Maugham; don’t let the truth get in the way of a scandalous, £12bn white elephant
London, Mar. 31, 2015 — Stop Smart Meters! UK
At 09:47 on March 7, 2015, the Communications Director for Smart Energy GB — the government body tasked with “ensuring customers understand smart meters” — appeared on the BBC One Breakfast show and told viewers that every home in the UK would need to have a smart meter fitted by 2020 — a colossal untruth.
The following transcript was recently obtained by Stop Smart Meters! UK directly from the BBC complaints desk and shows the exchange between Smart Energy GB’s Claire Maugham and presenter Charlie Stayt:
[Time stamp 09:47, 7 March 2015]:CHARLIE STAYT: How do you get one [a smart meter]?
CLAIRE MAUGHAM: They are being installed by energy suppliers and they are being installed at no extra cost to the consumer.
CHARLIE STAYT: So, you just call up your supplier and say “I’d like one” and they are obliged to give it to you?
CLAIRE MAUGHAM: You need to contact your supplier. Some of them have already started installing them and there are already one million of them out there, but they have to install them in 100% of homes by 2020. {emphasis added]
As we have repeatedly revealed throughout our campaign against the now “widely hated” smart meter roll-out, energy companies are commonly lying to customers in order to dupe them into thinking that smart meters are obligatory, when in fact smart meters are voluntary; a fact confirmed by the Government as well as by consumer group Which?.
Now we have evidence of where energy firms are getting their misleading ammunition — from the government-created body tasked with “helping customers to understand smart meters”. The body whose communications director, Claire Maugham, is prepared to go on national television and make the same provably false claims as the industry whose dirty work she is doing.
The need to expose the facts about the smart meter programme — which the Institute of Directors recently blasted as being “unwanted by consumers, devoid of credibility and mind-blowingly expensive” — is today more pressing than ever. Not only is the readiness to lie about smart meters endemic within the energy industry but now, seemingly, state-sanctioned.
Stop Smart Meters! UK is urgently calling for this programme to be terminated, for Claire Maugham to issue a public apology and for the BBC to issue a full retraction and correction to Maugham’s misinformation.
-ENDS-
Stop Smart Meters! UK is a grassroots campaign raising awareness about how ‘smart’ meters affect our health, privacy, safety, security and utility bills.
Sack her, she lied!
I have heard it said rightly or wrongly that the BBC is the properganda arm of GCHQ?
The message that we are all to have a smart meter installed by 2020 does not thrill me at all. I check my supply every month and sometimes a detailed examination of usage each week. I can assure you the new smart meters will not show me how to save on energy costs. Although they say it installation is free, just watch your standing charge jump up to pay for it. The diabolical standing charge is the admin costs on your bill from every energy company to pay for a meter every 15 years. The only way you can save money on electricity is to turn off all ovens and heating of any kind. In other words, you eat cold meals every day then sit and shiver in the winter. To save money on gas you must not turn on your central heating. When you use cooking and heating with electricity, the meter starts to spin wildly, sending large supplies of money to the energy companies. The hard working lower paid suffer greatly usually over 10% of their income. Do not be fooled by smart meters and reject them now.
This is just not acceptable, and yes its a lie because myself nor any other member of my family will accept a smart meter . EVER. These things do not save people money and they are a health hazard whatever anyone who is promoting this stuff says.
The UK Smart Meter programme, dreamed up originally by Ed Milliband costs about £12 billion, I believe. Independent experts say the cost does not justify the claimed savings, which are very unreliable estimates.
In addition, Smart Meter WiFi technology is up to 10 times the strength of mobile phone & router WiFi. It is an incalculable danger to public health as many worldwide studies have illustrated. I instructed my power company SSE not to install one in my home, as is my right. I have urged friends and neighbours follow suit.
There are harmless gadgets on the market which save up to 20% on gas and electric. I have two Intelligent Electricity Saver Boxes installed in my home, one costing under £3. My gas boiler has a “Thermoflow” magnetic fuel conditioner fitted which has reduced my gas bills for 15 years by up to 20%. Thames Valley University have an accreditation for using these devices – see more at:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pU5xJh7PZg
Don’t let vested interests hoodwink you into there perilous money making schemes. Exercise your citizens rights, be vigilent and take control of your life and health.
I am in a process on putting in my own meters which my energy provider is trying to stop me, energy company then can put the smart meters in. I have check online and notice a video where Transco has said it is not against the law to put your own meters in.
So I went off and got 1 of each, now I am saving up to have them installed. Now the energy supplier is pulling a fit due to myself seeing through them and they don’t like.
Also one of the mature side of Smart metering team gentleman came to my home and he notice I had a mic and so my Radio hat. So he told me that per month across the country there are 20,000 smart meters rolled out. The company this gentleman is with is Swalec and I think that is only with Swalec the figures are about. He told me people shouldn’t have to buy they own, but I notice in his eyes he was happy people standing up to this rubbish about smart meters.
Keep up the good fight everyone.
Hi Paul – the Electricity and Gas Acts both include provisions allowing you to have your own meter installed should you wish to do so – https://stopsmartmeters.org.uk/a-reminder-your-rights-in-relation-to-smart-meters/. Cheers.
Thank you, Admin.:)
Gas board are howding me I saw a fire on YouTube after I agreed to have one installed I questioned the gas board and they said that was not true and the fire was meant to be caused by a smart meter I a cancelled 4 times now and they are still phoning me I will name the company if you want
what’s this? lies about corporations in favor of them from corporate media? *gasp*…..
It’s a complete misquote. Listen to what she actually said.
‘…by 2020, 100% of customers will have been offered them and we hope that 100% of people will have them in their homes’
https://youtu.be/ns3PAPlgXO4?t=5m
She did not state that all British homes have to have them. She’s not exactly telling people they don’t have to have one, that’s implied. Of course this interview really is one big sales pitch, but it does not constitute lying.
If anyone is lying here, it is your web site. However, I expect that an overly excitable individual watched it live and was remembering what he thought she said – either a blogger for your web site or someone reporting it to your web site.
You really ought to verify these types of claims and stories before you publish them as it reflects badly on your web site and the anti-smart meter movement in general, and will reduce the credibility of the actual claims that are 100% true.
This type of unfortunate exercise only serves to makes your followers more paranoid than they need to be. It does not surprise me that no one else bothered to cross check this story as blindly accepting claims that are the sort of thing you want to believe or are expecting to be true goes with the territory for many unfortunately.
Dear Fabian – no, we did not misquote and we are not mistaken – you are. All of the pieces of data you need to verify this for yourself are on this page.
Check the timestamp that we provided in our post above (which was verified by the BBC), and then check the timestamp on the Youtube clip that you provided (embedded in the corner of the screen). There is a two hour difference.
Maugham appeared on BBC Breakfast twice that morning — first around 07:00 and then after 09:00. It was in her later performance, at 09:47 — as we stated above — that she tried to convince millions of people that they would have no choice in this matter.
You really ought to verify whether your contemptuous remarks are accurate before posting them and using them as a basis for attacking this website and our eagle-eyed visitors —- they can tell the time, after all.
Thanks for the video though. We hadn’t quite realised just how easy the presenters had been on Maugham, and for a moment you had us thinking that the pushers of this programme had started telling the truth in their efforts to sell this £12bn boondoggle to an unsuspecting public. Sadly not.
Fabian, I saw the clip in question live and I can assure you she said, “have to have” which is when her eye started twitching.