Angelo de Armas

As costs of energy double and redouble in the UK, and the government prepares to announce details of a bailout for householders, 100,000 off-grid households face winter out in the cold.

The bailout is likely to be based on previous utility bills, and as off-grid homes do not buy from utility companies they are being left out of the calculations. Van-dwellers, liveaboard boaters and permanent dwellings that are energy independent mostly rely on oil, butane or wood for heating and cooking. All of these will be in short supply this winter.

A document from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy published on 29 July, states: “Evidence suggests up to 400,000 would not receive EBSS support due to these circumstances compared with approximately 29 million that will.”

Gypsies and Travellers fear missing out on energy bills support and the National Bargee Travellers Association says thousands of “liveaboard” boaters could be locked out of the support payments.

Dan Hooper, an environmental activist nicknamed Swampy, who achieved prominence for his tunnel protest activities, lives off-grid in Tipi Valley, a 200-acre former farm in Wales.

He and others in the community generate sustainable electricity from solar panels supplemented by bottled gas and wood burners for heating in the cold winter months. Bottled gas prices have risen by 40% in the past 12 months.

Dan Hooper, AKA Swampy, said: ‘Government should not allow the energy companies to charge these extortionate prices.’
“Government should not allow the energy companies to charge these extortionate prices and make so many people miserable while they are making record-breaking profits. It’s all about human greed. We need to consume less,” he said.

He added that while he has some protection because his home is extremely well insulated, “Everyone should get these payments, which could be used to help people get their energy in more sustainable ways such as from solar panels.”

For Terry Green, a Traveller living with members of his family in a caravan park in East Sussex, the energy price hike has come as a “big shock”. He lives in a caravan with his wife. His three children and his grandchildren live in other caravans on the site.

“We’ve lived on this site for four years. It’s one of the best sites I’ve been on and I wake up every morning and thank God when I see my children and grandchildren around me. But when we add up the increased cost of paying our electricity key meter and bottles of gas I don’t know if we can afford it.

“A lot of Travellers will have to go back to the old ways of cooking outside on an open fire. Why should we be forced to do that? We should have equal rights with everyone else. Greed has crept in. It’s ruining the world.”

Friends, Families and Travellers, which supports Gypsy and Traveller communities, has written to …

One of the Greenpeace protesters who forced their way into the UK Chancellor’s Mansion House speech last night lives on an off-grid rabbit farm in rural Wales.

The activist – Janet Barker  –  was pushed against a column and held around the neck by Tory junior minster Mark Field before he marched her out of the room last night.

Barker was at the forefront of an attempt in 2017 to immobilise thousands of VW diesel cars by climbing aboard the ship they were imported on in the Thames, with the intention of stealing all the keys.

Mrs Barker, originally from Wigan, lives in a 12.5 acre farm in rural Wales with her husband Peter, and they run a business knitting items from the wool of the Angora rabbit.

The firm’s website says that the couple moved to the farm as part of a ‘long term plan to live on a low impact, sustainable smallholding,’ and stay in a small, zero carbon house, powered entirely by renewable energy.’

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