The second reason is I refuse to give the money grabbing energy companies more of my money than I have to.
Now certain readers will point out that what I write is at times very simplistic and avoids the facts and this may be true. But what I write is how I feel about things and if I don't get the facts correct well that's just me. I'm sure there are thousands more who feel the same way without knowing the facts. Sometimes you don't have to know them to know that things just aren't right.
I fail to see how energy companies making massive profits can be allowed to put prices up without having their profits capped. Somebody will now tell me that I don't really grasp the reality of this situation but the reality to me is that profits are soaring, prices are going up and our Government is doing very little to stop this.
Some will say well it's not our Government's job to intervene but I would say it is.
I would also like to talk about community in this blog. I am proud to be part of the community of Hethersett - a typical English village of which there are hundreds in the country. Each of these villages relies on hundreds of volunteers to make them what they are.
Hethersett is a good place to live because it has a beating heart and, as I travel to different parts of the country, I like to look for places that have beating hearts. They stand out immediately. You only have to listen to what's going on, attend coffee mornings, read noticeboards and local publications and you get a very good idea of what makes a place tick. The thing for me is that local residents are usually very proud of where they live and it's volunteers that make these places.
Take Hethersett as an example. We have groups, organisations, charities and individuals that make us what we are. There are groups for everyone from the day of their birth to the day they die. And most of these groups are run by volunteers.
Today I will be helping with the Forget Me Not Cafe which will be providing a lunch for over 20 people. The cafe is an offshoot and run under the wing of the Hethersett Dementia Support Group. Very few of those attending have dementia, however. They are just people who want to have a chat, enjoy the company of others and like to meet up twice a month.
To me this group is providing a vital service and there are many many more. What is happening to our communities concerns me though. Many of the services are being eroded. Just look at the shops and banks that are disappearing from our high streets. I would so much prefer to talk to somebody face to face than on the end of a telephone where they could be in a call centre virtually anywhere in the world.
The NHS is struggling. There aren't enough hospital beds, so why did they shut cottage hospitals? OK I know it's a matter of economics but sometimes pure economics should not be the driving force. Take away public services and we all immediately become institutionalised and that surely is wrong.
It was interesting that as I mused on community involvement there was a feature on Breakfast Television about a new Netflix film entitled the Bank of Dave. It's about a real life man from Burnley who set himself up as a bank and gave loans to local businesses. His name is David Fishwick and he seems like a real character. I'm looking forward to watching the film over the next couple of days. I do love these feelgood British films that are based on fact and real people. I mentioned Fisherman's Friends recently and I have also enjoyed The Duke and Fighting With The Family and many more over the past few months.
By and large they are gentle dramas, but the important thing for me is they are based on real characters and are miles away from the angst filled police dramas that we keep getting fed where each episode seems to want to out-gross previous ones and I use the word gross to mean unwholesome and not 144.
I popped into one of our local libraries (hands off our libraries) and had a look at a book on 500 meaningful English villages. It might be the villages have architectural or historic importance or they might be particularly attractive.
A couple of Norfolk villages I came across in this book I had never heard of. One was the long gone village of Godwick and the second a place called Babingley. I will do some research and tell you about them tomorrow. Strangely the local paper's website had a list of seven villages in Norfolk well worth a visit due to their beauty and I will speak a bit about them tomorrow as well.
Going back to Dave Fishwick, I remember a fleeting character in Coronation Street by the name of Colin Fishwick who I believe was murdered by John Stape. As Coronation Street is set in Salford/Manchester it's not a million miles from Burnley which would suggest that Fishwick is a name from up North up North.