Fahrenheit's Blog

Oh lordy,

Here's the story that Haringey Council have...

commissioned a plane fitted with a miltary thermal infrared sensor to carry out the aerial thermographic study, giving information about heat loss from every property in Haringey.

The result is this. A map showing the energy efficiency of every building in Haringey.


Where to begin?

Well I guess I should start by pointing out that the Civic Centre is listed as being well into the 'high energy loss' range, so perhaps they should get their own house in order before complaining about the rest of us...





...and so is their North Tottenham Customer Service Centre.




They list three 'benefits' of this programme:

1. Residents and businesses can discover online how much energy they are losing.

This is absolutely none of the council's fucking business. If my bills are too high I'm perfectly capable of identifying that fact myself. Keep within your remit, and stop wasting my tax money on this.

2. It will help the council identify homes whose occupiers may be too poor to heat their homes or are suffering from broken heating.

No. It won't. Not at all. The map doesn’t distinguish between houses that aren't losing much heat because:

A) they can't afford heating;
B) the person was out at work or on holiday when the picture was taken; and
C) the house is already properly insualted and energy efficient.

So we could get into the ludicrous position where if you follow all the recommendations and insulate your home properly, council officials will come banging on your door to make sure you aren't some old biddy cowering round a one-bar stove.

And I'm even going to be chariatible and not labour the obvious point - that more people might be able to affort to heat their homes if they weren't paying so much council tax to fund being spied on from the air!

3. The council will be able to investigate whether the properties losing least heat are empty and could be brought back into use.

If these are council properties you are investigating when why on earth haven't you already got a list of which ones are empty and which ones aren't. I mean, that's pretty fucking basic.

But if these are private properies you are investigating, then why on earth do you think it's any of your business?