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"There's no way": Man receives $52 billion tax bill

An American man has been left confused after receiving a letter from the government claiming he owed $52 billion in unpaid taxes. Barry Tangert got two letters in the mail from the state of Pennsylvania, opening the first to find a refund check from the federal government for over $900. His joy was short-lived though as he opened the second letter to find the income billing notice from the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue claiming that he owed a jaw-dropping $52,950,744,735.28 ($34,576,826,561.47 AUD). “I knew it was an obvious blunder. I don’t even make over $100,000 a year, so there’s no way I could owe anywhere near that,” Barry Tangert told local outlet News 8. The total sum was so large it didn’t even fit on a single line on the document. Tangert immediately knew it was a mistake, with the astonishing number being more than triple the $11 billion America’s richest man Elon Musk says he owed the government in 2022. How the error made it all the way to his doorstep is still a mystery to Tangert. “I don’t know if it was a computer glitch in the transmission or if it was an input error from my tax preparer,” Tangert said, noting that his tax preparer filed an amendment after noticing an error on his 2022 return. He reached out to the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue’s customer service line, which also provided little help to the baffled man. “The first thing he said was, ‘You had a good year.’ And I said, ‘I wish,’” Tangert said. Fortunately, the state department has since resolved the issue, which it chalked up to wrong numbers simply being put into the system. Image credits: WGAL News 8

Money & Banking

Tourist slapped with $225k bill after simple mistake

An American tourist has revealed the moment he was charged with a $US143k (AU$225k) bill after a short holiday to Switzerland. Rene Remund and his wife Linda went on the trip last September. Prior to their travels, Remund made sure to inform his mobile phone provider, T-Mobile, that he was going overseas and as a customer of 30 years, he was told he was “covered”. So, with no worries at all, the tourist shared photos of his moments in the Swiss countryside with friends and family via photo messages. Imagine his surprise when he came home to a six-figure bill, after he racked up thousands and thousands of dollars in daily roaming costs. “I get this T-Mobile bill and it doesn’t bother me very much because I was reading $143,” he explained, adding it wasn’t until he went to pay the bill that he realised a few more zeros were involved. “I look at the bill and I say, ‘excuse me’,” he said. “$143,000 … are you guys crazy?” According to the bill, Remund had racked up 9.5 gigabytes of data while in Europe, which cost him thousands of dollars each day. While it wasn't a huge amount of data, not being covered by roaming fees will cause a user to run up a huge bill very quickly. “I called [T-Mobile] and the girl put me on hold for a while,” he explained. “She said let me check this out and I’ll get back to you. She gets back and says, yeah this is a good bill. “I said, ‘what do you mean it’s a good bill?’ And she says ‘well, this is what you owe’. “I said ‘you’re kidding me … you’re crazy’.” After confirming that his bill was in fact AU$225,000, Remund hired a lawyer to argue the fact that he was covered for international roaming. His lawyer issued a letter to the president of T-Mobile, and they only received a reply a few days ago. The letter from T-Mobile allegedly said that the service provider was “sorry” for the charges, and that Remund would receive a “credit” to eliminate the entire bill. In an email shared to local media Scripps News Tampa, the mobile phone provider said that customers should always “check the travel features of their plan, such as international data roaming, before departing”. “If a customer is on an older plan that doesn’t include international roaming for data and calling, they’ll need to make sure they’re using aeroplane mode and wi-fi when using data to be certain the device doesn’t connect to an international network.” <em style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; color: #323338; font-family: Figtree, Roboto, 'Noto Sans Hebrew', 'Noto Kufi Arabic', 'Noto Sans JP', sans-serif; background-color: #ffffff; outline: none !important;">Images: ABC Action News

Travel Trouble

"My unexpected $223,000 overseas bill"

Jeffrey Yates had just embarked on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday with his wife to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Instead, he ended up racking up a whopping $223,255 bill, the biggest claim his insurance company had seen during 2017. The 71-year-old from Western Australia said the pair’s much-anticipated trip had started off well. “The trip was a particularly special one as it was our 50th wedding anniversary, so it was something we’d been looking forward to for quite some time,” Mr Yates told <a href="http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-advice/health-safety/my-unexpected-223000-overseas-bill/news-story/94cd850899f9e1367bf6f3fb49621307">news.com.au.</a> “We started in Dubai, and then went over to Athens. From there, we jumped on a cruise from Athens to Barcelona.” But things soon took a turn when Jeffrey was struck with a series of illnesses while in Italy. “We were only a week in when my health started to deteriorate,” he said. “I contracted legionnaires’ disease and pneumonia which led to me discovering that I had emphysema on the trip. “The experience was quite scary and my wife and our two friends had to leave the cruise early to assist during my recovery.” He ended up in hospital for more than a month. “Within three days they’d dropped us off in Naples to see a specialist hospital, which led to 16 days in intensive care. This was followed by an extended stay in hospital. “All up, I was out of action for 47 days. After all was said and done, the total came to well over $220,000 … It was an extremely difficult situation.” Jeff says that while the couple always take out travel insurance, it was more for his wife who has ongoing health issues. He hadn’t anticipated he would need it. “It’s not something you think about, especially given how quickly those transportation and hospital bills can add up,” he said. “Of course, we were disappointed that such a long-awaited trip had been cut short, but we are grateful that it wasn’t worse and that we weren’t left out of pocket.” He says his experience show that all travellers need to protect themselves when travelling – as you really never know what could happen. Jeff still has ongoing health issues that he is being monitored for, including breathing issues for which he still requires oxygen. Images: Getty

