Dizzy Thinks: Was the "boiler tax" dreamt up during a crack-party?

I know, I know, it's rare to even see me post more than a few characters on Twitter these days, but occasionally 140 individual letters/number just doesn't cut it for what I want to say.

You see, I've just read an article (admittedly in the Daily Mail) that is claiming that the Coalition plans to introduce what appears to be mandatory planning permission for getting a new boiler. The ideas goes like this.

If you want a new boiler you will have to ask the Council to let you get one and then if the Council decides your home is not energy efficient enough they'll tell you you can't unless you fork out hundreds of pounds on other energy saving efficiencies first, such as loft insulation, cavity wall insulation etc.

There are so many absurdities with this I can only conclude that Coalition ministers and their civil servants were having some sort of crack-smoking party when they came up with it.

For a start, what happens if the boiler breaks in a family home during the Christmas period. Are they to be expected to freeze their bollocks off whilst they wait for Council officials to sober up and answer the planning request?

What's more, if someone is spending their own money on a new boiler (which will invariably be more energy efficient than the old one anyway), why should the Government force them to further spend their own money or take out Government backed loans to put themselves in debt?

The plan is so obviously going to fail even if they did try to implement it. Firstly, it is a gift to their political opponents who will point out that they're attacking poor pensioners and families with extra cost, and you know it will only be a matter of time before someone dies of hypothermia because their boiler broke and they couldn't afford to get the extra work done.

Secondly, people will just start paying plumbers and the like cash-in-hand for work and boilers that go under the radar of the official snooping Council workers.

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