​If the King can reduce his electricity bill maybe the rest of us can too

When we’ve been a degree or two warmer than mainland Britain or even the south of Ireland this week what’s to stop us thinking life couldn’t get better despite all the problems and disasters happening in other parts of the world.

Well, there are lots of issues, some of them relatively new to us that are sufficient to upset one’s equilibrium during this fine weather. Rising energy bills for a start and I don’t mean a few shillings here and there.

Household energy bills it seems will not drop below £1,700 a year for the rest of the decade. So if that’s the equivalent amount you plan to spend on your summer holiday break each year you may have to re-do the arithmetic from now on. It’s called cutting down.

There is to be an energy price cap of £2,074 from July 1, with the whole sorry issue of energy costs being blamed on Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. And it’s not just those of us on electricity. Those dependent on gas to heat their homes will definitely feel the pain.

Even our newly enthroned King has got the message. He’s said to have ordered the Palace swimming pool thermostat to be turned down. So we should enjoy all this warm weather whilst we can but keep an eye on what might come down the line in future.

These dramatic rises are not exclusive to us. The whole of the UK will be in the same boat.

There’s always the possibility we here might fare better by the end of the decade. A story in the News Letter this week indicated that an application has been `filed to create a new electricity

connection under the sea between Northern Ireland and Scotland by the end of the decade’.

The company involved Transmission Investment (based in London) says `the £700 million project will be privately financed and will reduce the likelihood of electricity outages by facilitating greater access to other electricity markets’.

It’s Project Director Keith Morrison gives us hope for what he describes as `a very exciting project’.

Now, the term `under the sea between Northern Ireland and Scotland’ has been aired before in connection with the possibility of some kind of transport connection between the two places. I

would like to think it’ possible yet my sailing experiences of this route, which go back 40-plus years, do not fill me with optimism. Power cables no doubt are easier to work with under the sea but that particular route is complicated.

But I will stay hopeful and in the meantime will continue to keep a close check on what I’m paying for electricity every month as the figure is apt to rise without me noticing. Time was when we were

always warned of potential hikes in such bills. Now they arrive without your permission.

Wood burning stoves are a good way to heat homes and are becoming more popular by the year, but electricity is much easier and cleaner. The Government, constantly bleating about the

environment, would like to see an end to wood burning stoves. If they want to want to go down that route they may have to abolish the cutting down of trees throughout the land. Now, I wonder how

they would manage that. After all Christmas would never be the same without a natural fir tree and what would happen if our electricity supply failed in the dead of winter?