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£1,850 Israel Violently Lashed Out surcharge: your next energy bill broken down

WONDERING how your energy bill became 80 per cent of your disposable income? This is how the charges are calculated, item-by-item: 

£1,850 Israel Violently Lashed Out surcharge

No, you didn’t enter your meter readings incorrectly. Worried Trump was going soft, Israel decided to strike the South Pars energy field in Iran and gas leapt by 35 per cent. Iran retaliated, Trump sent an angry message, and now you’ll be spending the winter leaping on the sexy new trend of triple-slanketing.

£220 Suppressing Renewable Energy levy

Lobbying to make sure that clean, renewable energy remains unviable isn’t cheap. There are white papers to be discredited, Reform donations to be made and ridiculous rumours to spread about offshore windfarms. Your reasonable contribution is needed by gas companies now more than ever with the Green Menace on the rise.

£65 Smart Meter running cost

It costs energy companies a lot of money to install a snazzy little box that perpetually tots up your bill. And seeing as it whirrs away day and night, the numbers on its sinister digital display spiralling ever upwards, that’s guzzling up power. No, you can’t opt out of having one.

£120 Supplier’s Hedge fee

Despite all this, gas and oil producing countries are worried for their futures, given their only other assets are deserts. Therefore they need to hedge against sales falling whether because of solar power or a massive fall in the global population. Your money goes direct to buying football teams and holding Saudi Arabian comedy festivals.

£200 tip

You tip waitresses, so why not provide hard-working suppliers of energy with a small gratuity? After all, they’ve gone to the trouble of piping in gas from despotic nations and hastening climate change so it’s well-deserved. With this extra they can buy themselves a little treat.

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Grimsby, Morecambe, Bognor Regis: the deprivation highlights of England's new coastal path

THE new 2,689-mile King Charles III coastal path takes walkers through many of the country’s most exquisite areas of severe deprivation. Tour these today: 

Sellafield, Cumbria

Just inland is the gorgeous and perpetually rain-shrouded Lake District, but why go there when you can stroll slowly past the UK’s centre for nuclear waste management and decommissioning? This 650-acre concrete crescendo holds 140 tonnes of plutonium and far, far more of radioactive sludge. Take selfies!

Grimsby, Lincolnshire

The ‘grim’ is there for a reason, just as a different word lies within neighbouring Scunthorpe. First entered a long period of decline in the 15th century, then was hit by the Luftwaffe, then the Common Fisheries Policy. Consequently holds the second-most deprived ward in the UK, is Britain’s worklessness capital, and voted in a Reform mayor.

Bognor Regis, Sussex

Travel west from the lights and liberalism of Brighton and soon you’re in Bognor, a location which boasts the full trifecta: low employment, crime and addiction. Famously disparaged by King George V, make sure to note the shaven-headed young men on the seafront drinking white cider at 9am. How tempting walking into the sea never to return has become!

Middlesbrough, North Yorks

Seeing bombed refineries in Iran and thinking ‘I wish I could visit somewhere so thrillingly industrial’? Strolling this section of the path will bless you with more heavy industry and post-manufacturing decline than you could ever wish for, and the locals are as hostile as any Islamic regime you could name. Truly you’ll be glad to reach Sunderland.

Morecambe, Lancashire

Once a tourist attraction, Morecambe has reversed polarity to become a tourist repeller. The pier went into the sea, Noel Edmonds’s World of Crinkley Bottom closed after the Blobbygate scandal, and the sea is either three miles of muddy sand away or coming at you terrifyingly fast. An Eden project is being built here, in a fine show of irony.

Land’s End, Cornwall

Home to possibly Britain’s most grasping theme park, Britain’s most expensive car park and a sign saying it’s Land’s End you have to pay to take your photograph next to, Land’s End is truly not worth the trouble. And now you’ve got hundreds of miles to walk back to the good bits of Britain which are inland near rivers. Get going!

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