Source: BBC Radio 4: Any Answers
URL: N/A
Date: 23/11/2013
Event: "We don't need this energy brought thousands of miles to us"
Attribution: BBC Radio 4
People:
Julian Worricker: But I'm going to move it on, Josephine, and say thank you, because I want to try and squeeze at least two, maybe three, callers in on the green taxes issue, in the last two or three minutes of the programme. So I'm going to - I'm going to ask for brevity, if I may, Dorothy Morgan in Cumbria, good afternoon.
Dorothy Morgan: Good afternoon.
Julian Worricker: Your point about green taxes.
Dorothy Morgan: Yes...
Julian Worricker: Go ahead.
Dorothy Morgan: I worked past pension - pension age, on my date of birth. Now, while I was paying my mortgage, at one point I was paying 15% interest.
Julian Worricker: Yup.
Dorothy Morgan: Um... I'm sitting here today, I've got a thermal vest and two jumpers on. My point is: I worked 55 hours a week for many years to pay for extra loft insulation, double glazing, cavity insulation and cost-effective gas boiler central heating. Others, such as myself, should be excused green taxes on their fuel bills.
Julian Worricker: Because you've done it out of your own pocket.
Dorothy Morgan: Yes!
Julian Worricker: Yep, no, I get the point, Dorothy, and I'm going to say thank you -
Dorothy Morgan: I mean, I were working 55 hours a week.
Julian Worricker: Yep, no, I take the point.
Dorothy Morgan: Why should those who rarely or never worked - they get more pension than I do, because I only get what I paid in for, and on my date of birth, I needed 40 years -
Julian Worricker: Sure.
Dorothy Morgan: - when I only got 31.
Julian Worricker: Dorothy, forgive me, I want to bring Penelope Newsome in, in Oxford, as well on the same subject. You heard the debate - it was about green and blue and yellow, Penelope. Where do you stand, on all this?
Penelope Newsome: Well, I don't - I'm also living, actually, on pension credits, I've got very little money and I have to keep my heating bills to an absolute minimum, like 15 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening. But I don't object to the green energy taxes. I take my energy from Ecotricity, which is a green energy company.
Julian Worricker: Yeah.
Penelope Newsome: What I object to are the huge profits and the huge salaries paid to huge corporations that we don't need - we need local energy sources that we can control ourselves, in our own area. We don't need this energy brought thousands of miles to us, losing energy all the time on huge overhead wires or under cables, or wherever... So we've really got to try and develop a much more local, democratic kind of energy system, so that we can make our own energy and therefore supply our own needs as we need them.
Julian Worricker: Okay, Penelope, I'm going to say thank you and draw things to a close...