a new secular morality against the wishes of the majority.
There was a time when mainstream Left and Right agreed on ends but differed on means. Both wanted to build a world in which the poor and the middle class could aspire to the goods, services and lifestyle previously only enjoyed by the rich. The Left’s favourite tools were redistribution, union power and state direction; the Right’s privatisation, supply-side reforms and a tide that lifted all boats.
The green and woke revolutions have shattered this democratising consensus, and, in a bizarre turn of events, the modern Left has embraced the sort of neo-feudalism that went out of fashion on the Right in about 1846.
Instead of wanting to help the poor and the middle class, this newly “awakened” millenarian Left distrusts their cultural conservatism and materialistic instincts. They are revolutionaries who dream of a green year zero, a tabula rasa brought about by rationing, radical social control and material regression, all underpinned by a post-Christian ethical system obsessed with oppression, guilt and an inevitable day of reckoning.
Tragically, this regressive faux-religion – not to be confused with the sensible environmental protection that most people support – has permeated our ruling class, including a Conservative Party that appears to be afflicted with a political death wish. This is why behaviour or aspirations that were entirely uncontroversial a few years ago – heating or cooling one’s home, travelling to Australia or India, driving to the shops or to see family, living in a quiet suburb far from one’s place of work, even having children – are now suddenly being portrayed as not merely vulgar but damaging and immoral. This, needless to say, only applies to ordinary people: double standards are baked into woke and green activism. Its leaders can do no wrong: virtue signalling matters more than actual behaviour.
This ideology is becoming embedded in the machinery of state, in legislation, in urban planning, in our culture, in the mission statements of investment firms and the multinationals they own, in the work of charities, in the universities and of course is being taught to our children.
The result has been a collapse in ambition. There was a time when the West aspired to flying cars, jetpacks and hypersonic travel, where the rise of cheap flights, central heating and the mass adoption of the private motorcar were seen as immensely liberating. Today, we are instructed that walking and cycling are the only truly moral means of transport, and that “every trip counts” (and should therefore be minimised).
Progress and innovation are frowned upon, apart from in sectors such as environmental technology, entertainment or medical research, the latter two being today’s panem et circenses. Regular people are told that they need to use less energy, eat less meat and fewer imported fruit and vegetables, as in the 1950s, and above all to stop complaining, give up on traditional consumerism and make sure not to have ideas above their station.
Smart meters have been caught up in this clash of values. In theory, they make a lot of sense: it is good to encourage people to run dishwashers or charge electric cars at night to reduce the pressure on the grid. This lowers overall prices by reducing the need for as much generating capacity. Surge pricing – where customers pay more when demand is high, and which could soon be coming to our energy bills thanks to smart meters – is merely a reflection of reality and scarcity.
“The original 20th century dream – plentiful, cheap energy on tap for all, powering a miraculous suite of home appliances, with consumers free to choose when and how much they enjoy it – has been wrecked.”
In practice, however, energy supply has been trashed by the green blob, and the price we pay bears no relation to what a real free market would deliver. The original 20th century dream – plentiful, cheap energy on tap for all, powering a miraculous suite of home appliances, with consumers free to choose when and how much they enjoy it – has been wrecked. Green policies such as the ban on fracking have drastically reduced the availability of energy, and there has been no countervailing investment in nuclear to counter the intermittency of renewables. The lights could go off.
In a world where it is deemed immoral to consume too much, and where political idiocy has caused a crippling shortage, higher prices will be like a “sin tax” imposed by smart meters, a bullying “nudge” mechanism to punish and redistribute from those who cannot or don’t want to change their ways. No wonder so many already hate them.
This is not a rant against market prices: we need more of them. It is madness for everything in the NHS to be “free” for everybody all of the time. My frustration is with the social engineers who want to use a perversion of the pricing mechanism to control people and to add to the profusion of politicised, administered, pricing – taxes by another name.
I’m a libertarian who believes in genuine competitive capitalism and freedom, not a technocrat who wants to use economic weapons to manipulate society.
