The founder of the energy company who told customers to do star jumps and cuddle their pet for warmth has had a polluting wood burner fitted in his £3.2 million mansion.
Ovo Energy boss Stephen Fitzpatrick, 45, had to get permission for the posh £1,199 Anevay Tana Stove at his Gloucestershire home.
Cotswold District Council passed the request from Stephen Fitzpatrick, worth an estimated £675 million, two months ago.
It seems at odds with his own company’s ambitions to become the UK’s zero-carbon living partner in the home.
Ovo’s self-described visionary strategy is called Plan Zero and says that it means lowering carbon emissions and removing carbon from the air and that they’ve set tough targets to enable them to achieve both of those goals.
Woodburning stoves contribute to particle pollution and last year were labelled a health risk.
University of Sheffield researchers said they should be sold with a health warning because of the pollution they emit into homes.
Mr Fitzpatrick was in hot water last month after Ovo’s sister company SSE Energy gave embarrassing and insulting advice to customers trying to save money on fuel bills.
The blog said it was giving ten simple and cost-effective tips to keeping warm in the winter without turning up the heating, but they included the pets and star jumps advice, as well as challenging the kids to hula-hoop contest and leaving the oven door open after cooking food.
The uproar saw the webpage deleted and Mr Fitzpatrick acknowledged it was a bad day, and that they’d made a mistake.
After learning about the wood burner the Green Party’s Amelia Womack told a newspaper outlet that it was evident that he’d found a cosy alternative to cuddling his cat and doing star jumps to keep warm. Meanwhile, his customers are left shivering and unable to pay their bills.
She said that we can’t all live in mansions but we do all have the right to a warm home and that requires system change.
Conservative MP Craig Mackinlay added that it seems another example of do what I say but not as I do.
Ovo refused to comment.
Last month it announced at least 1,700 jobs were set to be cut by the energy company, and staff were given details of plans in January, which include reducing the number of offices from 10 to three.
It’s not the fact that Mr Fitzpatrick has a wood-burning stove, he’s entitled to have what he damn well likes, as long as he’s not spouting with his big mouth that other people that are vulnerable, elderly and disabled should be doing star jumps and cuddling their cat to keep warm.
The bigger picture is that this man doesn’t have to worry about money, he’s worth millions whilst his company hike energy rate to unaffordable levels for consumers.
Meanwhile, China burns millions of tons of coal to produce our offshore manufacturing – goods that were once made in Britain, which is then shipped to us, thousands of miles, in ships burning bunker fuel which is the dirtiest fuel in the world.
The British working class used to produce our manufacturing, but instead, they now drive around Chinese goods in vans, formerly skilled workers who are now reduced to being delivery boys for Chinese tat, and then there’s a mountain of woke guff that’s produced by UK politicians about Britain being carbon neutral. No, it’s not! We’ve simply exported our pollution to China.
Not forgetting that China is bankrolling the extraction of Lithium, using slave and child labour in the Congo. Is there any Li-on battery that’s not made in China?
The supply of non-renewable precious metals is probably about 100 years, after which it will likely be necessary to deep trawl the oceans for nodules, and EV vehicles produce twice the amount of ozone which causes respiratory illness and EV vehicles are today’s environmental disaster and it’s happening on a street near you!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 