Apr 4th, 2018
Author: donich_admin
Winter is back and a rant
Today is 4th April. Yesterday we had flakes of snow even at loch level, and at the top of the waterfalls it was snowing quite heavily.
When we woke this morning, the weather was foul and the snow was back on Beinn Bheula from about 200m. Tonight it has cleared and it looks positively alpine – you would honestly not believe we weren’t in January.
The bad news is that it is freezing, and our LPG cylinder is down to 15%. With all the problems with Calor – I am not holding my breath as to when we will get a new delivery so we are trying to keep our large house warm with electric heaters and my propane stove. We are not really succeeding. Actually we are the lucky ones as at least we have an electric stove, an electric immersion heater for hot water and – frankly – the money to pay the huge electricity bill we are going to have. Social media (I don’t use this but R does) is full of reports of people with nothing but gas for heating and cooking – and some of these are old and disabled people, plus parents with young children. This is actually a disgrace and another piece of discrimination against people in rural areas (don’t get me started on the question of refuse collections). Imagine the outcry if Scottish Power suddenly said they were turning the electricity off because they had run out of supply. To my mind the Scottish Government at least needs to force Calor to act as a proper service provider – and if they won’t do it voluntarily, they should be nationalized.
I was just talking to R the other day about what public services we actually get for our council tax. No proper road. Virtually no refuse collection. No street lighting. No mains sewage. Have to pay £90 to have an old appliance lifted (in Glasgow this is a free council service).
We do of course, have huge advantages (I’m looking at Beinn Bheula as the sun goes down and turns the snow pink at the moment), but that doesn’t give the Council the right to piss all over us and treat us like third class citizens.
Rant over.