EON offer insulation plus £100 incentive

[Ted]

Loft and cavity insulation free plus £100 - for those that qualify.

http://pressreleases.eon-uk.com/blogs/eonukpressreleases/archive/2012/01/09/1776.aspx

[AndySussex]

Great - more free stuff if you don't work...

[Ivan]

Very handy for those on low incomes, but I am inclined to agree with Andy. I know someone personally who is on benefits. His various benefits are not subject to tax. He'd like to work, and I helped him work out how much better off he'd be if he was working full time: if he'd If he had to earn the same amount of money, he'd be paying tax and national insurance, so he'd need to have a gross income of £35 000 to receive the same net amount. As the only jobs he would be likely to find would be sub-£20k, he'd be much worse off working, so he's not going to look for work.

[wookey]

I thought that was quite hard to achieve these days. Is it mostly housing benefit? Because JSA isn't going to make you rich and other benefits like disability and children don't go away when you get a job. You can see why the tories want to put limits on housing benefit.

[Richard Owen]

You can see why the tories want to put limits on housing benefit.

Indeed you can. The chickens have come home to roost.

Is anyone else old enough to remember when a Tory government deregulated the private rental market claiming that competition would drive prices down?

[mpooley]

It really annoys me that as I have been insulating my various houses since the 1970's that these total wally's who would rather spend their money on fags and beer can now get it all given to them.

They talk about old people not being in a position to afford it but for christ's sake they have had 40 or more years to do it but they couldn't be bothered !

I'm an 'old person' who has approx 430mm of insulation in his loft now - all paid for by me.
Grrrrrr

[Ivan]

I'm not personally against the 'free insulation' handouts- because they usually target the people who would never do it unless it's free, and they're still using our valuable resources until they get insulated. However, handing out £100 cash is simply Eon throwing away money which is supposed to be spent on helping people who genuinely can't afford insulation - not a bit of extra beer/fag money.

I think these offers should be open to everyone - even a lot of rich people won't spend their money on insulation unless it's subsidised or free. And many people on average incomes don't have anything left over at the end of the month, having paid for everything that the non-workers don't have to worry about.

[numenius]

I took advantage a few weeks ago of an offer from nPower (who I'm not even with) of £1 a roll. So ended up with 32 rolls to do my whole new loft to 270mm - that included delivery and they even threw in a mask and gloves set. That offer was open to absolutely everyone. Yep, even to us poor mugs who work!