It's not easy being rural

We’ve heard a lot about rising energy bills and price caps recently.

The energy price cap limits how high some people’s gas and electricity bills can go. It doesn’t apply to everyone, only to those who are on their supplier's basic energy tariff and not, for example, if you’re on a fixed-term energy tariff. Neither does it apply if you’re on a standard variable ‘green’ energy tariff – not exactly an incentive to go green, is it. 

The price cap is adjusted every six months and the last change was an increase in April 2022 to £2,000. The next review is due in October, when a further increase of £800 minimum is expected, landing the typical domestic customer with a likely bill of over £3,200 p.a. from October, and over £3,300 a year from January 2023. Ouch! Prices are rising sharply because demand for gas increased when Covid restrictions eased, and because the war in Ukraine has threatened supplies from Russia.

Without the cap, it would be much worse. For those on non-qualifying fixed-term contracts, they lock-in their energy price for 1-2 years up front, meaning that if the wholesale prices go up higher than expected, they’re laughing. If they reduce unexpectedly, they’re spitting feathers.

Spare a thought, however, for those of us in the middle of nowhere, not connected to natural gas and relying on heating oil. The price of heating oil isn’t capped and there’s no such thing as a fixed-term tariff. We can pay monthly to ease the burden, but if the price when we do order a top-up is particularly high, we have to pay the balance there and then. Currently a monthly payment can be £420 for a three-bedroom house, which equates to over £5,000 p.a. This is just for oil. We pay for electricity on top of that.

It's not easy, living in the country.

As well as paying more to heat our homes, we bumpkins are disadvantaged in other ways compared to our urban cousins. We have:
• A colder climate (more exposed to the elements and less heat (or shelter) from neighbouring buildings and traffic)
• Fewer buses
• Fewer police patrols
• Longer emergency-service response times
• More plane noise (flightpaths are routed away from urban centres and over rural areas because there are fewer people to complain).
• More dangerous roads
• In places, no mains drainage
• Patchy street lighting
• Fewer pubs
• Longer distances for retail therapy and recreation
• Patchy broadband and mobile phone signal.

To rub salt into the wound, we pay the same national and local taxes as townies but get a fraction of the benefits. The Americans rebelled against taxation without representation, so how about I start an uprising against taxation without commensurate services. Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it? And apart from BoJo and Rees-Moggy, name me a politician who would know what ‘commensurate’ means without looking it up. In any event I’d better be careful about inciting a revolution; if the police can arrest an army veteran for ‘offending’ someone by re-tweeting a gobsmackingly clever flag (the LGBTQ++%£% flag redesigned as a swastika), what do you think they’d make of me offending politicians by proposing we get rid of them undemocratically. Ruddy snowflakes. Politicians I mean, not the police. Oh, I dunno though.

However, living in out-of-the-way rural idylls, we’re less likely to:
• Be constrained by groupthink
• Volunteer for door-to-door duties because it’s too fekking far between each door
• Catch Covid
• Be bothered by those irritating politicians at election time.

Swings and roundabouts, we’re also more likely to:
• Be bothered by those irritating Countryfile presenters
• Be chased by angry bulls
• See a hare and hear an owl
• See more stars and less light pollution
• Get around shortages thanks to farm and rural business resourcefulness
• Be blighted by solar farms, wind turbines, potential fracking sites and other crap like HS2.

So what’s so great about living in the country?

There’s never a dull moment, and the view from my kitchen window can’t be beat.