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Electricity price predictions

MattEngineer · 2021-12-03T18:39:26Z

When the energy cap comes up for renewal I think it will rise to 26.5p per unit, any thoughts of the collective?

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Electricity, Tariffs, Monitoring & Providers

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dr_dongle

(@dr_dongle)

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23/02/2026 3:51 pm

@transparent Some background 🙂 As you know I'm well up for writing constructive and informed comments to government and the discussions here very helpfully inform that. There's a danger though in being parochial and taking a view that neglects all the competing issues that a government department has to face in steering the country through what must be the largest societal change for a century. You alerted me to distribution issues - my musings took me to thinking about actually what needs to be done to make entire areas of early 19th century tenement buildings zero carbon. This is all off-topic so I'd better stop but I found reading the nitty-gritty bits of the relevant reports humbling in that anyone would even contemplate this. It does leave me with a firmer conviction that governments had better get a move on but tempered with a better understanding of the huge challenges they face in creating groundwork before the actual visible work can make much progress.

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JamesPa

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23/02/2026 4:42 pm

Posted by: @dr_dongle

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@transparent Some background 🙂 As you know I'm well up for writing constructive and informed comments to government and the discussions here very helpfully inform that. There's a danger though in being parochial and taking a view that neglects all the competing issues that a government department has to face in steering the country through what must be the largest societal change for a century. You alerted me to distribution issues - my musings took me to thinking about actually what needs to be done to make entire areas of early 19th century tenement buildings zero carbon. This is all off-topic so I'd better stop but I found reading the nitty-gritty bits of the relevant reports humbling in that anyone would even contemplate this. It does leave me with a firmer conviction that governments had better get a move on but tempered with a better understanding of the huge challenges they face in creating groundwork before the actual visible work can make much progress.

Well said. Far too many people IMHO think Government is easy and both civil servants and politicians stupid.

Personally I don't believe either. Government is about balancing tricky and complicated choices in an attempt to change things which have enormous inertia and over which you have limited power and information, in an ever changing and largely hostile world, whilst forever under the spotlight of a largely hostile media. With the best will in the world that's somewhere between horrendously difficult and impossible. Its also clearly impossible to please everyone and probably almost impossible to please anyone in the impatient world we now live in.

Thats why I make my political choices based on values and intent, and then expect delivery of much of what might happen to take more than a single term of office. I don't expect perfection either, politicians are human beings and have to balance the needs/desires of people like me, with the needs/desires of many other disparate groups.

Unfortunately that approach doesn't make newspaper headlines or suit todays low-attention-span world. If it did we might return to a sane and mature political debate (and as a result enable our politicians to make better political choices) rather than the completely inane, self defeating and destructive dog-whistle nonsense that we currently suffer.

This post was modified 1 hour ago 3 times by JamesPa

4kW peak of solar PV since 2011; EV and a 1930s house which has been partially renovated to improve its efficiency. 7kW Vaillant heat pump.

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Toodles

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23/02/2026 4:53 pm

@jamespa In fact, it makes me doubt that anyone who wishes to become an MP is actually sane!

Toodles, heats his home with cold draughts and cooks food with magnets.

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JamesPa

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23/02/2026 5:32 pm

Posted by: @toodles

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@jamespa In fact, it makes me doubt that anyone who wishes to become an MP is actually sane!

I agree as it happens. It seems to me that the job of an ordinary MP largely amounts to following voting orders and fending off a load of complaints from constituents, most of which are about things that are nothing to do with Central Government but are actually functions of local government.

That said Committee work, where an MP gets to examine bills in detail, probably has its moments. I was privileged to be responsible for getting a rather minor private bill through Parliament, and it was very notable that the MPs (and the members of the House of Lords) who were responsible for examining it clearly took a lot of care in their work.

I guess being a minister may be more rewarding, but then you have to face the conflicts that are referred to above and are doubtless always on call, except of course if you are one of those ministers who more or less totally neglect their jobs, which does happen from time to time. It seems to me that the job of Prime Minister, if you both take it seriously and care, is absolutely horrible.

Whilst I despise the politics and cynical manipulation of the people that some of our politicians indulge in, aided and abetted by the media, I still have respect for the job they do.

This post was modified 37 minutes ago by JamesPa

4kW peak of solar PV since 2011; EV and a 1930s house which has been partially renovated to improve its efficiency. 7kW Vaillant heat pump.

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