Our house.
Because of my job we have always lived in fairly large houses, after all Vicarages have to be of a certain size, with reception rooms (to hold meetings) and dining rooms (to entertain) and studies (to study in).
Now we live in a much smaller house.
It is a modern cottage, twenty years old.
It is insulated (roof space and cavity walls) and it is much cheaper to maintain than a big, old, drafty vicarage.
But it still has to be heated.
So we still have to buy energy as well as eat, all paid for out of the pension.
We are lucky because so far we have not had to make a choice between eating and heating but an increasing number of people will be making that choice this winter.
Our energy supply system is broken.
But this Government seems to have no plans to fix it, so even though wholesale prices have been pretty stable, retail prices have continued to rise.
Faced with having to fork out increasingly large monthly payments to British Gas I changed my energy supplier to Co-op Energy. I did it in the hope that I might see a saving but also because if I was forced to pay somebody for Gas and Electricity I would rather pay the co-op than a public utility that has been privatised.
Politically energy is very much the theme of the day.
Whether Labour can improve the current dysfunctional system I don't know but I do know that the con-dems shrill rhetoric about competition simply won't wash.
The fact is that when the public utilities were sold by Margaret Thatcher's Government, most of them went on to be owned by foreign investors and Governments.
Quite why it is not OK for the British Government to own its own energy supply but it is OK for France and Germany to own it, I do not understand.
But the longer this debate goes on, and the shriller it becomes as the election gets closer, it will become increasingly clear that we are being faced with a choice between ideologies.
The Tory Party and its Lib-Dem allies simply rehearse again and again the ideological rhetoric of private, private, private, although the irony of their proposed sale of Hinkley Point to a French/Chinese consortium which is in fact public. public, public, but just not British public, seems to have escaped them.
Under the first ideological Tory Government as under this one, Britain has become very good indeed at exporting.
We have exported the ownership of Energy, Water, Car Manufacture, Steel Manufacture, along with a range of other goods and services whilst claiming in an Alice in Wonderland kind of way that we are not doing what we clearly are doing.
Yes, cars made in the UK are being exported in increasing numbers to the rest of Europe, but the owners of those companies are based in Japan and India.
Recently driving through Shap village in Cumbria I passed the entrance to the Shap Quarries, the notice board at the entrance announced Tata, and they weren't saying goodbye!
If we are saying that the management of public utilities are always held in thrall by the Unions and that private ownership guarantees better management and improved outputs (The argument put forward in response to the closure and re-opening of Grangemouth Refinery) then surely the best way to resolve that is to address the critical issues rather than flogging everything off to the lowest bidder.
So as I settle in to battle through another long cold Cumbrian Winter I shall toast my toes at the Gas Fire and wash my dishes in the hot water and dry my smalls on the heated radiator happy in the knowledge that I actually own the company that supplies my energy because it is a consumer co-op and I am a consumer.
Because of my job we have always lived in fairly large houses, after all Vicarages have to be of a certain size, with reception rooms (to hold meetings) and dining rooms (to entertain) and studies (to study in).
Now we live in a much smaller house.
It is a modern cottage, twenty years old.
It is insulated (roof space and cavity walls) and it is much cheaper to maintain than a big, old, drafty vicarage.
But it still has to be heated.
So we still have to buy energy as well as eat, all paid for out of the pension.
We are lucky because so far we have not had to make a choice between eating and heating but an increasing number of people will be making that choice this winter.
Our energy supply system is broken.
But this Government seems to have no plans to fix it, so even though wholesale prices have been pretty stable, retail prices have continued to rise.
Faced with having to fork out increasingly large monthly payments to British Gas I changed my energy supplier to Co-op Energy. I did it in the hope that I might see a saving but also because if I was forced to pay somebody for Gas and Electricity I would rather pay the co-op than a public utility that has been privatised.
Politically energy is very much the theme of the day.
Whether Labour can improve the current dysfunctional system I don't know but I do know that the con-dems shrill rhetoric about competition simply won't wash.
The fact is that when the public utilities were sold by Margaret Thatcher's Government, most of them went on to be owned by foreign investors and Governments.
Quite why it is not OK for the British Government to own its own energy supply but it is OK for France and Germany to own it, I do not understand.
But the longer this debate goes on, and the shriller it becomes as the election gets closer, it will become increasingly clear that we are being faced with a choice between ideologies.
The Tory Party and its Lib-Dem allies simply rehearse again and again the ideological rhetoric of private, private, private, although the irony of their proposed sale of Hinkley Point to a French/Chinese consortium which is in fact public. public, public, but just not British public, seems to have escaped them.
Under the first ideological Tory Government as under this one, Britain has become very good indeed at exporting.
We have exported the ownership of Energy, Water, Car Manufacture, Steel Manufacture, along with a range of other goods and services whilst claiming in an Alice in Wonderland kind of way that we are not doing what we clearly are doing.
Yes, cars made in the UK are being exported in increasing numbers to the rest of Europe, but the owners of those companies are based in Japan and India.
Recently driving through Shap village in Cumbria I passed the entrance to the Shap Quarries, the notice board at the entrance announced Tata, and they weren't saying goodbye!
If we are saying that the management of public utilities are always held in thrall by the Unions and that private ownership guarantees better management and improved outputs (The argument put forward in response to the closure and re-opening of Grangemouth Refinery) then surely the best way to resolve that is to address the critical issues rather than flogging everything off to the lowest bidder.
So as I settle in to battle through another long cold Cumbrian Winter I shall toast my toes at the Gas Fire and wash my dishes in the hot water and dry my smalls on the heated radiator happy in the knowledge that I actually own the company that supplies my energy because it is a consumer co-op and I am a consumer.
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