Can you turn this off ? If your food bill had risen by 70% in 18 months you would long ago have changed supermarkets. If all the supermarkets had increased their prices by broadly a similar amount what would be the point of changing supermarkets - you would start to worry and would have to rethink what you eat , how much you eat and possibly give serious thought to growing your own! Wouldn't you?

You wouldn't necessarily be able to grow everything but you would be able to do something to limit or in part offset the rising prices and restore some element of control into your own hands.

We are now at the mercy of energy exporters! Prepare to be sheared like a sheep by the wholesale gas suppliers, we are at their mercy. There is no end in sight to price increases. As far as we can establish things can only get worse!

BBC website Monday 12th March 2006

Key Resources

Russia has gently threatened the EU that if we do not want to sell the likes of Centrica to state-run Gazprom, it may prefer not to supply the gas EU consumers depend on.
Source. The Times Saturday 22nd April 2006

At essentialspark.com we believe this should be a signal to 'fast forward' renewable energy projects here in the U.K. There is no good reason why every household and business in the U.K should still be without solar hot water - Wet radiator Insulation panels and Energy efficient Kettles - In the United Kingdom, for example, you will find that all council and government websites carry tips on saving energy and on all these sites they all stress the importance of not overfilling your electric tea kettle, and only boiling the amount of water that you need.
The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) have quantified how important this is with the following statement:
"If everyone boiled only the water they needed to make a cup of tea instead of 'filling' the kettle every time, we could save enough electricity to run practically all the street lighting in the U.K."

Report champions renewable energy!
Renewable energy is cost effective and reliable – despite its intermittent nature – a new report by the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) has found.

Critics of renewable energy argue it’s unreliable and therefore uneconomic because it needs 100% back up from traditional energy sources (gas, coal or nuclear).


However, the UKERC report (launched 5 April 2006) says these views are “out of step with the vast majority of international expert analysis”.

Reviewing over 200 studies, UKERC found no evidence that intermittent renewable energy results in reduced reliability and that intermittency should not stop the development of renewable energy. It says that back up energy generation would be “modest and a small part of the total cost of renewables” and, moreover, worth the extra expense as renewable energy “leads to a direct reduction in CO2 emissions”.

The report estimates intermittency costs for wind energy at 0.5 to 0.8 pence per kilowatt on top of generation costs of three to five pence per kilowatt, if wind power were to supply 20% of the UK’s electricity. This compares quite favourably with gas-fired electricity which currently costs about three pence per kilowatt.

Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks welcomed the report and said suggestions that renewable energy is “excessively expensive or that traditional power stations are needed to back up the energy produced by all our wind farms, are just two of the myths peddled by their opponents”.