Travel Trouble

How to avoid mobile phone bill horror stories when travelling

"I'm sorry, calls to this number are not allowed, please try again later". This. Again. At 1am standing outside what I thought was our Galway Airbnb, but instead was a popular alley for Irish revellers to relieve themselves. Brilliant. After begging a convenience store manager, borrowing a phone and stealing some local wi-fi, we made it to bed before 3am (one-star rating for the Airbnb host, naturally). Such was the power of the phone company when you're on holiday, I still got pinged far-too-high amounts for calls and data used to attempt a check-in at the Irish abode. A reader recently contacted me wanting to avoid such a conundrum by asking for the best SIM cards available in Europe. Thankfully, EU law has recently shielded travellers from harsh cross-border roaming charges by ruling that providers cannot charge excessively for access to rival networks in fellow EU nations. You'll see the kiosks hawking pre-paid SIM packages at many major airports. If you want the dependability a SIM provides, assess your needs and shop around. Better yet, get to know your smartphone better and use the whole range of mobile apps that will soon make international call and text roaming redundant. Organising hotels, taxis, tours, dinner reservations as well as calling home and making your friends and colleagues jealous with holiday snaps can all be done with a wi-fi connections, which are readily available and far cheaper (if not free). Avoid phone bill shock when you're away <ul> <li>Contact your mobile phone company rep about your destination and length of stay to see what add-ons and spending caps may be best.</li> <li>Only purchase local SIMs if you're in the country more than a week, have an unplanned itinerary or will have no free wi-fi at your accommodation.</li> <li>If you're on a per-day bundle, choose a few days to be on-the-grid and turn off your mobile data on other days.</li> <li>Go wi-fi only, in North American, Asian and European cities it's readily available.</li> <li>Embrace apps like Uber, Gett, WhatsApp, OpenTable and TripAdvisor to book taxis, call home and book restaurants and tours using hotel wi-fi and thus limiting calls.</li> </ul> Image credit: Shutterstock Written by Josh Martin. Republished with permission of <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Stuff.co.nz</a>.

Travel Tips

A brief history of the mortgage, from its roots in ancient Rome to the English ‘dead pledge’ and its rebirth in America

