Government wants to pay you to switch off

[davidc4430]

Power bills: Why the Government wants to pay you to switch off this summer

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-11/power-scheme-offers-rewards-for-switching-off-in-peak-times/90...

i think this is a very bad idea.

i think that some older people who are struggling to pay power bills will take this offer up, and end up in hospital or dead.

its obviously going to be a scheme that the poorest would be most likely to go for, the unemployed, the elderly and the people on low incomes.

i doubt anyone 'well off' will switch of their airconditioners on a stinking hot day.

[davidc4430]

[davidc4430]

prolly whats happening is telephone surveys go like this,

if person hangs up on me i'll put them down as 'agrees to our question'

[chameleon54]

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@springyzone wrote:

I was reading in the papers just yesterday that apparently there is 'great community support' for this idea & people are getting excited by the prospect of being paid to switch off, they just love the concept.

I am wondering who they surveyed. All I can say is no one ever has asked my opinion, on anything. Who are these people? I haven't met any.

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Our house gets surveyed reasonably often for this type of thing. Sometimes we go through the survey if we have time, other times we dont bother.I suspect because we have done them before, we are probably on the lists that get handed around to the companies that run the surveys.

[twyngwyn]

[springyzone]

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@chameleon54 wrote:

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@springyzone wrote:

I was reading in the papers just yesterday that apparently there is 'great community support' for this idea & people are getting excited by the prospect of being paid to switch off, they just love the concept.

I am wondering who they surveyed. All I can say is no one ever has asked my opinion, on anything. Who are these people? I haven't met any.

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Our house gets surveyed reasonably often for this type of thing. Sometimes we go through the survey if we have time, other times we dont bother.I suspect because we have done them before, we are probably on the lists that get handed around to the companies that run the surveys.

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What state are you in chameleon & are you in a metro area?

I'm in an outer suburb of Melbourne and we obviously don't count.

The only survey I have taken part in was a few months back a woman rang, asking about my experiences with public train travel.

One of the questions was what station would you normally leave from to start your journey (or words to that effect')

I said-Sandown Park. Now for interstaters, Sandown station is an outer suburban station right next to a greyhound racing track & a car racing circuit and during the day, travellers can park for free at the dog racing track car park across the road. So HUNDREDS of free spots, which is unusual at most stations, so it is always busy there.

Well, there was dead silence for a moment then the woman said in an accusatory voice "No one has ever said that station, that is not a common station at all." I replied-well, that is where I drive to, for the parking & so do hundreds of others.

For a couple of minutes she kept saying it was unusual, no one in the whole history of surveying had ever mentioned it, surely I usually used a different station. But I stuck to my guns so in the end she presumably had to record it.

Obviously not many outer suburbanites ever get questioned by that mob.

[twyngwyn]

there goes your free parking.....

[springyzone]

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@twyngwyn wrote:
there goes your free parking.....

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You could be right, except it isn't government land. I wouldn't be surprised if the railways pay the dog track some yearly fee though for customers to have use of the parking there.

I probably only use the trains a handful of times a year but yes, I'm surprised all the parking is still free.

[chameleon54]

I live in a fairly large regional centre not too far from Adelaide SA. One of the recent surveys was our response to the introduction of nuclear power in Australia and the building of a nuclear waste storage facility. Another was on water policy and the River Murray. We often get polled for the name brand political polls close to election such as Morgan and Gallop Polling.

Sometimes the polls and the questions asked are quite interesting and seem to be trying to find a genuine response, rather than having loaded questions to suit a political purpose. I just assumed everyone got the calls.