A warning to South Korea from Britain

Tuesday/Wednesday blog

I’ve had this article published today on The Daily Sceptic website uner the title ‘THE COMING ECO-TOTALITARIANISM’:

https://dailysceptic.org/2023/09/11/the-coming-eco-totalitarianism/

(by the way, I strongly recommend readers sign up to getting the free The Daily Sceptic e-newsletter)

But I thought it might be amusing here to use a version of the article which I have very slightly repurposed for a South Korean newspaper as this more clearly exposes the madness that Britain’s power-crazed tinpot-dictator politicians are imposing on us unfortunate citizens:

A warning to South Korea from Britain

by David Craig

The British Government’s plans to force Britain to achieve ‘Net Zero’ CO2 emissions by 2050 seem to be falling apart. Few people seem interested in buying expensive, range-limited electric cars. Even fewer want to replace their cheap efficient gas central-heating boilers with expensive and poor-performing electric heat pumps. Offshore windfarms were a key part of the British government’s ‘Net Zero’ decarbonisation plans, yet there were no companies bidding for the recent group of offshore windfarm contracts as the government wouldn’t let windfarm operators charge as much as they wanted for their electricity. And the British Government seems unable to make a decision about which technology to choose for Britain’s new generation of SMRs (small modular nuclear reactors) even though British engineering company, Rolls Royce, has already developed SMRs which can work in the hostile underwater operating environment of nuclear-powered submarines and so could be quickly and inexpensively adapted for use on dry land.

However, having realised that it cannot provide sufficient renewable electricity to power Britain as a modern industrial economy, the British government has come up with a brilliant solution – force British citizens to use much less electricity.

The British parliament is currently passing a new Energy Bill. The British Palace of Westminster and the clock tower Big Ben are synonymous with democracy and have become a symbol of elected parliaments around the world. So, it might surprise some South Korean readers to learn the kind of totalitarian powers which the new Energy Bill with give the British authorities.

I won’t quote any sections from the 446-page Energy Bill as these are written in almost incomprehensible legal language. Instead, I thought it might be useful to describe three common scenarios which will arise once the Energy Bill has become law.

Scenario 1: Replacement of existing electricity and gas meters

British electricity and gas meters have a registered lifetime of anywhere between 10 and 25 years depending on the type of meter. Once a meter’s lifetime has expired, there is a legal requirement to have it replaced. Under the terms of the Energy Bill, someone from your power supplier will have the right to enter your home to replace your current meter with a smart meter. Smart meters have three main functions – they allow you to see how much electricity you are using at any time; they enable your electricity supplier to view how much electricity you are using; and thirdly, and more worryingly, they give your electricity supplier the ability to cut your electricity supply should someone at the electricity supplier or a government official decide that you are using too much electricity or should the government be unable to supply enough electricity at peak use times.

If you refuse the smart meter installer entry to your home or try to refuse having a smart meter installed, the Energy Bill gives the person the legal power to return with police back-up, force entry into your home and use what is called “reasonable force” to restrain you while he or she rips out your old-fashioned meter and replaces it with a smart meter. “Reasonable force” might just mean the police handcuffing you during the smart meter installation or could even mean detaining you in a cell at the local police station while your meters are changed.

It seems likely that it will be illegal for anyone in Britain to rent out or sell any residential property unless it has an EPC (Energy Performance Certificate) rating of ‘C’ or above. It is compulsory for anyone wishing to sell a home in Britain to commission an energy surveyor to produce an EPC for that home rating how well that home uses energy.

Currently there are just over one million home sales a year in Britain. Of these home sales, around 41% have an EPC rating of ‘C’ or above – that means ‘A’, ‘B’ or ‘C’. So, under the terms of the Energy Bill, over 590,000 homes a year would have to have alterations made to improve their EPC rating before they could be rented out or sold. These alterations could range from just installing double glazing or adding a little loft or wall insulation to spending tens of thousands of pounds installing a heat pump which would include replacing all the pipes and radiators in a home and could even require ripping up carpets and floors to install underfloor heating.

Scenario 3: Energy Saving Opportunity Schemes (ESOS)

The new British Energy Bill introduces what are known as ‘Energy Saving Opportunity Schemes’ (ESOS).Here the word “opportunity” has a distinctly Orwellian flavour. The expression Orwellian comes from George Orwell’s famous dystopian novel ‘1984’ and indicates that the words mean the opposite of what they say. Key slogans used by the Big Brother dictatorship in Orwell’s ‘1984’ were ‘War is Peace’, ‘Freedom is Slavery’ and ‘Ignorance is Strength’.

With ever more homes having smart meters, energy suppliers and government officials will be able to identify towns, neighbourhoods, streets and even individual homes which government ‘experts’ consider to be using too much electricity. The Energy Bill’s horribly misnamed ESOS would give the legal right for energy inspectors to enter any home, using “reasonable force” if necessary, in order to make an energy-saving assessment and propose ways the homeowner could improve the property’s energy efficiency.

In all three of the above three scenarios, refusal by the homeowner to comply with the government’s requirements to save energy would be a criminal offence with penalties of fines of up to £15,000 and/or imprisonment of up to one year.

That a government would introduce such intrusive and oppressive eco-totalitarianism on its citizens is something that we might expect from an undemocratic, centrally-controlled country like China. However, few of us would have imagined that a supposedly democratic country like Britain would implement such extreme restrictions on its citizens’ freedom. What is happening in Britain should serve as a warning to South Koreans of what can occur when a government becomes obsessed with forcing a country to achieve ‘Net Zero’ CO2 emissions to fight a supposed ‘climate crisis’ which doesn’t even exist.