This may smart a little

Had a ‘smart meter’ fitted recently.  2 in fact.  I’m not sure how smart they are, I rather imagine their squat little metal selves squeezed into foamy dinner jackets in their cobwebby cupboards quietly frustrated at the lack of public approbation of their appearance - but I wasn’t in when they were fitted so I haven’t actually seen either of them.  And they weren’t actually smart enough to keep the central heating working after the fitters left, having checked, apparently, that the heating did actually still work.  Fixing that involved a call to the central heating boiler people who were actually quite helpful. 

So yes, little Eon came round, fitted new meters and gave us a fancy computer display thing with 2 fat instruction books – I found the display plugged in next to the kettle when I came home.  It’s covered in buttons and options and whatnot.  Apparently it saves energy by telling you how much you’re using – at least it does for those of you who stop doing something when you realise we’re paying for it.  All via a gizmo that ironically one has to plug in to make work.  

It seems that our energy use increases when we turn stuff on, and decreases when we turn stuff off.  So now we live in the dark, don’t use the shower and drink off-milk.  Either that or we slung the horrid, awkwardly shaped, nasty little over technologised thing in the drawer with the 35 unlabelled power supply transformers for stuff we don’t know if we still have or not.  So well done little EON.  We have another piece of computer clevery-pokery that we don’t use and no doubt cost us consumers what I would guess was a pretty penny.  I wonder how much would have been saved if they’d spent the same amount of money on insulating little old lady’s lofts?  And you can fit that without breaking the central heating…

For those of you who like technology but haven't yet worked out that using electric powered devices uses electricity this may be useful.  I reckon it's a pointless damned thing...