Kelly’s Eye
FIRST they came for our cars.Then it was our boilers. Now it appears our dishwashers too are in the crosshairs for those intent on enforcing their net zero fantasy.
Joe Biden was shaken from his somnolence briefly last week to announce plans to slash the amount of water such machines use by more than a third.Very unsurprisingly, Britain is expected to follow suit. Even more predictably, there’s already talk of banning dishwashers in future.
Last week also saw a warning from Citizens Advice that retrofitting our houses to meet net zero targets will be unaffordable for most British homeowners.The average cost of the loft and cavity wall insulation, triple glazing, and heat pumps which the Government wants us to instal will be around £15,000 per household.
Small change maybe for the eco-posturing middle classes whose electric runaround second car is a favourite dinner party conversation. But Citizens Advice says half of all households have savings of less than £10,000, and one in 10 have no savings at all.
There’s the usual vague assurances about government subsidising such shortfalls. But most of us are reminded daily, even before these further magicked-up billions are committed, that the cost of living isn’t much to write home about.
It also hasn’t escaped our attention that at the same time as we’re being forced into electric vehicles, the cost of electricity has spiralled, and there is absolutely no sign of the staggering extension of the national grid required to prevent such cars grinding to a halt.
Nor are the limitations to the distances they can travel anything like resolved. Or the environmental costs of mining the metals their batteries contain.
And most recently come warnings that so heavy do the battery packs make their vehicles that the weight will be too much for many bridges and multi-storey car parks.
Meanwhile, like the man in the White House, we sleepwalk on while our enemies sew up longterm oil and gas deals, and build six times as many coal power plants as the rest of the world combined. I’m not sure everyone going back to doing the washing up will prove a sufficient distraction ultimately from that.