So if we measure something and present the data to people with an incentive to improve then people may well respond to improve the situation and may even set themselves improvement targets. I’m guessing that HM Government have forced EON to give these comparisons, after all what right thinking energy supplier would provide information that might prompt obsessives like me to use less energy? I now have some sort of self-imposed target to get the excess figure down to say 30% as a start but without incurring any personal thermal discomfort of course. Isn’t it interesting how EON’s (ridiculous) gas usage comparison figures, in particular the graphs, prompted a behavioural response from me? Meantime we now have a programmable wireless thermostat that I carry from room to room like a casket containing the sacred bones of a long dead saint. But no, I refuse to be cold and I will exercise my first world birthright to walk around the house in a thong in January if I feel like it (don’t ask). This is a policy pursued by one of my colleagues who can often be seen on the JOMC video conference in his dining room dressed for an Everest assault. Plainly the answer to this is to tell the wife to stop complaining and put another jumper on. The problem is that we had a few extra radiators put in and what with one thing and another I am dismayed to see that my, ancient, high-ceilinged, badly insulated, draughty semi is still using 40% more gas than what EON laughingly call a similar property – Aaaargh! In addition the supplier website shows graphed consumption curves month by month against the curves for the similar property. I now have an A-rated state of the art installation with spares support stretching into the foreseeable future. Incidentally the charming and fragrant Mrs Beswick has taken precisely no interest in the new appliance but what woman ever felt a radiator? What man doesn’t? Remember how privatisation was going to introduce competition to the energy market… how we laughed eh?

Less gas, less money to the UK energy cartel – yippee.

I mourn the old Baxi boiler which only ever needed a replacement thermocouple every five years the new one is a monster of complexity which will not match the reliability of the old one but is probably 30-50% more efficient. And it was while replacing our 30 year old boiler with a new whizz-bang condensing one that I noticed the power of projections, comparison and targets on influencing behaviour. Among my hobbies I can safely include central heating – an endlessly fascinating subject, especially where possible energy savings (i.e.

Instal the new Monster Tribe