Letters: Cynical energy companies are hoarding customers’ cash with impunity

SIR – Your report (“Energy companies hoarding customers’ billions”, December 27) captures my experience exactly.

I have been paying British Gas £270 for electricity by direct debit for many months. Last month I happened to check my account and found a credit balance of £900, and yet it was still billing me £270.

I contacted British Gas and have had £900 refunded, but that is not the point. Why was it up to me to instigate the refund? The answer is obvious: British Gas must love the free cash.

I contacted Ofgem to ask why this is allowed, as it is a cynical abuse of consumers. In essence it replied saying it is up to the energy companies to monitor credit balances and adjust as appropriate. Does anyone else think the energy companies might just have a policy not to bother giving back the billions of pounds they receive, especially when the regulator is going to let them self-regulate?

Dave Jordan
Chichester, West Sussex

SIR – My present to my energy supplier was an interest-free loan of £1,700 over the Christmas period. Its present to me was an email asking me to take my meter readings on Christmas Day.

Michael Loake
Repton, Derbyshire

SIR  – Melanie McDonagh’s experience of being called Melanie by Eir, the Irish telecoms firm, is nothing compared with my contact with Ovo Energy, which insisted on addressing me as “matey”, despite my objections as an 84-year-old senior citizen.

As a vulnerable customer I should have received monthly paper statements, but Ovo has still not resolved this situation after six months. Then, despite having a smart meter, I was given estimated readings, and only received these for electricity, not gas. I still have not received up-to-date records of my direct debit payments, which have gone up by 500 per cent.

I read daily of government and regulatory bodies that are not performing. The CEOs responsible should face a reduction in their overinflated remuneration until they resolve these problems.

Peter R Sutcliffe
Kings Langley, Hertfordshire

SIR – Over 60 years ago, when I was a small child, my father would urge me to turn my bedroom light out by saying: “Big Bill will come.”

I’m as frightened now as I was then.

Mike Fowler
Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire

SIR – Dr Angela Needle (“Heat pumps alone won’t save us from a freezing winter”, Comment, December 27) encourages us to install boilers that can burn hydrogen. The present gas mains are not necessarily capable of carrying hydrogen, and some are too old to carry gas safely.

Can anyone say how much money would be needed to create a network able to carry hydrogen without leaks? How many HS2s would it cost?

Philip Wilson-Sharp
Canterbury, Kent

Russia’s nuclear threat

SIR – General Lord Dannatt, the former Chief of the General Staff, writes that any new Russian offensive in Ukraine is likely to fail, but he then argues that an uplift in British defence expenditure should focus primarily on increasing the capability of our land forces (“Putin may have failed, but the West is unprepared for what comes next”, Comment, December 27).

If Russia cannot even achieve its objectives in Ukraine, how can it possibly pose a credible threat to the combined military strength of 30 Nato members under the collective defence agreement of Article 5?

It is Russia’s modernised nuclear forces that should be our primary concern, along with China’s rapidly increasing nuclear arsenal. Ensuring Britain maintains a credible nuclear deterrent against both of these totalitarian states should be the priority for any increase in defence spending, as it is this capability they fear most and the one that will constrain their expansionist ambitions.

Rear Admiral Philip Mathias (retd)
Director of nuclear policy, 2005-2008
Southsea, Hampshire

SIR – Peter Cave (Letters, December 23) blames President Biden’s delay in sending weapons for the extent of the misery in Ukraine. The responsibility for all the current tragedies in that country lies at the door of Vladimir Putin. We should not forget that.

Alastair Montgomery
Wemyss Bay, Renfrewshire

SIR – TASS, the Russian news agency, reports that Russia cannot enter peace negotiations unless all foreign “mercenaries” and Nato instructors leave Ukraine, or while the West continues to supply weapons.

Russia is the aggressor. To end this genocidal war, the Kremlin simply has to withdraw all troops and offer full reparations for its destruction of Ukraine. In no way can Putin, a war criminal many times over, have any part in eventual negotiations.

Doug Morrison
Cranbrook, Kent

Meddling with music

SIR – Ivan Hewett (Arts, December 23) thinks it inevitable that the musical classics such as Handel’s Messiah will survive undiminished by so-called immersive productions.

I think he is mistaken. The Classical Everywhere production of the Messiah at Theatre Royal Drury Lane earlier this month was stripped of its Christian message by continuous unrelated computer-generated visual distractions, occasional abstract dancers of no clear relevance, and by actors (who appeared not to know their lines) telling themselves some story of grievance. The sheer majesty of the music was hidden by wokery.