“In practice, in the UK, road pricing will be used as a tax, a tool of cultural warfare, a punishment to restrict mobility.”
Take road pricing: the positive version would allow not merely the elimination of several taxes and a smoothing of traffic but also the creation of a revenue stream which would allow the financing of new roads. That is how supply and demand is meant to work: if high demand pushes up prices, extra supply is added. This was the original thinking behind French motorway péages.
In practice, in the UK, road pricing will be used as a tax, a tool of cultural warfare, a punishment to restrict mobility. There will be no new roads. This fake pricing will also eliminate privacy, and hand the state – and hackers – too much information about citizens’ lives.
The row over smart meters goes to the heart of the society we want to live in: do we want to be free and prosperous, or poor and submissive? It beggars belief that a government that understood Middle England so well on Brexit has got it so wrong when it comes to net zero.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Excellent…this should be read by all so-called Conservative MPs. Please send and ask for their comments.
Allister Heath has it described perfectly. Agree with every word – and hope some senior Tories are taking it on board. Otherwise we are all in for a desperate time, going it alone to the amusement of the rest of the world and the impoverishment of the British…
There have been a few anti ‘net zero’ pieces in the DT recently but this is by far the strongest and best. I find myself with a tiny glimmer of hope that the tide is finally starting to turn….
Phil I am hoping alongside
Indeed, it is very well written, being both accurate and emotive.
It strange, all we ask for is rationality, logical thought and evidence to drive policy, and yet that seems to be the hardest thing for politicians and media to do, or more like want to do.
UK energy policy has not been trashed by the ban on fracking. There’s no evidence yet that the geology is suitable. I’m all for exploration though, and maybe it might work in some limited sweet spots, but cannot be a panacea. UK energy policy has been trashed by allowing nuclear to decline and by skewing the market by not making renewables pay for the backup capacity they require,
Woodblog writes “There’s no evidence yet that the geology is suitable”
The Bowland Hodder shale extends from the East Irish Sea to the North Sea and it is exploited for oil and gas at both ends. Perhaps there is some mysterious process that has changed the geology in the middle but that seems unlikely, in which case there is plenty of evidence that the geology is suitable — it comes down the pipes to millions of homes every day.
JF
Wasn’t the problem that the vibration level alarm was set so low that the equipment didn’t know if they had an ‘earthquake’ or it was a lorry driving past.
There is plenty of evidence the geology is suitable (see the Quadrilla website). Thus it is criminally neglegent of UK Govt to ban further exploration to find the full extent of a known resource.
Not only ban but operate a scorched earth policy, forcing Cuadrilla to concrete the bores, to forestall any future change of heart; this is not disagreement, it is not evidence-based, it is dogma-driven criminality.
Bobn, you have it backwards and don’t understand how oil and gas exploration works. You find out if the geology is suitable by drilling Wells and testing. That may mean quite a few wells and testing until you understand what works.
Uk fracking has been sabotaged and strangled at birth by neurotic Green idiots and pathetic spineless ministers and bureaucrats
Wooblog,
whether it is viable I think is a commercial decision by the oil companies and no one else.
While the mess the generation system is in cannot just be blamed on the moratorium on fracking it should not have been curtailed.
Nuclear has been overlooked and is huge mistake, but remember dispatchable generation is still required, I.e. gas or coal as nuclear is not, at the moment, a flexible generator.
Not only that, gas is required for many other uses apart from generation and it is sensible to produce as much of it as possible from U.K. resources.
UK energy policy has not been trashed by the ban on fracking. There’s no evidence yet that the geology is suitable. I’m all for exploration though, and maybe it might work in some limited sweet spots, but cannot be a panacea. UK energy policy has been trashed by allowing nuclear to decline and by skewing the market by not making renewables pay for the backup capacity they require,
There is certainly no evidence that the geology is NOT suitable.
And there were a number of companies who were more than happy to invest THEIR money to find out, in the expectation of (a) paying into the Exchequer massive amounts of tax and (b) making profits by selling reliable and affordable energy.
