It’s now time to earn and not just receive

ACCORDING to a new proposal we need to stop burning wood in our log-burners as it is apparently harmful to the environment.

Does this new proposal cover the Renewable Heat Incentive, where recipients are actively encouraged through feed-in tariffs to burn as much wood as possible 24 hours a day and all year round in industrialsized boilers so that they qualify for their substantial annual payments?

Will it mean that properties with multiple units such as can be found in mid Wales (and probably elsewhere) be held accountable? Can it be that units used to heat empty properties, animal housing, barns and store sheds will be banned?

Is it remotely possible that the scheme will be policed properly and payments only calculated when the weather justifies their use and not given willy-nilly, even during a heatwave?

This pernicious, unregulated scheme is another way of swelling bank accounts with absolutely no benefit to the wider public whatsoever, indeed, it is us who are paying these subsidies through our own energy bills.

Furthermore, this proposal advocates that farmers should receive financial help to purchase equipment to reduce slurry spread emissions etc. Sorry, but it is their responsibility and as the majority of beneficiaries of the RHI scheme are of the farming fraternity, maybe they could use some of their already massive subsidy payments from this and elsewhere to fund these equipment purchases themselves without the need for further huge sums going into already inflated bank accounts.

The agricultural community and other benefits recipients need reminding that a great majority of their members voted to leave the EU and as a consequence their subsidy supported ways of life would stop.

Time to join the rest of us who have to live our lives without large amounts of free money being handed out annually and realise it’s time to earn and not receive. AW Jones Llandrindod Wells