The average interest rate for a new U.S. <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/home-loan-mortgage-interest-rate-7-percent-highest-since-2001/">30-year fixed-rate mortgage topped 7% in late October 2022</a> for the first time in more than two decades. It’s a sharp increase from one year earlier, when <a href="https://www.valuepenguin.com/mortgages/historical-mortgage-rates">lenders were charging homebuyers only 3.09%</a> for the same kind of loan. Several factors, including <a href="https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/mortgages/fed-mortgage-rates">inflation rates and the general economic outlook</a>, influence mortgage rates. A primary driver of the ongoing upward spiral is the <a href="https://abc7chicago.com/fed-interest-rate-decision-today-hike-federal-reserve-meeting-november/12408055/">Federal Reserve’s series of interest rate hikes</a> intended to tame inflation. Its decision to increase the benchmark rate by <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20221102a.htm">0.75 percentage points on Nov. 2, 2022</a>, to as much as 4% will propel the cost of mortgage borrowing even higher. Even if you have had mortgage debt for years, you might be unfamiliar with the history of these loans – a subject I cover <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KVv47noAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">in my mortgage financing course</a> for undergraduate business students at Mississippi State University. The term dates back to <a href="https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/story-of-england/medieval/">medieval England</a>. But the roots of these legal contracts, in which land is pledged for a debt and will become the property of the lender if the loan is not repaid, go back thousands of years. <h2>Ancient roots</h2> Historians trace the <a href="https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Nehemiah-5-3/">origins of mortgage contracts</a> to the reign of King Artaxerxes of Persia, who ruled modern-day Iran in the fifth century B.C. The Roman Empire formalized and documented the legal process of pledging collateral for a loan. Often using the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%202%3A13-16&version=NIV">forum and temples as their base of operations</a>, mensarii, which is derived from the word mensa or “bank” in Latin, would set up loans and charge <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%202%3A13-16&version=NIV">borrowers interest</a>. These government-appointed public bankers required the borrower to put up collateral, whether real estate or personal property, and their agreement regarding the use of the collateral would be handled in one of three ways. First, the <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fiducia">Fiducia</a>, Latin for “trust” or “confidence,” required the transfer of both ownership and possession to lenders until the debt was repaid in full. Ironically, this arrangement involved no trust at all. Second, the <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pignus">Pignus</a>, Latin for “pawn,” allowed borrowers to retain ownership while <a href="https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1684&context=penn_law_review">sacrificing possession and use</a> until they repaid their debts. Finally, the <a href="https://legaldictionary.lawin.org/hypotheca/">Hypotheca</a>, Latin for “pledge,” let borrowers retain both ownership and possession while repaying debts. <h2>The living-versus-dead pledge</h2> <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Claudius-Roman-emperor">Emperor Claudius</a> brought Roman law and customs to Britain in A.D. 43. Over the next <a href="https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/story-of-england/romans/">four centuries of Roman rule</a> and the <a href="https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/story-of-england/early-medieval/">subsequent 600 years known as the Dark Ages</a>, the British adopted another Latin term for a pledge of security or collateral for loans: <a href="https://worldofdictionary.com/dict/latin-english/meaning/vadium">Vadium</a>. If given as collateral for a loan, real estate could be offered as “<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vadium%20vivum">Vivum Vadium</a>.” The literal translation of this term is “living pledge.” Land would be temporarily pledged to the lender who used it to generate income to pay off the debt. Once the lender had collected enough income to cover the debt and some interest, the land would revert back to the borrower. With the alternative, the “<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mortuum%20vadium">Mortuum Vadium</a>” or “dead pledge,” land was pledged to the lender until the borrower could fully repay the debt. It was, essentially, an interest-only loan with full principal payment from the borrower required at a future date. When the lender demanded repayment, the borrower had to pay off the loan or lose the land. Lenders would keep proceeds from the land, be it income from farming, selling timber or renting the property for housing. In effect, the land was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1321129.pdf">dead to the debtor</a> during the term of the loan because it provided no benefit to the borrower. Following <a href="https://www.royal.uk/william-the-conqueror">William the Conqueror’s victory</a> at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the English language was heavily influenced by <a href="https://blocs.mesvilaweb.cat/subirats/the-norman-conquest-the-influence-of-french-on-the-english-language-loans-and-calques/">Norman French</a> – William’s language. That is how the Latin term “Mortuum Vadium” morphed into “Mort Gage,” Norman French for “dead” and “pledge.” “<a href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/mortgage">Mortgage</a>,” a <a href="https://ia600201.us.archive.org/1/items/cu31924021674399/cu31924021674399.pdf">mashup of the two words</a>, then entered the English vocabulary. <h2>Establishing rights of borrowers</h2> Unlike today’s mortgages, which are usually due within 15 or 30 years, English loans in the 11th-16th centuries were unpredictable. <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/1323192.pdf">Lenders could demand repayment</a> at any time. If borrowers couldn’t comply, lenders could seek a court order, and the land would be forfeited by the borrower to the lender. Unhappy borrowers could <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/chancery">petition the king</a> regarding their predicament. He could refer the case to the lord chancellor, who could <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Chancery-Division">rule as he saw fit</a>. