Solar Power - For the Rich, the rest of us pay?

The local rag this week had what looked like an article but was actually an advert, its title was New Energy Stream" and went on to tell me how I could earn money and get free electricity.
We all know nothing in life is free so I read on, then did research of my own.

Its about the latest fad in Solar panels for your home, I'll disregard the fact that they are an eyesore for your neighbours and one of the least efficient ways of generating electricity you can use in the UK and see what the benefits are.

I was completely shocked, get the pun, OK, it seems that if you have the odd £10,000+ laying around doing nothing you can cover your house roof with black panels and maybe on a good day generate only 40% of your energy needs, well in the daytime in mid summer and so long as you don't cook or heat by electricity. So remember your still paying full price for 60% of your electricity.

The amazing thing about this scheme is that you get 41.3pence from your electricity provider for every unit you generate, plus an extra amount of money for any electricity you sell back to the grid, which in fact in most homes is going to be a very very very small amount unless you have covered every inch of the place in solar panels spending £20 - 30K

Where is this 41.3 pence coming from? That's easy, everyone of us who has not got the £10k to spend on buying solar panels is going to pay more for our electricity. Now that sounds fair doesn't it. Just like a lot of things the Labour party stitched us up with, oops I got political again.

But it doesn't end there, because the amount being paid to you to generate your own power was set way too high there are already scams going on with people connecting small diesel generators to their generation systems because they can generate electricity with conventional means for way less than they get paid for their units. It is also apparently worth while setting up arc lights on your roof and running them at night and your still quids in, its apparently been done.

Remember, all this is being paid for by those of us who don't have £10k to throw away.
Remember too that once you have installed the panels you lose out if you decide to move house as your unlikely to get the full price back on your sale, although you could take them with you I am sure it would only cost a few thousand to remove and re-install.

Finally there is the problem with the calculations being made by the people trying to sell you solar panels. They say that as a top rate tax payer your return is equal to 12% PA. No its not, for the first 10-15 years I'd be paying off the installation costs. And if it were interest on my money I wanted you have to consider compound interest whereby £10k in the bank at even just 3% will be £15,579 in 15 years.
If your solar panels are running at maximum, (remember the winter this year) you are expected to save £625 a year, which by my maths means its 16yrs before you break even.

The solution is easier, rather than covering the world in expensive black panels, build nuclear power stations or loads of coal fired ones. We all know coal produces way less pollution than a certain volcano is doing, and as is being proved by Tony Robinson in the series Man on Earth, our CO2 has nothing to do with climate change.

If on the other hand you have £10k to throw away stick it in the bank and in 15yrs time look forward to at least 10yrs completely free electricity.

And another thing!

We we sitting, no were we were sat, oh whatever, we were eating lunch yesterday, home made bread, cheeses the usual kind of thing when I noticed the best before date on the Extra slowly matured cheddar cheese, 11 June 2010, which begs the question , how does the cheese know its finished slowly maturing and to start going off?
And another thing, how come this cheese can mature extra slowly yet when I open it I should use it within 3 days, and the fact that most of my large blocks of cheddar are usually open for a good couple of weeks before they are finished makes me wonder who though they should be used in 3 days.



It will amaze some to learn that cars have horns or to give them their correct name audible warning devices. I say it will amaze them because I bet some people have never used them for their correct use. These much misused devices are intended to allow drivers to warn others to ther presence on the road yet it seems that the lad next door thinks it is to say goodbye every time he drives off. Why is that, whatever is the point and he certainly isn't the only one doing it. And another thing, why is the dork a few roads away allowed to drive around sounding his musical air horns time after time and what does he think he is achieving. Doesn't he know its the same as having a sunvisor sticker saying "I'm a complete tosser"



Finally, I thought I would share with everyone that I can now play the piano. Yes that's right, I started learning 6 weeks ago but I can now tell people I can play it.
How do I reason this, that's simple, you see although I am not very good yet I liken it to when I see a totally terrible driver, if I asked them can you drive they will no doubt say "yes I can drive" they won't say yes but I am not very good. So if anyone should ever ask can I play piano the answer is yes.

