Keeping the Lights On by Denis Podany

I’m a blue-collar worker, a nightmare-shift HGV1 truck driver. I pay my own rent, my own electricity, my own gas – every month I see the bills, and I know exactly what it means when the power won’t turn up. I don’t do spreadsheets, I don’t own a tweed jacket, I don’t even own a suit. I just know that when the lights go out, everything else stops – work, pay, heating, and my dwindling patience.

And that’s what we’ve got now: people telling us “Net Zero is working” while our bills climb and the grid groans like some of the trucks I’ve driven.  Who is it really working for? Not us. Not the people who actually need power.

Electricity isn’t a feeling. You flip a switch – it either works or it doesn’t. Britain used to get this. We used to build in too much power, not too little. We planned for cold winters, not perfect weather. Somewhere along the way, common sense got replaced by a green agenda, reckless optimism and PowerPoint. Welcome to Globalism.

Let’s Be Honest About Net Zero

We’re told we can’t extract our own gas because it’s “dirty.” So, what do we do? Buy gas from abroad. That gas doesn’t appear out of nowhere — someone has to drill it, pump it, ship it, usually from countries with worse safety and environmental rules than ours. The pollution still happens. The carbon still comes out. It just happens somewhere else so we can pretend we’re clean.

On paper, we’ve cut emissions. In reality, global emissions don’t drop, our bills go up, and our energy security goes down. It’s like refusing to cook because you don’t like smoke, then ordering a takeaway and acting smug while someone else fries the chips. That’s not saving the planet. That’s outsourcing the mess and keeping the halo. I mean, what muppet came up with this plan?

We’ve been stitched up, plain and simple. Munchausen syndrome by proxy, energy edition: we cripple our own system, drive up costs, make ourselves dependent on foreigners, then get told it’s “for our own good.” If Britain needs gas – and it does – we should extract it here, under our rules, with our workers and our standards. That’s cleaner, cheaper, and sane. And there’s plenty of the stuff:

So How Do You Actually Keep the Lights On?

It isn’t complicated. Gas works. It’s boring, it’s reliable, and it turns on when you need it. We know how to build it. We know how to run it. It doesn’t care if the wind drops or the sun hides. Every serious country uses it – including the ones that lecture everyone else.

And stop chucking away stuff that still works. We’ve shut down plants that could still run, and hoped nothing went wrong. That’s gambling with wages, factories, hospitals. That’s not planning, that’s lunacy.

When things get tight, you bring in generators. Big ones. Loud ones. Ones that smell of diesel and don’t apologise. Not pretty, not sexy, not a press release winner – but they keep the lights on.

Common Sense Must Prevail

Coal? Gone. Some idiot dismantled our last power plant. Oil? That’s for another article. Nuclear? Slow. Takes years. Wind and solar? Great when it’s windy or sunny, useless when it isn’t. And my God the landfills with those huge blades. So, you still need something solid behind it, and that something is gas.

Keeping the lights on isn’t right-wing or left-wing. It’s basic competence. Until the people in charge get that, working people keep paying the price.

We don’t need sermons, we need power. Can you not sort this out? I may not be the brightest bulb, forgive the pun, but if I can figure this out, why can’t this government, or any UK government since Margaret Thatcher’s?

Image credit on main page: Department of Energy and Climate Change