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Francis-Bacon-Viscount-Saint-Alban">Sir Francis Bacon</a>, England’s lord chancellor from 1618 to 1621, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/752041">established</a> the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/equity_of_redemption">Equitable Right of Redemption</a>. This new right allowed borrowers to pay off debts, even after default. The official end of the period to redeem the property was called <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/foreclosure">foreclosure</a>, which is derived from an Old French word that means “<a href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/foreclose">to shut out</a>.” Today, foreclosure is a legal process in which lenders to take possession of property used as collateral for a loan. <h2>Early US housing history</h2> The <a href="https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/colonial-settlement-1600-1763/overview/">English colonization</a> of what’s now <a href="https://themayflowersociety.org/history/the-mayflower-compact/">the United States</a> didn’t immediately transplant mortgages across the pond. But eventually, U.S. financial institutions were offering mortgages. <a href="https://www.huduser.gov/publications/pdf/us_evolution.pdf">Before 1930, they were small</a> – generally amounting to at most half of a home’s market value. These loans were generally short-term, maturing in under 10 years, with payments due only twice a year. Borrowers either paid nothing toward the principal at all or made a few such payments before maturity. Borrowers would have to refinance loans if they couldn’t pay them off. <h2>Rescuing the housing market</h2> Once America fell into the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression">Great Depression</a>, the <a href="https://www.stlouisfed.org/news-releases/2008/05/02/does-the-great-depression-hold-the-answers-for-the-current-mortgage-distress">banking system collapsed</a>. With most homeowners unable to pay off or refinance their mortgages, the <a href="https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/great-depression">housing market crumbled</a>. The number of <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-and-education-magazines/housing-1929-1941">foreclosures grew to over 1,000 per day by 1933</a>, and housing prices fell precipitously. The <a href="https://www.fhfaoig.gov/Content/Files/History%20of%20the%20Government%20Sponsored%20Enterprises.pdf">federal government responded by establishing</a> new agencies to stabilize the housing market. They included the <a href="https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/housing/fhahistory">Federal Housing Administration</a>. It provides <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/what-is-mortgage-insurance-and-how-does-it-work-en-1953/">mortgage insurance</a> – borrowers pay a small fee to protect lenders in the case of default. Another new agency, the <a href="https://sf.freddiemac.com/articles/insights/why-americas-homebuyers-communities-rely-on-the-30-year-fixed-rate-mortgage">Home Owners’ Loan Corp.</a>, established in 1933, bought defaulted short-term, semiannual, interest-only mortgages and transformed them into new long-term loans lasting 15 years. Payments were monthly and self-amortizing – covering both principal and interest. They were also fixed-rate, remaining steady for the life of the mortgage. Initially they skewed more heavily toward interest and later defrayed more principal. The corporation made new loans for three years, tending to them until it <a href="https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,858135,00.html">closed in 1951</a>. It pioneered long-term mortgages in the U.S. In 1938 Congress established the Federal National Mortgage Association, better known as <a href="https://www.fanniemae.com/about-us/who-we-are/history">Fannie Mae</a>. This <a href="https://www.financial-dictionary.info/terms/government-sponsored-enterprise/">government-sponsored enterprise</a> made fixed-rate long-term mortgage loans viable <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/securitization.asp">through a process called securitization</a> – selling debt to investors and using the proceeds to purchase these long-term mortgage loans from banks. This process reduced risks for banks and encouraged long-term mortgage lending. <h2>Fixed- versus adjustable-rate mortgages</h2> After World War II, Congress authorized the Federal Housing Administration to insure <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CPRT-108HPRT92629/html/CPRT-108HPRT92629.htm">30-year loans on new construction</a> and, a few years later, purchases of existing homes. But then, the <a href="https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/69/09/Historical_Sep1969.pdf">credit crunch of 1966</a> and the years of high inflation that followed made adjustable-rate mortgages more popular. Known as ARMs, these mortgages have stable rates for only a few years. Typically, the initial rate is significantly lower than it would be for 15- or 30-year fixed-rate mortgages. Once that initial period ends, <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/arm.asp">interest rates on ARMs</a> get adjusted up or down annually – along with monthly payments to lenders. Unlike the rest of the world, where ARMs prevail, Americans still prefer the <a href="https://sf.freddiemac.com/articles/insights/why-americas-homebuyers-communities-rely-on-the-30-year-fixed-rate-mortgage">30-year fixed-rate mortgage</a>. About <a href="https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=DP04&t=Housing">61% of American homeowners</a> have mortgages today – with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15214842.2020.1757357">fixed rates the dominant type</a>. But as interest rates rise, demand for <a href="https://www.corelogic.com/intelligence/interest-rates-are-up-but-arm-backed-home-purchases-are-way-up/">ARMs is growing</a> again. If the Federal Reserve fails to slow inflation and interest rates continue to climb, unfortunately for some ARM borrowers, the term “dead pledge” may live up to its name. Image credits: Getty Images This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-the-mortgage-from-its-roots-in-ancient-rome-to-the-english-dead-pledge-and-its-rebirth-in-america-193005" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>.

