TOM UTLEY: Soon I’ll be sneaking upstairs to turn on the heating

Have you already turned on the heating? If these were normal times, I would have done that about two weeks ago, when I felt the first pinch of autumn in the air.

But this year, as gas prices spiral toward the stratosphere, I’ve held out manfully and resisted the temptation to sneak up and flip the switch to the “on” position when my wife isn’t looking.

Mrs. U, I must explain, is a strong Scot who doesn’t seem to feel the cold as sensitively as her floppy English husband. She’s also much more careful with the bawbees – except, I should add, when it comes to summoning builders and decorators to tear down walls, lay new carpets, install kitchen units, re-pave the patio, and generally to give the entire property a makeover, whether it needs it or not.

For example, she always looks out for special offers at Sainsbury’s, when I couldn’t tell you the going rate for a carton of butter or a can of diced tomatoes. When it’s my turn to run errands, I plop the items off her list into the cart without looking at the price tag.

(Even I’ve noticed, though, that the checkout bill gets more terrifying every week.)

This year, as gas prices head toward the stratosphere, I've held out manfully and resisted the temptation to sneak up and flip the switch to the

This year, as gas prices head toward the stratosphere, I’ve held out manfully and resisted the temptation to sneak up and flip the switch to the “on” position when my wife isn’t looking.

Sustainable

She’s also careful about turning off Alexa by the wall, telling me it costs a fortune to keep our smart speaker on standby – though I’ll bet it won’t cost us more than a few pence a month. costs.

Still, this week she didn’t even consider hiring the most expensive seamstress in the area to make new curtains for our bedroom at a cost I can’t imagine.

This is despite the fact that the last one we bought, no more than a decade ago, does the job quite well, whether or not they match her new room color scheme.

As for the heating, I admit she has a very good point. This year in particular, we really have to make an effort to delay switching it on as long as the temperature remains bearable.

I tell myself that this is not only a sensible austerity measure, but also a relatively painless way of showing solidarity with Ukraine after the Russian invasion.

After all, if we in the West can suppress our demand for gas—and thereby lower the global wholesale price—we can marginalize Putin’s power to inflict economic suffering on countries that have recklessly allowed themselves to become overly dependent on Russia. Reduce.

Yet I already feel myself weakening, as the mercury begins to drop. Indeed, I fear that it will not be long before my wife and I renew the battle for the will, which has become an annual part of our lives for the past ten years, since I began to feel more susceptible to the cold. I’ll sneak up there to slide that switch. And as soon as she notices the radiators heating up, she gasps and turns them off again, telling me to stop wasting cash and advising me to put on an extra sweater if I’m cold.

Meanwhile, as likely as not, she’ll be scouring the internet for ideas to develop her latest, wildly expensive home improvement plan.

Mind you, I wasn’t always such a wimp when it came to the cold. Like so many of my generation, born in the early 1950s, I grew up in drafty homes with no central heating, where we could see our breath when we woke up on a winter morning. But for that reason I never felt cheated.

Indeed, one of my fondest childhood memories is the smell of the kerosene heater we relied on in the winter for warmth, along with extra blankets, sweaters, and hot water bottles.

By the way, my mother always said she would never dream of having central heating, because that would wreak havoc on the furniture. But even as a kid, I knew the real reason my parents wouldn’t let it install was that they couldn’t possibly afford it.

She's also careful about turning off Alexa on the wall, telling me it costs a fortune to keep our smart speaker on standby - though I'll bet it won't cost us more than a few pence a month. costs

She’s also careful about turning off Alexa on the wall, telling me it costs a fortune to keep our smart speaker on standby – though I’ll bet it won’t cost us more than a few pence a month. costs

Luxury

It wasn’t until my mother finally moved to a place of worship, long after my father died, that she had central heating in her own house for the first time in her life. She admitted it was pure bliss.

But I’m not going to bore you all and infuriate the young by whining about how hard life was in the austerity years after World War II, when luxuries that so many have come to take for granted, such as washing machines, foreign travel and, yes, central heating – were exclusively for the wealthy.

I will protest in the least, as so many have done, that those of us who had to pay 15 percent of our mortgages had more to complain about than today’s homebuyers, who are only threatened with 5 or 6 percent.

I may be bad at math, but even I realize that 15 percent of £147,000, which I paid in 1988 for our four-bedroom house in South London, is damn much less than 5 percent of the £1 million that same house would give me. would have cost if I had bought it last week.

No, I fully accept the truth behind the oft-claimed claim that we British baby boomers are in many ways the happiest generation in history. We were never conscripted to go to war, we had access to ‘free’ university education (at least for the lucky few who got in), same-day appointments with GPs and dentists, and a choice of a wide variety of careers with long-term prospects.

Not only did we enjoy all those benefits, but today we are offered triple-lock pensions, free travel, and senior discounts at numerous movie theaters, theaters and exhibitions.

Crash

In any case, I have moderate confidence that the current crisis will be over once the financial world recovers from its panic attack and calmly considers what is really being proposed

In any case, I have moderate confidence that the current crisis will be over once the financial world recovers from its panic attack and calmly considers what is really being proposed

Best of all, just as a panic attack in the city threatens to boost the economy, most of us homeowners have paid off our mortgages and are sitting on assets that will be worth many times what we paid for them, even if the worst predictions of a housing market crash come true.

Meanwhile, while the prices of everything are rising, far too many young people are faced with the choice between heating and eating or paying the rent. As for the homeownership hopes they once harbored, it is dwindling every day.

Indeed, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that after 12 years of neglect by conservative-led governments, young people are flocking to other parties for a glimmer of hope.

Do not get me wrong. I remain a seasoned Tory myself and I firmly believe that Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng have the right approach to go all out for economic growth (although, God knows, both could take a crash course in how to implement their policies). the public and the city).

In any case, I have some confidence that the current crisis will be over once the financial world recovers from its panic attack and calmly reflects on what is really being proposed.

But in the past, the Tories could always rely on the aging process to instill a little wisdom in the minds of the young and make left-wing student rioters pillars of the local Conservative Association.

I’m not at all sure they can rely on that any longer.

So yeah, I’ll admit right off the bat that a lot of baby boomers like me are pretty well off, with not much more to worry about than our kids’ finances and the faint risk of our other halves running into the dismay of running the central heating too soon. turn on.

But the young are the future. Unless the Conservatives quickly turn their minds to offering hope, I fear their own future will be lost.