The boy called at my house, rang the bell, it must have been about half past four and I was busy. “Yes?” I said, in what I hoped was an unfriendly tone. He took a pace back and almost fell over the doorstep, but then gathering his courage he went into his sales patter. About solar panels, this time. I relaxed. eco-freak that I am.Eventually I said he could send someone round to ‘assess’ my house though I warned him that I really didn’t have a spare £10,000 and while I appreciated the government’s guarantee of a premium rate for electricity sold back to the grid for the next 25 years, I didn’t think I could wait seven long years until the scheme had paid for itself. “We can provide finance,” he said hopefully. “For nothing?” I asked. “No,” he said. Anyway, someone would ring. I went back to work.
In due course Wesley rang. From a mobile. Twice. I said having thought about the matter over the weekend I really didn’t think there was any chance of my proceeding, finance or no finance, unless they could offer me a deal that was financially neutral, that is to say wouldn’t cost me anything. Could he? No!
But gosh Wesley was persistent, claiming that I would be earning £1,700 a year from my investment. Or something. “There’s another problem,” I said: we live in a conservation area. “I don’t think that will be a problem.”
“It is not enough to think,” I said, delighted at last to have gained the upper hand, “one has to know - otherwise the planners will have you pulling the whole lot down again.” I suggested that he first called the planners and then called me back again when he had done that, if he was determined to persist in his vain quest.
While he was thinking of his next gambit, I said ‘goodbye’ and put the phone down. Thus far he hasn’t rung back. Neither Wesley, who called from a mobile, nor his doorstep friend told me the name of the establishment for whom they worked. Or if they did, not so that I remembered it. No cards, no leaflets.
I mentioned all this to a friend who is a heating engineer and who suggested that solar panels shouldn’t cost me more than about £3,000. I’m not sure whether this includes connection to the National Grid and the various boxes of electronic tricks that I suppose are necessary.
Still, I should indeed love to have a solar powered house. Moreover, I have a roof that is large and sloping and faces south-east. Ideal, I would have thought, for any number of panels, provided the conservation planners would allow it. As the panels would be at the back rather then the front of the house, there seems little reason for them to be difficult.
I wonder why the government won’t lend me the money on a kind of interest-free ‘student-loan’ basis? After all it is clearly in the government’s interest for us to have solar-powered homes. The work would create jobs and would save having to import gas or coal to burn in our power stations. The government might have to borrow funds, but the saving would more than pay for the interest. It is a ready bankable proposition; if the government were more entrepreneurial it would realise this.
There is a great difference between a £1 billion borrowed to pay for, say the NHS and £1 billion borrowed to finance solar panels which would give a return of perhaps £50 million. The borrowing wouldn’t cost more than £40 million leaving a £10 million profit for each £1 billion of expenditure and perhaps 3,000 jobs created in installation alone. I offer this wizard wheeze free to our dear leaders C and C, which now that I think of it used to be the name of a cordial company - Cantrell and Cochrane, I believe. Sounds,, rather more solid than Cameron and Clegg, if you ask me. They competed with Kia-Ora, if I remember rightly, which phrase is Maori, for good health, or so it said on my bottle of orange juice!
Anyway, we shall battle on without solar power for the moment. But the sun is shining, pushing up both grass and daisies on my lawn and the lawn in front of of little theatre, both of which I have to cut this afternoon. Our play, ‘The Benefactors’ by Michael Frayn, in which I have some sort of starring role, starts next Thursday and we have to put the premises into order. I shall practice my lines as I mow up and down. I have 261 speeches in total. Enough for an afternoon’s mowing, anyway. What do you think?