Real Estate

1 in 4 households struggle to pay power bills. Here are 5 ways to tackle hidden energy poverty

<a href="https://energyconsumersaustralia.com.au/news/how-increases-in-energy-prices-are-impacting-consumers#:%7E:text=Energy%2520affordability%2520is%2520not%2520just,in%2520the%2520past%252012%2520months.">One in four Australian households</a> are finding it hard to pay their gas and electricity bills. As winter looms, <a href="https://www.aer.gov.au/news-release/default-market-offer-2023%25E2%2580%259324-draft-determination">energy price rises</a> will make it even harder. Cold homes and disconnections resulting from energy poverty threaten people’s health and wellbeing. <a href="https://www.acoss.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/ACOSS-cost-of-living-report2-March-2023_web_FINAL.pdf">Income support for welfare recipients</a> and retrofitting homes to make them more thermally efficient – by adding insulation, for example – can ease the burden. And when homes are not too cold or hot, <a href="https://theconversation.com/fuel-poverty-makes-you-sick-so-why-has-nothing-changed-since-i-was-a-child-living-in-a-cold-home-201787">people’s health benefits</a>. This in turn <a href="https://apo.org.au/node/319556">eases pressure on the public health system</a>. However, many people are missing out on assistance as programs often do not recognise their difficulties. Their energy vulnerability is hidden. <h2>What forms does hidden energy poverty take?</h2> <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629623000737">Our newly published study</a> has revealed six aspects of hidden energy vulnerability. These are: <ol> <li> underconsumption – households limit or turn off cooling, heating and/or lights to avoid disconnections </li> <li> incidental masking – other welfare support, such as rent relief, masks difficulties in paying energy bills </li> <li> some households disguise energy poverty by using public facilities such as showers or pooling money for bills between families </li> <li> some people conceal their hardship due to pride or fear of legal consequences, such as losing custody of children if food cannot be refrigerated because the power has been cut off </li> <li> poor understanding of energy efficiency and the health risks of cold or hot homes adds to the problem </li> <li> eligibility criteria for energy assistance programs may exclude some vulnerable households. For example, people with income just above the welfare threshold are missing out on energy concessions. Energy retailer hardship programs also ignore people who have voluntarily disconnected due to financial hardship. </li> </ol> <h2>5 ways to help these households</h2> Our studies suggest trusted intermediaries such as people working in health, energy and social services can play a vital role in identifying and supporting such households. First, energy efficiency and hardship initiatives may be <a href="https://www.rmit.edu.au/about/schools-colleges/property-construction-and-project-management/research/research-centres-and-groups/sustainable-building-innovation-laboratory/projects/care-at-home-system-improvements">integrated into the My Aged Care in-home care system</a>. Energy poverty risk identification, response and referral could be built into the national service’s assessment form. This could leverage existing client screening processes. The system’s front-line staff could connect at-risk householders with energy counsellors. These counsellors could help people access better energy contracts, concessions, home retrofits and appliance upgrade programs. A new Commonwealth “energy supplement” could help pay for essential energy-related home modifications. This would help avoid My Aged Care funds being diverted from immediate healthcare needs. Second, general practitioners and other health professionals could help identify energy vulnerability among patients with medical conditions of concern. They could also provide letters of support emphasising renters’ health-based need for air conditioners or heaters. Third, energy providers could use household energy data to identify those that seem to be under-consuming or are often disconnected. They could also identify those that are not on “best offer” deals. They could be proactive in checking struggling householders’ eligibility for ongoing energy concessions and one-off debt relief grants offered by states and territories. Energy providers could also make it easier for social housing providers to ensure concessions for tenants renew automatically. Fourth, local councils could use their data to identify at-risk householders. They might include those with a disability parking permit, discounted council rates or in arrears, on the social housing waiting list, Meals on Wheels clients and social housing tenants. Maternal and child health nurses and home and community care workers making home visits could call attention to cold or hot homes. Councils could employ in-house energy counsellors to provide assistance and energy literacy training. Council home maintenance teams could develop bulk-buying, insulation and neighbourhood retrofit programs. Strategies to reduce vulnerability to energy poverty should be part of municipal public health and wellbeing plans. Under these strategies, net-zero-carbon funds set up by states and local councils to reduce emissions could finance targeted housing retrofits. We also suggest setting up a central helpline to improve access to energy assistance via local referrals. Fifth, residential energy-efficiency programs could become more person-centric. For example, we already have <a href="https://www.homescorecard.gov.au/">Residential Efficiency Scorecard</a> audits to assess the thermal quality of a home. These audits could also explore whether concessions and better energy deals are available to the household. <h2>Building capacity at all levels</h2> <a href="https://cur.org.au/cms/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/tackling-hidden-energy-final.pdf">Capacity-building strategies</a> are needed at all levels – individual, community and government – to overcome the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629623000737">challenges</a> of reducing energy poverty. Current obstacles include the competing priorities of service providers, lack of time and resources, and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629622003553">poor co-ordination between siloed</a> programs and services. Access to essential energy services should be part of state and local governments’ strategic health plans. Housing, energy and health departments could work together to include housing retrofits in preventive health programs. A comprehensive approach is needed to overcome hidden energy poverty. It must include public education, integrated services and well-funded energy-efficiency programs. Regulatory reforms and ongoing funding are both needed to improve the availability of energy-efficient, affordable homes for tenants. Our suggested strategies start with improving the skills and knowledge of trusted intermediaries. Doctors, social workers, housing officers, community nurses and volunteers can play a central role. Using these front-line professionals to help identify and act on energy poverty offers a novel, cost-effective and targeted solution. This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/1-in-4-households-struggle-to-pay-power-bills-here-are-5-ways-to-tackle-hidden-energy-poverty-204672" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. Images: Getty

