Energy news in general

Ildhund

As one of the BBC's victims suggested, there are customers out there who would just pay any bill sent by their supplier without investigating further. This is a problem in itself, whether back-billing is involved or not. Working out what your energy should cost involves nothing more than primary-school arithmetic. Have we raised generations of citizens who can't even manage this? 

victor2

Ildhund said:

As one of the BBC's victims suggested, there are customers out there who would just pay any bill sent by their supplier without investigating further. This is a problem in itself, whether back-billing is involved or not. Working out what your energy should cost involves nothing more than primary-school arithmetic. Have we raised generations of citizens who can't even manage this? 

Unfortunately, it often appears so, along with finding anything on the internet that apparently supports their case.

Scot_39

Don't know about primary school given the way some suppliers presented things like EPG and EBSS discounts and credits over last few years.

But yes millions sadly do lack basic numeracy - depending on how you define that in UK today.

From google
Oecd reports 57.4% adults below level 2.

And uk lags far behind international average at even the basic level by several percent.

Scotland made the mistake of abandoning arithmetic as a a seperate qualification.

Most people will never need calculus or trigonometry etc in real life - most will need basic numeracy - and so that puts many off taking it beyond the age of 14.

And even below that - simple budgetting,  balancing a bank account and understanding bills would be far better than some of what our schools now deal with.

Remember the political arguments when a school - a secondary school - not infants or primary school - reportedly allowed a child to identify as a cat.

National numeracy org
78% below GCSE / standard grade level 2 ( o level /  o grade etc) 

One group reported by age uk over 6m uk adults over 50  struggled with basic maths and 6m from basic literacy problems.  Yet the dwp expects them to be able to fill in things like the pension credit application form.

MattMattMattUK

Many people do lack basic numeracy, estimates are around 40%, 18% of people are functionality illiterate in England, 26.8% in Scotland, combine those two issues and for a huge number of people an energy bill or bank statement might as well be written in Ancient Egyptian. Even above that ability level many people still struggle with anything more complicated that the absolute basics, more than half of people are not able to fully manage their lives, understand bills, bank statements, budgets, even something as basic as a percentage which is why so much media reporting is now fractions "1 in 5" because a huge proportion of people were confused by "20%".

Now these kind of people are the ones who keep screaming at Ofgem about standing charges and worst of all, Ofgem has decided to listen to them, not because they are intelligent, not because they have a valid position, not because they are rational, but because there are loud and numerous. 

Ildhund

Don't forget that other vital statistic: that half of the population of Britain is of below average intelligence. 

MattMattMattUK

Ildhund said:

Don't forget that other vital statistic: that half of the population of Britain is of below average intelligence. 

Whenever you meet someone of average intelligence you soon realise that it barely enough for them to scrape by in life!

Badboi

MattMattMattUK said:

Many people do lack basic numeracy, estimates are around 40%, 18% of people are functionality illiterate in England, 26.8% in Scotland, combine those two issues and for a huge number of people an energy bill or bank statement might as well be written in Ancient Egyptian. Even above that ability level many people still struggle with anything more complicated that the absolute basics, more than half of people are not able to fully manage their lives, understand bills, bank statements, budgets, even something as basic as a percentage which is why so much media reporting is now fractions "1 in 5" because a huge proportion of people were confused by "20%".

Now these kind of people are the ones who keep screaming at Ofgem about standing charges and worst of all, Ofgem has decided to listen to them, not because they are intelligent, not because they have a valid position, not because they are rational, but because there are loud and numerous. 

And yet, they’ll be the ones shouting loudest when they see the unit rate has gone up to cancel out the SC. (Though they might not notice it in reality)

Ildhund

Scot_39 said:

But yes millions sadly do lack basic numeracy ... 
... understanding bills would be far better than some of what our schools now deal with.

I sometimes wonder whether some of those millions are producing energy bills. I could have done with some instruction in how to understand my very first statement as a brand-new bill payer:



I challenge anyone to make sense of that!

debitcardmayhem

Ildhund said:

Scot_39 said:

But yes millions sadly do lack basic numeracy ... 
... understanding bills would be far better than some of what our schools now deal with.

I sometimes wonder whether some of those millions are producing energy bills. I could have done with some instruction in how to understand my very first statement as a brand-new bill payer:



I challenge anyone to make sense of that!

Well beyond my 53 year old 2 Maths ‘A’ levels

Gerry1

Ildhund said:

As one of the BBC's victims suggested, there are customers out there who would just pay any bill sent by their supplier without investigating further. This is a problem in itself, whether back-billing is involved or not. Working out what your energy should cost involves nothing more than primary-school arithmetic. Have we raised generations of citizens who can't even manage this? 

Sadly we have, probably because Spin is often more highly regarded and rewarded than Substance.

For far too long, Engineers and Engineering have played second fiddle compared to less rigorous subjects such as sales and marketing, which are regarded as more glamorous.  'The phone box door is stuck?  I'll send out an Engineer to fix it.'

This bias permeates almost everywhere.  Pure make some excellent and reliable radios, but this amazing nonsense on their GB website has to be seen to be believed.  The author thinks that DAB isn't a Broadcasting service, that DAB radios don't use radio waves, that DAB offers an 'infinite number of radio programmes to choose from' and that you can listen to 'BBC 6' in the UK, but also to 'Radio Energy' out of Germany.  Needless to say, the culprit is a Marketing Manager !

However, the wooden spoon goes to Halfords: "Digital transmissions contain more information than conventional FM / AM, thanks to the super-fast wavelength of around 220MHz in the UK, compared to the 75KHz or so wavelength of analogue FM / AM radio broadcasts. The choice of channels is much wider too, as you'll be able to listen to channels from all over the UK (and sometimes even abroad), rather than local broadcasts on FM / AM."