European Energy Policies, Henry Marsh, Edinburgh Jokes

The Gas Cooker
Spencer Gore (1878-1914)
Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

All governments are struggling to find solutions. But there is a sense of urgent engagement in the EU that has been lacking in the UK. European governments are scrambling to find ways to protect households and businesses and the Czech Republic, which holds the EU's rotating presidency is weighing calling an emergency energy summit to discuss bloc-wide price caps. 

Many countries have already taken action. Spain has capped gas prices for a year, halved VAT on energy bills and slashed another tax on electricity to 0.5% and is taxing energy companies more, transferring the money to needy customers.

Italy this month approved a new energy aid package worth 17bn euros, on top of 35bn euros earmarked since January for cost of living subsidies, and also aims to tax companies profiting from higher energy prices. Low income earners are getting a 200 euro extra payout.

France has forced the state-owned electricity utility EDF to limit wholesale prices to 4% for a year and cut its tax on electricity consumption from 22.5 euros per megawatt hour to 1 euro for households and 0.5 for businesses. Further individual help is being decided.

Germany enacted several energy-saving measures last week: temperatures in public buildings will be limited to 19C from September and heating turned off in common areas such as corridors. The private sector is being encouraged to follow suit.

(Toby Helm, John Henley, The Observer, 2022)

And the UK?  Martin Lewis, the consumer champion, first warned the government last March. Now, he's calling the situation here a catastrophe. Yet another failure to act.

In his book, Matters of Life and Death, Henry Marsh, a neurosurgeon, outlines some of his mistakes.

A surgical Operation on a Man's Head
David Teniers 11 (1610-1690) (follower of)
Photo Credit: Wellcome Collection [Public Domain]

... Here, Marsh is self-lacerating and also self forgiving when he reminisces about his medical mistakes. On one occasion he steels himself to admit to a patient that he'd operated on the wrong side of his brain. "Well I quite understand, Mr Marsh," the patient answers after a long silence. "I put in fitted kitchens for a living. I once put one in back to front. It's easily done."                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Top ten funniest, one-liner jokes, of the Edinburgh festival fringe 2022.

The Laughing Girl
Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792)
Photo Credit: Glasgow Life Museums [CC BY-NC-ND] 

1. I tried to steal spaghetti from the shop but the female guard saw me and I couldn't get pasta.                        (Masai Graham)

2. Did you know, if you get pregnant in the Amazon, it's next day delivery.                                                        (Mark Simmons)

3. My attempts to combine nitrous oxide and Oxo cubes made me a laughing stock.                                         (Olaf Falafel)

4. By my age, my parents had a house and a family, and to be fair to me, so do I, but it's the same house          and the same family.                                                                                                                                         (Hannah Fairweather)

5. I hate funerals. I'm not a mourning person.                                                                                                     (Will Mars)

6. I spent the whole morning building a time machine, so that's four hours of my life that I'm definitely  getting back.                                                                                                                                              (Olaf Falafel)

7. I sent a food parcel to my first wife. Fedex.                                                                                                 (Richard Pulsford)

8. I used to live hand to mouth. Do you know what changed my life? Cutlery.                                               (Tim Vine)

9. Don't knock threesomes. Having a threesome is like hiring an intern to do all the jobs you hate.             (Sophie Duker)

10. I can't even be bothered to be apathetic these days.                                                                                     (Will Duggan)