I’m fed up reading comments on here trying to rubbish fracking on the basis of pretending that the “geology” isn’t right. Although, of course, Gazprom will be more than happy to fund such comments and GangGreen nutters will get big in the trouser area at prospect of the UK and its incompetent politicians driving the country off a cliff.
Gas “central heating” alone has been a miracle of technological advance, driving the costs of necessary solutions like this down so they are in the reach of even the lowest paid. That has done more for the plight of man than any of these parasites weird and lunatic theories, and yet are now declared “immoral” by those who deem to sit in judgement of us. I have no time for these folk except to both say “no” to them, and where possible, vote them out.
Smart meters are a symbol of this demonisation by immorality, “if you don’t switch to a smart meter, you are an immoral person who doesn’t care for others and our world”. Sorry, no! I care a great deal for the misery they are imposing on countless millions, more than they can ever imagine in their closeted ivory towers, and vastly deeper than they can fathom in their shallow and false knowledge sets, their computer models and pet theories.
It’s a disgusting scene to behold, that of politicians chasing the public mood for votes, but this is one chase I hope they do finally follow, the revolt against this wholly politically manufactured energy crisis. Perhaps they’ll finally learn something of reality, as they are currently devoid of that knowledge.
Nice one!
Very good missing only a reference to where all this madness originated and that of course is Critical Theory which came out of the Frankfurt School in the 1930s and relocated to the US when Hitler was feeling their collars in the run up to the horror that was WWII That is why all the garbage originating from this perverse ideology comes from the US and not from Germany because the infection relocated was allowed to run unchecked in their Universities in spite of McCarthyism in the 1940’s and 1950’s.
The _existing_ taxes on petrol, diesel and road tax (suspiciously renamed to Vehicle Excise Duty) ALREADY provide a revenue stream for financing the maintenance and building of roads. The problem is that money goes elsewhere into the black hole of public spending and gets used for other things.
It’s not only the UK though. Why are European politicians attacking mobility? Even more curious with the direct contradiction of the EU’s own core principle of free movement.
Know your place and stay in it.
Excellent discourse Paul . . . Excellent.
How . . . can we now disrobe ‘The King’ that is our Media . . . THEY rule all of these policy initiatives ostensibly to ‘clean up the Planet’ while ignoring the fact that Globally not a dam thing has changed . . . We have quite simply moved our pollution to developing countries . . . Out of site . . . Out of mind.
Meanwhile, ALL the ‘Green’ solutions, when you pull back the screen, require Massive burning of fossil fuels, solar panels, the Czochralski method turning all that silicate into the silicon used to make these panels, and Massive increases in pollution of different kinds like the 800 lbs. of Neo Dymium Boron in every Wind Turbine that causes more Radiation to be released into the environment of Mongolia than ALL the Nuclear Reactors produce in the USA, every day.
History of climate change throughout the Holocene, absent of ANY leading or following indicators from CO2 . . . MUST be acknowledged as Scientific Fact. If CO2 did NOT lead the Planet into 5 warming periods that were warmer than today . . . How in God’s name can it ‘Magically’ be causing ‘Climate Change’ today? Our intentions are well founded if we concentrate on the foul effluents attached to CO2 while burning fossil fuels . . . But CO2 per say, has been the greatest gift of life to ALL living organisms on Planet Earth for the last 3 billion years.
How do we break the tide of misinformation? How can we teach the Media these truths? What crushing piece of evidence is out there proving Collusion and Willful Deception among the ‘Green’ revolutionaries that will bring them down? Surely among us it will be found . . .
https://www.academia.edu/71021345/All_Electricity_Even_Renewables_Poisons_Planet_Earth
https://www.academia.edu/71023588/Batteries_Renewable_Energy_and_EV_s_The_Ultimate_in_Environmental_Destruction
Maybe within these passages a crack will open up . . . otherwise . . . more of the same . . .
My Thoughts . . .