Home Hints & Tips

The most misused word in the English language

A traffic jam when you’re already late. A free ride when you’ve already paid. The fact that the King James Bible is the most shoplifted book in the United States. One of these three things is an example of irony – the reversal of what is expected or intended. The other two (no offense to Alanis Morissette) are not. The difference between them may be one of the most rage-inducing linguistic misunderstandings you’re likely to read about on the Internet or hear about from the determined grammar nerds in your life. “Ironic” does not, technically, mean “unfortunate,” “interesting” or “coincidental,” despite these terms often being used interchangeably. And that frequent misuse has not escaped linguists. According to the editors at <a href="http://WWW.DICTIONARY.COM">Dictionary.com</a>, “We submit that ironic might be the most abused word in the English language.” That’s a tough claim to prove, but it’s clear that confusion over the definition of irony is persistent and decades old. “Irony” makes Harvard linguist Steven Pinker’s <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/the-58-most-commonly-misused-words-and-phrases-a6754551.html">list</a> of the 58 most commonly misused words in English, and ranks in the top 1 percent of all word lookups on Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary. Even Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald got it wrong, some say, when he claimed in 1939, “It is an ironic thought that the last picture job I took yielded me five thousand dollars five hundred and cost over four thousand in medical attention.” So what does irony mean, really, and where does the confusion come from? Part of the ambiguity probably stems from the fact that there are no fewer than three definitions of irony depending on which dictionary you use. There’s Socratic irony (an ancient rhetorical move), and dramatic irony (an ancient theatrical move), but the definition of irony we care about – and the kind that’s most bitterly debated – is situational irony. Situational irony occurs when, as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it, “a state of affairs or an event… seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result”. The trick, according to purists, is the deliberately contrary part – for a situation to be ironic, it must be the opposite of what is expected, not merely an amusing coincidence. A traffic jam when you’re already late may be an undesirable coincidence, but it is not the opposite outcome one would expect when leaving for work late (especially if that person lives in a major city). In an article titled <a href="http://www.collegehumor.com/post/229130/lines-from-alanis-morissettes-ironic-modified-to-actually-make-them-ironic">Lines From Alanis Morissette’s “Ironic,” Modified to Actually Make them Ironic</a>, College Humor writer Patrick Cassels corrects the situation like this: “A traffic jam when you’re already late… to receive an award from the Municipal Planning Board for reducing the city’s automobile congestion 80 per cent.” Now that’s irony. Not every linguist goes by this limited view, though. Ever the champions of fluid language growth, Merriam Webster <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irony">argues</a> that Mr. Fitzgerald, Ms. Morissette, and anyone else who uses “ironic” to mean “coincidental” isn’t actually wrong, but is actually just trailblazing. “The word irony has come to be applied to events that are merely curious or coincidental,” the editors write, “and while some feel this is an incorrect use of the word, it is merely a new one.” Now isn’t that something. Image credit: Shutterstock Written by Brandon Specktor. This article first appeared in <a href="http://www.readersdigest.com.au/true-stories-lifestyle/our-language/most-misused-word-english-language">Reader’s Digest</a>. For more of what you love from the world’s best-loved magazine, <a href="http://readersdigest.innovations.com.au/c/readersdigestsubscribe?utm_source=readersdigest&utm_campaign=RDSUB&utm_medium=display&keycode=WRA85S">here’s our best subscription offer</a>.

Retirement Life

Dad’s horror at six-year-old’s massive bill

A young boy from Michigan has learned a tasty lesson in money management. Six-year-old Mason Stonehouse had been playing on his dad’s phone when he discovered his soon-to-be favourite app - food delivery service Grubhub. After putting his son to bed, Mason’s father Keith was shocked to find delivery drivers began to frequent their doorstep, one after the other leaving something behind. Keith likened the strange evening to a Saturday Night Live skit, and in doorbell camera footage he could be heard asking one of the drivers “what the hell is going on?” A look at his phone confirmed that Mason had pulled off a parent’s nightmare - the boy had ordered almost $2,000 (AUD) of food from restaurants all across their town. Speaking with TODAY.com, Keith explained that the two were having father and son time in front of the TV when Mason asked to use Keith’s phone. Mason often uses his dad’s phone to play educational games, so Keith thought nothing of it, allowing Mason 30 minutes with the device. Keith recalled how Mason made his way downstairs to play, and went to bed without a fuss when his half hour was up. “A 6-year-old going to bed is not normally an easy thing but he was surprisingly really good,” he said. “There was no fight, no ‘I’m hungry’, or making up stuff to stay up. He just went to bed, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is amazing, I wish Mom was here to witness this’. And all of a sudden I hear the doorbell.” To various news outlets, Keith has mentioned how it was “car after car” that kept “coming and coming” to the family’s home in Chesterfield Township. In his own Facebook post about the incident, he shared Mason’s shopping list, telling his friends “if you’re hungry and you’re in the mood for 5 orders of jumbo shrimp, salad, grape leaves, rice, 3 hanis, several orders of chilli cheese fries, chicken shawarma sandwiches, and plenty of Ice cream - swing on by SMH.” Keith saw Mason’s delectable adventure to an end when his bank declined an order of $635 (AUD) for pepperoni pizza. As he told Good Morning America, this “would’ve been on top of the $1,000 worth of food that was piling in my kitchen.” This wasn’t even Mason’s first order of the evening from the same establishment - Happy’s Pizza for a happy Mason - with a sizable jumbo shrimp delivery already having made it to their doorstep. MLive.com heard from Keith that he tried to speak to Mason about what had happened, but soon discovered that their priorities weren’t exactly aligned, “I was trying to explain to him that this wasn’t good and he puts his hand up and stops me and says, ‘Dad, did the pepperoni pizzas come yet?’” “I had to walk out of the room. I didn’t know if I should get mad or laugh,” he admitted. Whether the entire situation prompted more amusement or exasperation from the Stonehouses, they assured everyone that none of Mason’s bouncy went to waste, with the food going to their neighbours, and their phones well away from Mason’s sneaky shopping. Images: Facebook

Money & Banking

Banksy: who should foot the bill to protect his work in public spaces?

