The UK’s Smart Meter programme continues make the press, see here for example. Things are unsurprisingly late. Consumers, who’re paying for the £11bn programme through current energy bills, can apparently expect savings of less than £1 a week on bills by 2030. The utility companies haven’t been particularly consumer friendly in their rollouts. There’s been lots of pressure tactics applied to get consumers to accept a Smart Meter installation. Indeed, the best energy deals today mean a consumer must accept having a Smart Meter. The Badger has proudly resisted and doesn’t have one!
Why? Doesn’t the Badger want to save money or the planet? Is it because the Badger is intimidated by modern technology? Or is it just the Badger’s a dinosaur and resistant to change? Good questions. The Badger’s very pragmatic and objective, very technology, environment, and budget aware, and very conscious of how tech is transforming society, so what’s the real reason for not having a Smart Meter? Simple. The Badger values his privacy.
Smart Meters and other smart devices in your home provide granular data that can be analysed to determine what you do inside your home. That’s nectar to organisations and marketing companies who, let’s face it, employ expert lawyers to ensure they can maximise their benefit from the data they capture from you and your home. Articles from Bloomberg and the Daily Mail are worth a read. They reinforce that we must not be naïve when it comes to how such data is used.
The Badger is an advocate of ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle’. Smart Meters and smart devices encroach on that being the case. Unlike twenty years ago, today’s smart technology means you no longer really have privacy in your own home. Others will pooh-pooh that statement and assert legal protections are in place, but should you trust that’s proven to be the case with the companies involved? Hmm. The only safe way of keeping what you do within your home private is not to have Smart Meters or devices like those in the Bloomberg article in the home in the first place.
So, there you have it. The Badger values privacy within his home way above any future saving of £1 a week – a loaf of bread – in energy bills. In fact, the Badger’s significantly reduced home energy bills without a Smart Meter and still remains an advocate for technology that preserves individual rights, freedoms and brings real benefit to society. Does the case for the UK Smart Meter programme really stack up? Views differ. All the Badger knows is that ‘the Badgers home is his castle’. Smart inanimate interlopers will be resisted until privacy within the home can be guaranteed…
