Just imagine, as a Daily Sceptic reader, temporarily going insane and buying into the rental market. Next, imagine going even more insane and pouring your savings (or increasing your mortgage) into trying to kit out your rental properties so that they gain the highest possible Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) in a nod to the U.K.’s fixation at pouring astronomical sums down the eco plughole. You’d soon wish you’d never been born
That’s what the Telegraph’s Secret Landlord has done, but came a cropper when trying to improve a Victorian flat:
At great expense, I’ve carried out internal wall insulation and upgraded the electric storage heaters in my one-bedroom Victorian flat (I’d already fitted double glazing years ago).
There’s no gas and, given it’s a flat, no way to do something fancy with solar panels or heat pumps, so I elected to purchase two high heat retention storage heaters, which cost £2,500 with the installation.
I chose these top of the range models because I was assured they would help me achieve the hallowed EPC ‘C’ rating, which rented properties are required to have by 2030, up from the current grade ‘E’.
The assessor had already told me I only needed one heater to improve the score, but as I also wanted to improve the quality of a tenant’s life, I bought an extra – rather than a panel heater, which I could have done without lowering the EPC rating.
Having also installed lovely wooden flooring, I called the assessor and asked him to revisit the property. I still had a couple of years left on the old certificate, but wanted to get it done now to show potential tenants the new enhanced ratings.
Imagine my surprise when the certificate came back with a ‘D’, just one grade higher than it was previously.
Cue angry phone call.
“I did what you said, why have I not got a ‘C’?”
“You didn’t install 50mm insulation under the floor.”
“But it’s got floorboards, plyboard, insulated underlay and then wood flooring – surely that’s enough?”
“I’m sorry, Secret Landlord, you needed to insulate under the floor.”
“But,” I said, “I’ve been doing research on this and I worry it may rot the joists, there’s a fear it may breach the damp proof course and cause other issues.”
“They don’t care about that on the EPC.”
“So, what am I going to do?”
“I suggest you either rip up the floor and insulate, or accept the ‘D’. They’re changing the software in January, so you may be better off just doing it now.”
“Sorry, what?” I exclaimed.
At this point the conversation moves from the absurd to a Kafkaesque nightmare. The assessor continued:
“Yes, from January we have to measure all the windows, say what direction they’re facing and list the age. Electric heating will also potentially get downgraded because the new update includes heating costs and electric is more expensive to run. To be honest, I don’t understand why the Government is pushing heat pumps because having them could potentially lose you up to 11 points.”
“OK, so you’re essentially saying we’re having a window tax by the back door and the electric revolution they’re pushing is going to penalise me?”
“It’s a mess. The new tests will take double the time so the costs of an EPC will go up, I also wouldn’t be surprised if many assessors quit – loads left during the Green Deal.”
“OK,” I said, reeling from this new information. “What is it I should do?”
“Well, if you lower the ceiling by 400mm that will give you three extra points, you do have very high ceilings.”
Cue insane laughter. So insane, the assessor had to cut across my guffaws.
“But honestly, I don’t think the Government will stick to the ‘C’ grade, I think they’ll lower it to ‘D’. Also, they may drop that metric altogether as it’s measuring the wrong thing – it’s not in line with carbon reduction, and that’s what they’re trying to do.”
The Secret Landlord is thus left thousands out of pocket chasing an EPC rating being carried as fast as possible up the pitch attached to a pair of goalposts operated by mutating software. Even heat pumps turn out to be a liability.
The EPC is exposed as a pointless farce. The Conservative government proposed a £10,000 (previously £3,500) cap on landlords’ spending on an EPC upgrade. If that spending wasn’t successful in improving a landlord’s EPC rating, he or she could apply for an exemption. But the Telegraph points out that in almost every instance the real cost of ‘improving’ a property is far higher than 10 grand – in some cases almost four times. Difficult to imagine how you’d ever get the money back.
Worth reading in full.
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Whether or not white Americans feel guilty about slavery, they certainly wish they’d picked their own damn cotton (h/t the great Kathy Shaidle).
