Thousands shiver at home plagued by rip-off prices in this greedy land & our wannabe-tough politicians just sound tepid
YOU’RE probably sitting there shivering in your winter coat, wooly hat and mittens as you read this, too afraid to turn on the heating because being warm is now a luxury most can’t afford.
Abandon hope. There is no consolation to be found anywhere any more. Take to the bottle and stay there.
Everywhere you turn in this greedy land of ours you are met with two big, fat fingers waving in your face.
Ireland is now the dearest place to live in the European Union — we’ve pushed Denmark, where a coffee and donut costs €12, into second place.
Being top of the rip-off league is a badge of dishonour. And let’s face the truth, it’s all driven by greed — our ugliest, but enduring, national trait.
Celtic Tiger Prices Part II is in full swing and devouring its young — they are all leaving in record numbers.
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The price of everything has gone up since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But here in Ireland prices have risen much more than anywhere else. This place, where you need a crock of gold to live a basic, simple life.
Who can afford now to pay their rent or mortgage without difficulty? Who among us doesn’t gulp deeply at what it costs to buy food — a half dozen eggs for a FIVER? FFS. And who doesn’t endure sleepless nights worrying about the next electricity or gas bill?
Figures released yesterday revealed that EVERY Irish household was stung for an extra €3,500 in 2022. That’s a fair old poke. And much of that was pocketed by the energy companies who made hay on the back of the soaring prices of electricity and gas.
Wholesale gas prices have now plummeted to LESS than what they were before the Ukraine war started, but the price you pay hasn’t. And don’t hold your breath that it will any time soon.
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Ireland’s biggest energy provider, Electric Ireland, announced this week it would reduce bills by between ten and 15 per cent for businesses. Yes, yes, yes . . . but NOT residential customers.
No, the 1.25million poor sods who pay the energy giant a pretty penny will have to endure electricity and gas bills DOUBLE what they were this time last year, and for another two bloody years, they estimate.
That’s despite wholesale energy prices being at their lowest level in 18 months.
Electric Ireland increased its prices for electricity and gas FIVE times since 2021. The last price increase, in October 2022, saw electricity unit rates rising by 38 per cent and gas by 47 per cent. The average annual household bill is now €2,000 — it was €1,000 last year.
BRICKIES IN PORTAKABIN
Its rationale for NOT dropping bills for residential customers? Essentially it hedged its bets on what the prices would be in the future, and lost.
And these prices could take two years to unwind.
It didn’t take two years to put up your bill when prices increased dramatically last April, did it? If it can raise prices so quickly, it can drop them equally fast.
But this sorry tale just gets even worse. Electric Ireland is owned by the ESB, which is owned by the state. We own the damn company. So we are screwing ourselves.
Confronted by the outrageousness of Electric Ireland rewarding business and continuing to punish ordinary citizens, our political leaders have sat on their hands and offered timid, tepid observations that wouldn’t light the a*** of a firefly.
Strong leadership would mean taking Electric Ireland by the balls and ordering bosses to pass on cuts to all its customers with immediate effect.
Instead, we got the usual second-rate response.
HANDS-OFF APPROACH
Simon Coveney was weaker than the last cup of tea made from one teabag for five brickies in a building site Portakabin.
He reasoned: “We want to see households benefiting from reduced electricity prices when the market allows for that and I think there’s an explanation needed as to how an energy company can reduce for businesses but not for households.”
When the market allows. Typical hands-off approach to governance.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar tried to sound tough too, but came across as lame. He said he would like to see Electric Ireland pass on bill cuts to ordinary folk “as soon as possible”.
Will two years time do, Leo? Because unless you’re serious with the energy bosses, that’s how long they propose to keep charging us top dollar.
Leo also warned there MIGHT be windfall taxes on energy companies’ profits — once we know them. I’m sure they’re quaking in their boots.
Repeat all of that nonsense to the people who live in the real world and can’t pay their extortionate bills. Like pensioner Gerry Clarke, who got a bill from Electric Ireland for €1,678.95 this week.
