The Verney family were big time landowners in Buckinghamshire in the 17th to 19th centuries. They had a railway station built in the middle of nowhere, on the skirts of their vast landholdings, which is now converted into a private house on a country road with no other houses around. This was Verney Junction, which for a time was the end point of the Metropolitan Railway out of London. The junction itself, was that the line, shortly afterwards, joined the railway track running from Oxford to Bletchley (which is in the process of being restored to working order after being axed by the Beeching chop). There are no plans to reopen Verney Junction.
At http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/07/eu-probe-into-british-drax-biomass… … there is a comment by one Richard Verney from the UK. I don't know if he is a descendant of the landowning Verney's of Buckinghamshire but there is a good chance he is, which is by the by as what he says is quite illuminating. His pet moan is the way wind turbine and solar panel subsidies affect our electricity bills (in the UK). Scottish and Southern Electricity (one of the better electricity suppliers) explained how the bill is made up. Cost of supply accounts for 50 per cent of your bill, infrastructure 25 per cent and Green Deals (part of Labour and the Coalition climate harvesting) account for the other 25 per cent. As far as the latter is concerned these figures may be out of date as I'm not sure how many of these Green Deals concocted by politicos are still in force.
Verney then breaks down these numbers which seem pretty innocuous at first sight, so much so they confused the BBC utterly when aired. The infrastructure bit is mainly down to coupling wind farm and STOR to the grid – which means 50 per cent of your bill is down to environmentalists pushing the Green Blob. The Green Deals include things like subsidising loft insulation, ecoboilers, and even double glazing. I hadn't heard of the last one but you can add the smart meters instead. On top of that the cost of supply is higher as electricity suppliers are forced to purchase energy from renewables at a higher rate than the market price for coal and gas. The politicos are thereby depriving electrictiy customers of any benefit from the crash in coal and gas prices from over supply, as they are fixing the market in favour of renewables. On top of that electricity suppliers have to include the carbon floor price as far as coal and gas is concerned, a levy the politicos have introduced to try and get some equality with the cost of energy from renewables. Verney estimates that 60 per cent of your electricity bill is entirely due to the roll out of renewables – introduced to Joe Public as a benefit and a saving the world mantra beloved of the environmental lobbyists. You are being robbed – mugged quite openly and not only that, every time you get your electricity bill someone else's pockets are getting fuller and fuller.
Gas bills differ as they only have the carbon floor price to swallow and absorb, as well as Green Deal such as loft insulation and eco-boilers. Even then 10 per cent of your gas bill is down to environmentalists pushing renewables. The average gas bill (if you have gas central heating) is around £900 a year. You are paying £90 a year of that for absolutely no sensible reason. The nub of all this is that everyone in the UK is being milked by the millionaires. In the medieval period you would have paid a tithe on your end product and provided the Lord of the Manor with so many hours of your labour (free) and that would have been it. Now you are subsidising fat cats who in turn grease the palms of the NGOs who lobby the government whose ears prick up at the prospect of bigger and bigger tax revenue.