Solar panels ruined my home – now Rachel Reeves wants to tax my electric car

It was while studying biology that the need to protect the planet really came home to me. The evidence for man-made climate change was there, all those years ago – so I’ve long been convinced of the need to go green.

And I’ve tried my best. I drive an electric car. We’re zealous recyclers. We turn the taps off while brushing our teeth. But here’s the truth: as a wise man once noted – well, Kermit the Frog – it isn’t easy bein’ green.

Just keeping on top of the recycling can be a Sisyphean task. Whenever we get the stone to the top of the hill, it rolls back down again, and another room is full of cardboard packaging that needs breaking up and Tetrapaks that needs to be sorted. Weekends can be spent journeying to the bins at the local supermarkets, or queueing for the local tip.

However, this is but nothing when compared to the irritation we have confronted ever since getting solar panels on our roof.

We did this out of pure idealism. I was fully aware that it would take years for them to deliver a return on the capital outlay, although they have had a noticeable and welcome impact on our bills, especially in the summer when they’re at their best.

However, I soon had cause to regret signing up for the solar scheme overseen by the Mayor of London, aimed at bringing down the cost of the things to consumers.

It was basically a group-purchase deal. Contractors would bid to do an entire neighbourhood – and ours was a disaster. The company, which eventually went into liquidation, didn’t appear able to cope with the work it had taken on.

Their customer service seemed to be inspired by Soviet Union retailers, the ones that involved people queuing round the block for their groceries while waiting three or four years to get a TV set. Calls were rarely answered. Emails, never. On the rare occasions when we did hold of someone, we were fobbed off with vague promises and excuses for delays to a service we were encouraged to sign up for – and had paid thousands for the privilege. Installing solar panels in the UK for an average home (3-4kW system) typically costs between £5,000 and £8,000.

The process felt like a punishment. The workmen, when they finally arrived, did a pretty good job. And, during this cost of living crisis, I’m glad we got the panels, although a word to the wise. Pigeons love solar panels, which offer year-round shelter to the prolific little breeders. If you’re thinking of taking the plunge, invest in some netting, or else buy a power-washer.

Then there’s the EV. Don’t get me wrong, I love driving it. It’s like piloting a space cruiser. When some rube ploughed into the back of my Nissan Leaf, the insurer provided a petrol engine replacement. It was like trading it in for a Sherman tank. I hated the thing.

But it might be worth driving a pig and shelling out for fuel to escape Rachel Reeves’ EV poll tax. I get that the chancellor needed to find a way to replace the lost revenues from fuel duty. But the new 3p-a-mile charge, when it comes in in September, will be punitive to high users. The administration of it looks like a bureaucratic nightmare, too, waiting to strangle all those who get caught up in it.

Reeves wants us to estimate our per-mile usage and pay in advance. Overestimate your bill and you’ll get a refund and/or credit against the next year. The reverse is true for an underestimate. You don’t need a PhD to see the flaws, just a dose of the common sense our government appears to be horribly lacking in.

The idea was clearly dreamed up by people with a puffed up sense of their own self-importance and no conception of what it’s like living in the real world, and of how frustrating it is to deal with the state’s sepulchral bureaucracy. The one that holds that the taxpayer is always in the wrong.

Our political masters are in income brackets where they can easily afford to pay people to deal with this rubbish for them (although that doesn’t always go so well, just google Angela Rayner and stamp duty). A dose of reality would do them the world of good.

While formulating the new tax, the government has been putting a gun to the head of a car industry already grappling with the impact of bad policy (starting with Brexit) with its ruinous fining regime. It lands those which fail to hit targets for EV sales with punitive penalties. After pulling the rug out from under them with a latter day poll tax that will inevitably make EVS much less popular, would anyone blame them for pulling out?

Most people, I think, want to do the right thing. They accept that we need to clean up our planet and ensure that it’s liveable for our children. But the authorities need to help them with it.

Ed Miliband is hot for net zero. It’s like a teenage crush for him. But as with most teenage crushes, reality has a nasty habit of cooling one’s ardour and all of a sudden its tears before bedtime and a lifelong fondness for lovelorn indie-pop.

It’s never going to happen unless he and his colleagues work out that they need to bring the public along with them. Pious statements, hectoring, lecturing, and taxes that look like they were designed by the Spike, the big meanie from the Gremlins movies, aren’t going to do the job.

If a convinced and committed greenie like me is getting thoroughly fed up, then, Houston, we have a problem.