Genesis? Cool.

Having turned 30 at the beginning of the year, there’s two inexplicable changes that have occurred within me between then and now which i could never have envisaged:

(1)   I’ve started really appreciating the musical dexterity and craftsmanship of U2 and Genesis. The Edge is such an amazing guitarist, and Mike Rutherford’s got some darned impressive licks too. I can’t believe I’m admitting this, and have to concede that for someone so image conscious, it’s a major concern.

(2)   All of a sudden, monitoring energy usage, and trying to keep energy bills as low as possible, has become of pivotal concern to me.

This could be due to some evolutionary, hormone driven change that occurs in a man of my calibre around this sort of age, whereby preparing for the future and potentiality of providing for (and protecting) a family becomes paramount over the concern for oneself.

On the other hand, I might have really loved Bono for ages, but just been too embarrassed to admit it.

Life is such a minefield.

However, tapping my feet to ‘Mysterious Ways’ I can live with; keeping the fuel bills down is becoming something of an impossible task.

E.ON, my ever faithful German energy supplier (and I do love the Germans, as evidenced here), has gone on the record to say fuel bills will continue to soar without let up while crude oil prices skyrocket.

The pressure to regenerate an ailing and inefficient energy network is also preventing energy suppliers from reducing premiums. The cost of building new power stations, overhauling existing power plants, and integrating renewable energy sources into the energy infrastructure will shake out at around the £100 billion mark.

It’s the energy suppliers who must foot this bill.

So what can I do?

Well, I recommend those of you out there who have an E.ON online account to get yourself the ‘Energy Tracker’ tool. It provides you with a daily breakdown of your energy usage, the results of which can prove to be startling. Take the following for example:

• Boiling a kettle uses as much energy as it takes to run a fridge for eight hours.

• The Central Air facility in my flat costs 75p an hour to run. 75p an hour.

• The hairdryer is more expensive to run than the cooker.

• Running my computer uses very little energy at all.  

In energy saving terms, the Energy Tracker has revolutionised my outlook.

With reference to my coolness rating though, it doesn’t really help. If only someone would invent a meter which illustrates how much damage listening to Genesis can do to your credibility.

Phil Collins though: what a drummer. Who needs a real kit when you’ve got electronic drum pads?

 Shiny Happy People? Not exactly…

There’s something I just can’t let pass right now, and it’s a three pronged attack.

My bugbear bleeds neatly into yesterday’s npower bashing on Times Online, and I know I wanted everyone to stay positive and concentrate on the pleasing aspects of their energy supplier, but it’s possible today’s post may degenerate into something of a rant (I’m just so complex).

I’m taking the line ‘I know that this is vitriol, no solution, spleen venting’ from REM’s magnum opus ‘Ignoreland’ as my call to arms, so forgive me. I’m so mad i could throw a yoghurt at someone, even though i haven’t been mixing sleeping tablets with alcohol, and i don’t have an ego problem.

Ok, so it’s three pronged……….

(1) npower announced a new eco-friendly initiative yesterday called the ‘Climate Cops’ scheme. Effectively, it’s a series of lectures and practical courses aimed at young students in order to make them more ecologically switched on.

The campaign is fronted by the professionally chirpy Fearne Cotton, and the gainfully unemployed Piers Morgan, with Mr Morgan choosing the winning school at the end of the twelve month course. The school judged to have applied itself most unswervingly to its chosen green project will receive a cheque for £20,000, which must be spent on improving the school’s ecological infrastructure.

I digest the press release, I believe it to be a worthy cause and, despite the recent troubles npower has experienced, I think it’s a step in the right direction. So I write a news article on this development (see the ‘Energy News’ section), and proceed to go about my business in a typically eager and dedicated fashion.

Until……..

(2) …….it’s brought to my attention around mid-afternoon npower has raised online dual fuel tariff prices by a whopping 20%. Great, thanks very much for that, I’m really glad I fought your corner.

Essentially, the Sign Online 10 tariff has been scrapped, and replaced by the new, more expensive Sign Online 11 tariff.  A quick bit of maths in the office shows the Sign Online 11 tariff is still the cheapest on the market (by £10 from British Gas Click Energy 5), so all is not lost.

Like a scratched record (and not even a good one, this is like a scratched copy of ‘How can we be lovers if we can’t be friends’ by Michael Bolton) the same reason has been trotted out for this price rise as those we heard previously this year: escalating wholesale costs and exorbitant crude oil prices.

Which would be fairly easy to stomach, if……….

(3) ……Shell and BP hadn’t announced combined first quarter profits of £7.2 billion this lunchtime.

How much money do they want? What can you even do with £7.2 billion? There aren’t enough consumables in the world to spend that amount of money on! It makes me want to throw up, and I’m not even an anarchist or especially right on.

Right, let me just take a breath for a moment.

That’s better. The BP profit represents a rise of nearly 50% on last quarter, whereas Shell can boast only a paltry 12% gain. The increase has been driven by higher petrol and diesel costs set by the companies in the light of (you guessed it) rising crude oil prices.

Just to conclude, rather than absorb some or all of the rising crude oil costs, petrol companies have elected to rip us off at the petrol pumps, and energy companies have chosen to rip us off in our own homes.

Gee, thanks. Again.

I think I’ll listen to ‘Everybody Hurts’ now, just to cheer myself up a bit.

Anyone else feel like venting?