HOT STUFF

There is a sign on the communal front door of our house advertising seminars for locals to come and talk about the awful heating costs demanded by Riga's heating company. Here in Riga most buildings are on the central heating network. It is always one day behind the curve, so it is cold when it is cold and hot when it is hot - simple really! You can see where the pipes go because they heat up half of the countryside and roads as well. No matter how cold it is there are broad swathes of Riga that snow never covers because they are simply too warm from the pipes running underneath.

This is party of a national problem - government monopolies! A few weeks ago I attended a meeting with the national electricity company who also have the same disease. When I suggested that there were available better local finance and social models for power (like Flensburg in Germany who are bidding for the Ventspils heating contract for example) the head planner answered me as though I was from the moon and quickly found it was time to leave! We still have a deep official culture of "mummy knows best" here and anything not agreeing with official plans must be wrong.

Sadly I doubt that our seminars will do much. I will try to attend because my last bill was extortionate by any standards. This is hurting me too, but not as much as the other tenants who are unemployed and get less pension each month than the cost of the bill. They cannot pay!