It’s not unique. In pre-Covid days we experienced extremely inappropriate political messaging between scenes at a performance of The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Globe. Can we not have some respect for our classic heritage, whether musical or dramatic? Let us listen to the melody and message the authors proposed without politically motivated supplements.

Jolyon Culbertson
Haslemere, Surrey

Hidden mints

SIR – I have no complaints about Bendicks Bittermints (Letters, December 27). I adore them.

They are known in my family as “knickermints”. I am not prepared to share them, so I hide them in my underwear drawer – the one place I know my family will not rummage in.

Sara Williamson
Bulford, Wiltshire

Taxed into retirement

SIR – Juliet Samuel (Comment, December 24) writes that the post-Covid tendency for over-50s to seek early retirement is a uniquely British trend. Might it have something to do with the punitive taxes imposed upon anyone earning a reasonable salary?

Lifetime pension limits, the illogical IR35 policy, and cliff-edge marginal tax rates as high as 62 per cent are encouraging those who can manage without working not to work.

The solution is entirely within the gift of the Treasury.

Will Curtis
Raydon, Suffolk

SIR – I retired this year and am enjoying retirement. I volunteer twice a week in the NHS. I hope never to have to return to paid work because I wouldn’t have the time to sit on the phone to the taxman and the Department for Work and Pensions to get them to correct the regular errors in my tax code. I have modest means, but the taxman cannot get it right.

Rosie Sheppard
York

BBC guest editors

SIR – As a professionally trained journalist, Alan Ashton (Letters, December 27) is insulted by the recruitment of guest editors for the BBC’s Today programme. As a listener, and a professionally trained journalist, I found the programmes guest-edited by Ian Botham and Jamie Oliver to be refreshing and inspirational.

Too often for us professionals the only news is bad news. To these guest editors it is important to report on positive reforms and campaigns that could improve life in this country. It is an honour that they thought it was worthwhile to join the programme for a day to make their points.

Let’s hope the professionals continue to report on the progress of these campaigns throughout the year.

Esther Rantzen
Bramshaw, Hampshire

Surgery stiffener

SIR – My mother, who at the age of 98 was about to have her second leg amputated, was asked by her caring surgeon: “Mrs Turner, would you like an epidural?” “That would be lovely,” she said, believing it to be an apéritif (Letters, December 27).

Leaving the operating theatre to the nurses’ applause, she said she would have preferred her usual Guinness.

Elizabeth McGovern
Charlton, West Sussex

The Church is neglecting its rural parishes

SIR – It is as a result of the efforts of people like Allison Pearson (“Let’s cherish our wonderful local parish churches”, Features, December 21) and the subsequent growth of the Save the Parish campaign that the now infamous GS 2222 document, in which the Church commissioners broke cover on their plans for rural churches, was stopped in its tracks.

I am the treasurer of a very small Grade I listed rural church on the edge of Exmoor. Our main monthly expense is our parish share, which we consider to be important because it covers the expense of our incumbent’s housing, salary, pension and so on.

However, a percentage also goes towards the expenses of the diocesan office. We are told that “historically 75 per cent of diocesan income comes from the parishes”. One could argue that the rural parish church is therefore the financial coalface of the diocese, without which its office would not survive.

A rural church treasurer has to manage practicalities, including cash flow, budgeting, and living within one’s means. In other words, he or she must live in the real world. When the Archbishop of Canterbury said that it is our Christian duty to take in refugees (“Welby attacks ‘cruel’ handling of migrant boat crisis”, report, December 12), he gave no explanation as to how to manage the financial or logistical side of organising such a project. He was spiritually correct, but he does not seem to understand that it is more difficult if you are also responsible for the reality side of things.

This rather unworldly attitude reigns not only in our diocese but also throughout the bureaucratic structure of the Church of England.

Like many others, our small rural parish has over the past 25 years prudently saved money that has been given or left in a legacy specifically for the fabric of the church. That money has always been put away in one of the Church of England investment funds and has over the years built up to a considerable sum. Even though we had to raise £87,000 for the re-rendering of the tower, we managed it without dipping into our savings. We were secure in the knowledge that if one day the church has to be closed (not on our watch, I might add), there is a fund producing enough income to keep the fabric in order.

With the security of that investment fund in mind, I asked at a recent Synod meeting what would happen to that fund if the church was closed. The answer I was given was that unless we could prove that every penny was given for the fabric of the church, it would be taken to be used in other ways within the diocese. Do I need to say more about the difficulties we face in managing our church affairs?

There is plenty of taking and no giving.

Colin Snow
Huish Champflower, Somerset

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