Good article highlighting the one-sided hatred and violence coming from the radical, mentally deranged ‘Trans’ extremists, being all the while enabled and supported by the authorities;
”If Clive or Sadiq or the Trans+ Pride crew could point me in the direction of any counter examples, of prominent gender-critical women calling for transgender activists to be physically assaulted, or getting stuck in themselves, or refusing to condemn those who do, I’d be keen to see them. But we all know they don’t exist. For all the allegations of transphobia hurled at gender-critical campaigners over the years, they are not the extremists and haters in this debate – and they never have been.
Putting to one side the thorny issue of incitement in this case, and the thin line between venting one’s rage and directly inciting violence, there is simply no comparison to be drawn between the so-called TERFs and the trans activists. One side is robustly defending their rights against a tide of bigotry and routine harassment by the police. The other are the trans activists – who not only have genuine extremism among their ranks, but also get a free pass for it from Labourites, universities and even the police.
Violent woman-hating has made a comeback in politically correct form. Men are being cheered on at rallies for calling for women’s rights activists to be punched in the face. Meanwhile, politicians and activists, who on any other day might fancy themselves as valiant warriors against ‘the patriarchy’, are either staring at their shoe laces or making excuses for them.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/10/punch-a-terf-the-violent-misogyny-of-the-trans-movement/
Probably sharing this is just giving this absolute certifiable POS even more exposure but I do feel we need a reality check on just what kind of nasty mentalists are in our midst. I actually hope this ‘person’ gets everything they deserve off the back of sharing this video and he is condemned from all sides. Just vile.
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1678892214682890241
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1678892214682890241
That is one specimen that does not belong on the planet. Seriously that is one of the most corrupted, evil, anti-human things I have seen. Mengele territory.
I know, hux. It’s bad enough to even have those thoughts or record those thoughts ( everybody is entitled to the privacy within their mind, after all, and as far as I’m aware actual ‘thought police’ do not exist ) but to actually post those seriously f*cked up, offensive thoughts and opinions onto the web so that everybody becomes aware….well, I just hope his video backfires and Karma pays him a visit. I’m not going to shed a tear if there’s one less sicko inhabiting the planet alongside decent folk. I hope his parents are proud of what they produced!!
America’s guilt about slavery is understandable? Really? None of them were alive at the time FFS! What cobblers. Nonsense like this is partly why we’re in the mess we’re in.
“Parochial xenophobia” is a useful, but incredibly shortsighted, way of defending your own country. By failing to distinguish the real issues, you leave yourself defenceless against them when they are in fact shared by the other nations. We should be building bridges with those of like mind abroad, not crowing about our supposed superiority.
So apart from the “we abolished slavery quicker than the Yanks did” thing, consider how we cover up our own involvement in recent war crimes by pointing the finger at the US and Guantanamo Bay; how we are blind to our leadership in State tyranny by talking about “Chinese style social credit” when they appear to have less of it than we do; saying the French are prone to rioting when they’re just further down the slippery slop than we are, etc.
I’m well aware of my own country’s (England) shortcomings. I tend to think it’s superior to many other places (for which I take no personal credit, just put it down to good fortune) and a lot of people from many places seem to agree with me as people seem very keen on coming here. But I am not overly interested in cultural pissing competitions – other people might feel their countries and culture are superior and if so, good luck to them. England suits me – probably because I grew up here and I am used to it, and know what to expect. Change is inevitable but can be managed in a way that gives people time to get used to it.
I agree we should build bridges with those of like mind abroad, though goodness knows there seem to be very people of like mind to me anywhere, at home and abroad. There’s an argument that we need new countries, some of which would be places where the vast majority of the population had a strong belief in individual responsibility and freedom, small government, rule of law. Would I like to live in such a country? Yes, probably – but would I like to live there if the people there mainly of a completely different culture to me, with different social mores and ways of behaving? I don’t know. Covidian sheeple who know how to queue vs. anarchists who don’t know how to queue. I don’t know and won’t ever have the choice, though I think it might depend on how bad things get here.