When a mural by artist Banksy <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-46617742">appeared on a garage wall</a> in Port Talbot, the building’s owner, Ian Lewis, had no idea just <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-46771722">how many people</a> would want to get a good look at it. The mural has attracted <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-46759349">thousands of visitors</a> and Lewis has been keen to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-46617742">protect it</a>, by employing guards, and building a see-through covering over the work. But should there even be security on a piece of graffiti? After all, <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/38778/occupying-the-walls-graffiti-as-political-protest/">the essence of graffiti</a> is that it is temporary and subject to the possibility of being covered over with the next slogan or image. It has long been one of the means by which people can <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/may/17/writing-wall-political-graffiti-banksy-brexit-trump-in-pictures">make their views known</a> in a very public way without official sanction. It is a form of protest that visually takes up public space and asks for no endorsement and often no individual credit. The list of graffiti artists who have gained recognition in the contemporary art world is not a long one. Shepherd Fairey, who <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artworks/229396/barack-obama-hope-poster">designed the Obama “Hope” poster</a>, and <a href="https://www.theartstory.org/artist-basquiat-jean-michel.htm">Jean Michel Basquiat</a> are two of the most well known. Banksy himself has been quoted as saying that he never craved commercial success and that it’s actually <a href="https://www.villagevoice.com/2013/10/09/village-voice-exclusive-an-interview-with-banksy-street-art-cult-hero-international-man-of-mystery/">a mark of failure for a graffiti artist</a>. A lofty sentiment, but whether he wants it or not, the popularity of Banksy’s work is phenomenal. The pared down stencil style coupled with often highly astute political commentary and visual puns is easy to read. It is enough to satisfy even those for whom art should consist of a “proper picture of something”. It also lends itself very well to reproduction and copying. I actually have a mug emblazoned with Banksy style rats sitting on my desk as I write. This is what happens when an iconoclast becomes an icon. What started out as a practice that deliberately subverted the concept of art as an exclusive, costly investment, has now become just as commodified as the latest piece by <a href="https://www.theartstory.org/artist-hirst-damien.htm">Damien Hirst</a>. <h2>Banksy’s bankability</h2> I’m personally on the fence about some of Banksy’s more recent work. I’m completely on board with the political nature of the imagery and most definitely share a lot of his ideological sentiments, but there is a degree to which he is becoming a parody of himself. For example, while it’s easy to appreciate the point he was making with the recently auctioned self-destructing drawing “<a href="https://theconversation.com/banksy-i-was-in-the-room-when-his-painting-shredded-and-enhanced-his-brand-104660">Love is in the Bin</a>”, no one could convince me that he was unaware of the effect that the action would have on his bankability. Given he knows the impact his work can have, was it selfish of Banksy to impose this latest piece on the unsuspecting garage owner? Or was it an act of extreme philanthropy, bestowing on Port Talbot a gift that can be used either to benefit the individual or the community? He must have known that Lewis would be plagued with attention, and the inevitability of this imposed cultural responsibility must surely have at least crossed Banksy’s mind. Public art comes in many diverse forms, from the monumental statues commemorating historical figures, to the temporary and often illegal murals created by contemporary graffiti artists. My own practice is informed by an ethos of inclusion that places the nearby community at the centre of decisions about how it is created, themed and managed. Because of that philosophical background, I do find Banksy’s imposition of his work without regard for its effect on the local community to be irritatingly entitled. However, the <a href="https://www.theartstory.org/artist-banksy-artworks.htm">issues he highlights</a> such as the <a href="https://theartstack.com/artist/banksy/i-remember-when-all-this-was-trees">capitalist obsession with growth</a> over sustainability, and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/banksy-port-talbot-graffiti-wales-michael-sheen-steel-pollution-environment-a8692821.html">industrial air pollution</a> are relevant and important to a much wider community, so I appreciate that by using his fame to draw attention to them he is carrying out a form of community service. The Welsh government <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/banksy-collector-willing-pay-six-15656998">has since confirmed</a> it will be taking over security for the Port Talbot artwork, and is discussing the future of the piece. Whether by design or because he just isn’t interested in how the work is used, it’s part of Banksy’s artistic practice to leave the work to the mercy of others when it’s complete. However, it could be argued that he could have used <a href="https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/close_look/how-does-banksy-make-money-or-a-lesson-in-art-market-economics-55352">some of his own money</a> to help protect the work, and mitigate against any grief <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-46810787">he’s caused the garage owner</a>. I’d personally like to see the work sold, and the proceeds used to address some of the social and political issues that Banksy highlights with his work. It worked for Dennis Stinchcombe who, when a mural entitled Mobile Lovers appeared on the doorway of his Bristol youth club in 2014, sold the work and used the funds <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-46810787">to save the struggling organisation</a>. Whatever happens now, one thing is certain: Banksy certainly knows how to get his work in the news. Image credits: Getty Images This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/banksy-who-should-foot-the-bill-to-protect-his-work-in-public-spaces-109831" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>.