What beats me is the left/ecomentalists would avidly support the NHS, as they keep demanding more and more money is put into it, yet are totally blind to harvesting our local shale gas reverses, and creating a Sovereign Wealth Fund from which the tax receipts could fund it and a whole lot more. You only have to look at Norway, they have a USD 2,322.6 BILLION fund built from their oil and gas reserves, so think what the UK’s would be like. That the left won’t see this says a great deal about them and their hatred of man.
I have a soft spot for Norway – spent a week in Oslo once – but try finding the money for a few beers! 🙂
Because their population is a less than a tenth of ours. Their fund is simply that.
Fracking ban is not what has “trashed energy policy”. That has been done over the last decades by skewing the market through rewarding intermittent renewables by not making them responsible for paying for backup capacity. Running down nuclear has not helped either. I’ve worked as a geologist for a US fracking company, and the geology of Lancashire is not very favourable. Maybe a sweet spot or two, but no panacea.
Watched Belfast last week, and it is striking how materially poor we were in 1969, pre-North Sea…
Not really. We still that poor in the 1970s. Remember the IMF rescue?
Our wealth changed with Thatcher. The Left hate her so much because she was right.
Our wealth changed with Thatcher. And North Sea Oil revenues which started flowing in 1976.
North Sea Oil revenues created huge tax take but also fixed security of supply, rhugely improved our balance of payments.
Who remembers all the (early) adverts for Smart Meters – that their raison d’être was to eliminate estimated bills. Not a dickie-bird about them enabling Time-of-Use charges that some of us forecast even before Smets2 meters were invented.
Indeed. Time of use and actual rationing capability. We were called bonkers conspiracy theorists. But this is becoming a golden age of conspiracy theories turning out to be accurate prophecies.
Now most bills have little to do with meter readings. Instead, companies charge fat sums in advance of actual delivery to fund their businesses. That works when wholesale prices are falling, but not when the amounts they may charge are capped and their costs are rising sharply. The the cash fund disappears and they go bankrupt.
This is a very powerful piece of writing, I hope millions read it.
Once we all became wealthy, the elites decreed that being wealthy was wrong. Once we could all eat steak, steak became wrong. Once we could all go abroad for holidays, that became wrong. Saving the world is nothing more than the shallow desire of elites to cling to power, privilege and status. It is a symbol of their supposed intelligence and superiority. Our resistance simply makes them feel more superior, convinces them they are right.
Ironically, if we plebs embraced it. they will shift to something else, just as they have shifted from being chubby as proof of status to being first stick thin and now to absurd veganism.
Because it is always irrational and because it always falls to the bureaucrats to carry it out, we get these insanities disguised as “policy”.
They’re not emitted, they’re parasites.
(sorry, autocorrect woes: “They’re not elites, they’re parasites”)
In Michael Moore’s film Planet of the Humans there is an interview with Al Gore and Richard Branson. The interviewer ask Gore if he thought he was a ‘prophet’ about climate change. Branson interjects “depends how you spell profit” and he and Gore fall about laughing.
Very revealing moment.
“to undermine genuine capitalism”
In fact, the undermining of genuine capitalism began already in about the second part of nineteenth century when the classical liberals got overruled by the democratic statists and leftist socialism.
The classical liberals and conservatives of that time also predicted the situation of growing centralization, statism and socialism (hyper-regulation and control by bureaucratic elites) which has intensified after the two big world wars.
A part of this article consists thus of typical simplifying propaganda (born out of ignorance and naivety?).
I would advise for interested readers to read the works of Herbert Spencer (especially Man versus the State and Proper Sphere of Government), Tocqueville (Democracy in America) and Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (Liberty or Equality and The Menace of the Herd, or Procrustes at Large). To get an idea about real liberty, real liberalism and genuine capitalism.
On the nature of mass democracy and its tendency to move towards widespread corruption and finally tyranny and oligarchy enough has been written by the most eminent philosophers.
All this has been widely ignored and delegated to the archives to gather dust because of ubiqitous democratic propaganda, so one has to learn in practice where this so called ‘mainstream Left and Right agreeing on ends but differing on means’ leads to.
Perhaps it is now time to change the name of the parliamentary website from They Work For You– as it is now quite obvious they don’t – to Do As Your Told or Else?