Gordon to quit - But not yet

More on the general erection. ( no its not a type, its a big cockup)

I can't help it, I promise I will stop being political on the blog soon, but at the moment I am blown away with the way this country is run.
So Gordon has said he will go, but not yet and I bet he changes his mind, so we are set to have the two parties who lost the election plus a load of Gordon's mates running the country.
Then, as if it was not bad enough that the election was a waste of time, we are yet again going to have a labour prime minister decided not by their policies put to the country but by the labour party as they select a new leader from the bunch of rotten apples and self serving twits such as David Miliband and Ed Ballsup.
The country voted for change millions of people don't want labour in power.

Still I must remember that in a democracy the party decides not the people.

Now GET OUT Gordon, and other points from the news.

So there we have it, well over 2 million less people voted for Gordon than David but he still stands outside No.10 and says he is the Prime Minister.
As he would say LOOK (I hate the way he uses look to try and be-little people) LOOK 77% of the country didn't vote for you so GO!
What do we have to do to get rid of him, physically carry him out, let me know when and Ill lend a hand.

The sheer arrogance of the bloke who has not only never been elected in but now that he has been elected out he still thinks he can stay. Send in the removal team now, lets be shot of this tw-t. What makes it worse is that the party who got the least votes is now virtually deciding who will be prime minister.

OK enough of that, plenty of other people are fuming over this best I move on.

Something completely different
Off the coast of America an oil rig has exploded, everyone seems to have forgotten that 11 people died in the explosion but that aside there is one ironic outcome from the disaster.

Before I give you that it is worth putting my comment in context with some of those by Americans.
So far they have come up with ; " We have the boot firmly on the throat of BP and we don't intend to remove it any time soon" , "Lets just hope the tide changes and the oil washes up all over the beaches of the UK" , and best so far "how would they feel if we put cyanide in the drinking supply of the UK" .
Cheers guys, someone remind me why we are allies with that lot.

So anyway, although no one would wish to see harm caused to the wildlife you have to smile when having invaded and terrorised so many places in the world to take their oil they now have it washing up on their beaches.

Strange how oil industry pollution only matters to them when they can see it.

What have the Romans Labour Party ever done for us ?

With thanks to Monty Python I ask on the eve of Gordon being booted out of No.10 (if he isn't the election is a fix) what has the labour party ever done for us.

the sanitation!
Oh yes ... sanitation, Reg, you remember before people could actually afford their water rates.

And the roads ...
Well YES OBVIOUSLY the roads ... the roads go without saying, before they put up car tax we had roads you could drive along without hitting pot holes all the time.
But apart from, the sanitation and the roads ...

Medicine ... Education ... Health
Yes ... all right, fair enough ... Prescriptions have trebled in price and people fight to find a good education for their children, and as for the NHS the waiting lists are gone because they won't put you on a list until you have waited 2 years already.

And the wine ...
Oh yes! True! They want to tax wine so much that no one can afford it just because a few drunks can't control themselves.
Yeah. That's something we'd really miss if the Roman labour left.

AND it's safe to walk in the streets at night now.
Yes, they certainly know how to keep order you can walk the streets at night with any weapon you like, and reported crime has fallen because there is no way you can get through to the police to report it.

All right ... all right ... but apart from sanitation and medicine and education and public health and roads and public order ... what HAVE the Romans Labour ever done for US?

£800,000,000,000 debt!

'Nude Green Leaves, and Bust'

Its official the world is mad. Today in the news there is an article about a painting by Picasso which has just been sold at auction.

A few weeks ago I spent time wandering in the National Gallery in London, well its free so why not, and there are some amazing works of art there. Paintings that look like photographs and some that are so intricate that they must have taken months of work if not years.
Then you come to the Picasso or the Sunflowers by Van Klonk or whoever he was and you have to look at them and think why the heck would anyone think this is good.
Some of the art there is nothing short of terrible, and don't anyone dare tell me that I just don't understand it or that I am not educated enough to be able to see the art in it, take it from me its trash and a 5yo could paint better using a dead cat as a paint brush.

So I get back to the Picasso, here it is -
I dare anyone to tell me that it is worth the £70million paid for it yesterday.
I have seen road kill that's better art.