‘Cash for ash’ is one green scam among many

Toffs are like jackals: always quick to sniff out new carrion. I remember a few years back one florid aristo boasting what obscene amounts of money he was saving on his heating bills thanks to a brilliant new government scheme to incentivise wood-burning. ‘Probably no use to you —your house isn’t big enough,’ he said, pityingly. Then he went on to tell me about the solar array on his estate. ‘Makes perfect sense if you’ve got a few acres spare.’

But I haven’t told you the worst of it. The worst was that my friend felt really virtuous. Some might say that here was another well-heeled scrounger with a massive sense of entitlement raking in tens of thousands in subsidies for sitting on his fat arse. But as he saw it, he was doing his bit to save the planet. In fact, he went on to indicate — and I’m not making this up — that he considered himself a better person than me because all I did was write articles advocating for selfish, greedy causes like unfettered free markets, whereas he was making a real difference.

My toff friend, it goes without saying, was a massive fan of the kinder, gentler Conservatism of David Cameron. So, no doubt, are many other landowners who have benefited from the feed-in tariffs and other subsidy schemes that Dave’s ‘greenest government ever’ used to incentivise renewable energy. But I’m not. I think it was a disgraceful scam, an inexcusable waste of public money, and a grotesque, cynical and immoral wealth transfer from the poor to the establishment elite, with poisonous consequences we will be ruing for many years to come.