Here’s the question. Now, some of my oldest friends will say that I have an opinion on everything, and I get where they’re coming from, even though in these days of everyone shouting very loudly, I can barely venture below the line, have left twitter and shun Facebook. In the world of keyboard warriors, it turns out I’m a pacifist. Still, you would expect me to have an opinion on smart meters, and as a mung-bean knitting, Guardian-reading, do-gooding, bollocks to Brexit, metropolitan pseudo-intellectual, you would expect that I’m all in favour, have several, along with solar panels, and have long since turned my electricity surplus into a revenue stream directed towards good causes.
Yet, I’m not and I haven’t and I probably won’t.
I’ve been bombarded by my provider, Bulb, for weeks now to get one. This makes me not want one. For I am contradictory and resist pushing. “They’re free” they say. “What’s the catch?” I echo. The more they push the more I resist. Always look a gift-horse in the mouth, I say, if you’re so keen on it, what’s your own benefit? Please, they say.
Then I hear an advert, voiced by Maxine Peake, top actor and well-known lefty agitator /class warrior. And I think, ah – you’re aiming at me there are you not? At someone who loves an actor/ lefty agitator/class warrior. And instead of thinking, right-ho, here we go, I think, what are you trying to greenwash?
Which is pretty sad, isn’t it, if the advert was sincere and well-meant. See where we are?
So, I googled. And then wished I hadn’t. The first thing I clicked on was an article in The Daily Telegraph – “Six reasons not have a smart meter.” None of them of any point. Their reasoning seemed to be, this is just the sort of thing that our enemies are in favour of, so let’s be against it. They even managed to put a picture of Ed Mllliband in the middle of the article, as if to say, you know, lefties and Jews, eh?
I didn’t find any cogent reason to install one. What, I might shout at Anne not to use her hair-dryer on Mach 10, or maybe use a saucepan instead of a kettle for that one-cup brew of earth-ending selfishness? That’ll save the world. And 20 pence.
There’s a suggestion, if you can be bothered to click through enough shit, that it allows for efficiencies, not just within our home, but within our overall planning for electricity, but that left me thinking, yes, but that’s not for our benefit, that’s for your profit – why am I helping companies make more money out of me about something I honestly think shouldn’t be run for gain.
So, please, tell me, because I really feel I should want one, why?
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