Exactly! When is the cut off date for reparations?
How about modern day Italy having to pay reparations to the thousands of persecuted Christian slaves killed in the gladiator games for entertainment!.. their later generations have a claim,.. and through human history, where does this list end?
“Secret blacklists have no place in a modern democracy.”
On the contrary they appear to be an indispensable feature of modern democracy.
Now, if you were talking about the old, unenlightened and primitive form of democracy (you know, the kind where Christian views are not beyond the pale and where voting meant something), then I’d agree.
Dr McCullough’s opinion on this whole ”chest-feeding” nonsense ( 1min clip ) and I did think this bit on his substack was funny. He’s right though.
”Instead of fantasizing about being a women, men can focus on helping the mother who just delivered with work around the house, cooking, supervising other kids in the home, and keeping their appointments for psychotherapy.”
https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/cdc-becomes-public-laughing-stock
About Chicago paying reparations to black residents – I thought this definition of reparations was perfect, apologies if youv’e read it before;
“Where people who aren’t guilty are forced to give money to people who aren’t victims”.
In the HART article “The inversion of the ‘precautionary principle’” listed above, there is a link to another of their publications, which is quite instructive: https://www.hartgroup.org/fact-check/ “Government funded take-down looks increasingly ridiculous”. Changing the definition of things so as to manipulate public understanding of something is pretty close to fraud, Languages are flexible enough to accommodate new terms to correctly describe, or label, the functionality of anything new.
“Pupils struggle more with three Rs than before pandemic” – Barely three in five children in England are meeting standards in reading, writing and maths
It’s all that white privilege they’re having to mug up on…..
“How Bill Gates wants to hack the weather to
savelead usfromto extinction”There, sorted.
Well done.. and for those that don’t know they’ve been hacking it since 1946, and in full blown technological earnest since the mid 90s.
Geoengineering’s the name.. weather warfare’s the game..
https://usawatchdog.com/biden-blocking-sun-destroying-earth-dane-wigington/
George! You came back!!
OK you can stop messing with our minds now. 
Yes I’m back.. well rested.. and have my alter-ego back under lock and key.. haha..
Absolutely – you can see & hear the on/off con trail planes overhead here (South West) almost all the time, following which the sky often looks like complex tartan before shading into that sickly milk white. (Didn’t do it during Glastonbury Festival I noticed as it would look bad on the telly, but got back with a vengeance after.)
Yes.. its pretty damn despicable isn’t it. When I’m back in UK I spend a lot of time in the SW and have witnessed the massive amount of spraying going on down there..
Transgenderism can be seen as a politically correct ideology along with feminism, anti-racism and the others. The main things it has in common with them are a hatred and denial of nature and an impertinent urge to overcome it.
https://www.unz.com/article/transgenderism-as-a-pc-ideology/
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/how-much-longer-can-this-junk-money-charade-go-on/
A brief why and how our monetary system must collapse. It’s all about debt and value.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-wrong-sort-of-fools-running-our-lives/
“If this is the case, then the drive to combine Artificial Intelligence with humanity in the form of transhumanism is redundant, not only in its evil intent, but in the possibility of humanity’s own natural development. Perhaps, as that brilliant and humane historian Neil Oliver says, ‘We are not a finished piece – we are a work in progress’.
It seems to me that the court jester would be infinitely preferable to the fools in charge at present.”
A worthy short read.
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/excluded-for-the-crime-of-whiteness/
A cracking essay by the wonderful Frank Haviland laying bare the crap and lies of “diversity.”
Anyone else think the BBC might have sat on the presenter scandal throughout June in order to stop the story emerging during Pride Month?
We deserve more than the woeful response to Sarah Jane Baker’s ‘punch TERFs’ rant
Even the author of this piece has failed to understand that Baker’s rant was an incitement to violence and not just hatred. The clue is in the word ‘punch.’