The 77-year-old from Robinstown, near Navan, Co Meath, has vowed not to pay it. For the same billing period last year (December to February), his bill was €290.
There are hundreds of thousands like Gerry across Ireland, shivering at home, while those with the power to make the energy companies do the right thing dither. Same old, same old.
MONSTER OUGHT TO GET LIFE
ELEVEN and a half years is nowhere near enough jail time to compensate for what evil Christopher Stokes did to his former friend, Simone Lee, on May 11, 2021.
Simone’s ordeal began as the pair travelled in a car being driven by a pensioner friend between Charleville, Co Cork and Limerick city.
Stokes, 39, agitated about a lack of money to pay child maintenance, repeatedly beat Simone with fists and a glass bottle.
Once out of the car he continued the assault, kicking and striking Simone before dragging her into her house, putting a bin liner over her head and tightening it so she lost consciousness.
When she awoke he removed the bag and threw acid in her face on three occasions, before pouring boiling water down her back.
When the attack finished, he placed her on the ground, putting debris on her body, before setting the house on fire.
Miraculously, Simone, 43, managed to escape on her hands and knees to raise the alarm.
Stokes was soon arrested and in five interviews with cops he denied he did anything wrong and even claimed Simone had burned down her own house.
Gardai charged him with attempted murder, which Stokes denied. As his trial was about to get under way this week he pleaded guilty to lesser charges of assault causing serious harm, threats to kill and arson, meaning he would escape a potential life sentence and serve a maximum of 15 years instead.
His victim told the Central Criminal Court, sitting in Cork: “For all the fear that this man caused me I am proud I am here today telling my story – I am a survivor, not a victim”.
What a brave woman. And what an evil scumbag.
Not that I’m a judge, but if it had been me presiding over the trial I’d have sentenced Stokes to life breaking rocks for ten hours a day, seven days a week. Alas, this isn’t Alabama, 1963.
PARTRIDGE IS AL OURS
ALAN Partridge is perhaps the greatest comic invention of all time.
And we should all rejoice that the genius behind Partridge, Steve Coogan, is now a bona fide Irishman.
Steve’s parents are both of Irish descent. His mum grew up in Co Mayo, which entitled him to an Irish passport.
Soon after Brexit he applied for Irish citizenship, along with tens of thousands of other Brits, who wanted to retain their EU identity.
As Partridge said: “There’s more to Ireland than this.”
YOSEMITE SCENERY
YOSEMITE National Park in California is synonymous with Yogi Bear, but also breathtaking scenery and now extreme weather like never before.
Snow storm after snow storm has battered the place, so much so that the floor of the Valley recorded 40in of snow this week.
You’d wonder what the electricity bill would be for those staying in the tents at Curry Village, above.
DUP ARE SO 17TH CENTURY
THE heinous gun attack on PSNI cop Detective Inspector John Caldwell, by the so-called New IRA, should serve as a serious wake-up call to the foot-draggers in the DUP.
For the last ten months the DUP hav refused to take their seats in Stormont, no doubt because Sinn Fein is now the largest party and leader Michelle O’Neill would be First Minister.
That prospect sickens the DUP to the core. Any other excuse they come up with for not engaging meaningfully in politics in Northern Ireland is a concoction.
As they hold their noses to the future, they harp on in private about how good they had it in the past, when Unionism was the dominant force, politically, socially and economically.
All that is now a distant memory. But it’s one the DUP take succour from – and that feeds the tiny minds of the terrorists, like the New IRA.
Repeatedly saying “never” and “no” has got the party to where they are now, nowhere.
The people of Northern Ireland voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU in the 2016 Brexit referendum. The DUP campaigned to Leave, inexplicably. Flags mean more to it than people.
Now, seven years on and Brexit is finally done. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has delivered a deal with the EU that gives Northern Ireland the best of all possible worlds, unfettered access to the UK and to the EU Single market. But still the DUP mumble away in negativity.
They are so far from the prevailing winds, as to be in a different age altogether. The 1690s is more their thing than the 21st century.
DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson has a big decision to make. If he decides to say no to the deal, he will see his party and all it stands for die a quick death.