Last week I stood with some Big Issue vendors outside what must the smallest of Big Issue offices. It was not warm and yet there was sun this Thursday morning in Plymouth. The night before I had spoken at a social enterprise festival in Devonport in a large classically shaped building. The lights were dim outside making me think I might have slipped back into my dark childhood.
But no, it was common sense. The subject of my talk was energy justice: with the audience the local enterprise that fights for justice around poverty in terms of getting a better deal for the poorest among us.
Yes it’s the same old story that the poorer you are the more you will be paying for your basic rudimentary costs, with energy a big one.
Power to Change is working away at helping people in the crisis of fuel poverty and I was privileged to relate their work to the work I am doing around how the poorest pay for everything through the nose.
I was inspired by the broad range of work that Power to Change does in the Plymouth area. Educating people in fuel use and helping to lag pipes and put in insulation seems the wisest of things. Yet this method of preventing people falling into fuel poverty is not encouraged by central government. In fact the good old glory days when green was top of the political list have long since disappeared.
Why not make the UK the brightest of places because we take the work of people like Power to Change seriously. Alas we operate such political and financial short-termism that we ride roughshod over the future. Leave the muck until tomorrow to pick up.