Smart meters

Portrait of the Week: Kate’s chemotherapy, Waspi pensions and Moscow’s terror attack

Home Oliver Dowden, the Deputy Prime Minister, told parliament that China was behind a cyber attack on the Electoral Commission in August 2021, getting access to 40 million voters’ details. Three MPs, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Stewart McDonald and Tim Loughton, said they had been hacked and harassed by China. The government sanctioned two individuals and a company. A Chinese battery manufacturer, EVE Energy, had been in talks about building a gigafactory near Coventry airport. Scott Benton MP, from whom the Conservative whip had been withdrawn, successfully applied to be Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead in place of Chris Pincher, thereby provoking a by-election in Blackpool South.

Ross Clark

You’re not being paranoid: smart meters are out to get you

If anyone was still in doubt as to why the government is keen to press ‘smart’ meters onto us, those doubts will surely now be dispelled by the latest intervention of Ofgem, which has proposed abolishing the current electricity price cap and replacing it with a cap which varies throughout the day in response to the wholesale price of electricity. No, the smart meter sitting in your home is not there just to help you manage your electricity use – it is there to facilitate a future ‘dynamic’ pricing structure for electricity consumers. It is there so that we can be offered cheap electricity when wind and solar power is