Art

From Elfin to Garlick: Take inspiration from this list of medieval dog names

In a world of Bellas, Spots, Lunas, Milos and more, one 600-year-old document could be the source of a unique name for your new best friend. The Names of All Manner of Hounds is one of several texts included in a manuscript dating back to the 15th century, with an apparently unknown author, which includes a hefty list of 1065 medieval names used for hunting dogs. While the manuscript itself is owned by a private collector (and unavailable to be analysed), one researcher, David Scott-Macnab, has compiled a list of the names, which include proper names, descriptions, virtues, vices, and human occupations. The list categorises the names for the type of dogs, like running hounds, terriers and greyhounds, as well as by gender. According to Scott-Macnab, the list has plenty of names taken from history and mythology, including Boleyne, Charlemagne, Nero, Arture, Achilles, Hercules, Romwlus and Pompeye. Others refer to desirable qualities for hunting dogs, such as Birdismowthe, Fynder, Corage, and Cachefaste, while some, like Filthe, Oribull, Plodder and Cruell, are less positive. The names also seem to be inspired by nature - like Dolfyn, Flower, Garlik, Sycamore and Dyamound - as well as nationalities - Jewe, Romayne, and Ducheman are just a few - and occupations and human categories, such as Leper, Archere, Wodeman (or woodsman), and Monke. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> in the early 15th century, edward, 2nd duke of york, wrote a list of 1,126 names he considered to be suitable for dogs. highlights from the list: -nosewise -garlik -pretyman -gaylarde -norman -filthe <a href="https://t.co/7MuvHJKM5f">pic.twitter.com/7MuvHJKM5f</a> — weird medieval guys (@WeirdMedieval) <a href="https://twitter.com/WeirdMedieval/status/1595169422448201751?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 22, 2022</a></blockquote> The lengthy list of names in Middle English, known as the language of Chaucer, also contains Middle English words found nowhere else in the texts that have survived from that time period, adding to its value and giving us a snapshot of 15th century life. These include Mownferaunt (mun ‘my’ + ferant ‘grey’), Aufyne (a term of contempt), Kilbucke (‘kill buck’), and Lwfkyn (‘little love’). A snapshot of life While it’s amusing to think of dogs named Clowder, Crabbe, Pretiboy or Plodder, Scott-Macnab argues that All Manner of Hounds sheds light on the language spoken day-to-day in the fifteenth century, a period where writing things down wasn’t the norm or accessible to everyone. “It is clear from the hunting treatises that I quoted earlier that high-status hunters felt little need to record the names of entire packs of hounds; they make their point with a few representative names,” he writes. “But dog-handlers who trained, bathed, nursed and fed the hounds on a daily basis, and who whipped them into line when hunting, must have lived by a different imperative, one that required them to know their dogs as individuals.” These names also show that the relationships between us and dogs hasn’t changed much hundreds of years later, with equal numbers of names showing affection and “ironic displeasure” - from Litilman, Nise (Nice) and Best-of-all to Rude, Noty (Naughty) and Symple. To see the full list and read Scott-Macnab’s full paper, head <a href="https://www.academia.edu/44222801/THE_NAMES_OF_ALL_MANNER_OF_HOUNDS_A_UNIQUE_INVENTORY_IN_A_FIFTEENTH_CENTURY_MANUSCRIPT" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>. Image: Trivulzio Book of Hours

Family & Pets

"Is this real?" Family in shock after Kate Winslet pays $30k power bill

Kate Winslet has stepped in to help ease the financial strain on a hard-working family, who are full-time carers for their disabled daughter. Mum-of-four Carolynne Hunter started a <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/medical-care-for-freya-amid-the-energycrisis?qid=3ad717b05ab76c3332ad308b4e5d11ae" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GoFundMe</a> page to help pay for her electricity bill after they were warned by the council that their bill – normally already high at £6500 ($A11,500) a year – was going to almost triple to the eye-watering amount of £17,000 ($A30,000). Carolynne said her daughter Freya, 12, has severe cerebral palsy and chronic breathing problems, and relies on the oxygen machine to help her breathe. “Freya has the most beautiful smile,” Ms Hunter wrote in the GoFundMe. She said her daughter was “enriching our lives every day”. With the cost of living crisis reaching catastrophic levels in the UK, the family, who live in a council house in the Scottish town of Tillicoultry, didn’t know how they were going to afford the massive bills. “I have no way of reducing the usage of energy in our home,” the 49-year-old mum wrote. “My older daughter and I have historically lived in fuel poverty to keep Freya safe and comfortable making sure all her medical needs are being met whilst allowing me to keep my bills as low as possible. “We dread every winter in our cold home.” Carolynne got the shock of her life when her GoFundMe page raised the amount of money needed with one donation, with the $30,000 gift coming from "Kate Winslet and Family". The mum told <a title="www.bbc.com" href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-63599369">BBC Scotland</a> she “burst into tears” at the news that the actress had made the huge donation. “Our journey as family has been very traumatic and I just feel done at this point in my life,” she said. “When I heard about the money I just burst into tears – I thought it wasn’t even real. I’m still thinking is this real?” Image credits: GoFundMe / Getty Images

Caring

English cottage comes with free theme park tickets

A small cottage in the English countryside is up for sale, and it comes with an unusual bonus for its new owner. The two-bedroom home in Staffordshire has been <a href="https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/126610616#/?channel=RES_BUY" target="_blank" rel="noopener">listed</a> for £200,000 ($NZ 395,000), and if its new owner moves in they can access free tickets to a local theme park. According to the Alton Towers Resort website, residents located within a three-kilometre radius can apply for 20 entries to its theme park or water park. With the charming cottage only a four-minute drive from Alton Towers Resort, the new residents will simply need to prove they live there with a council tax bill. As well as free tickets, the home also boasts a private garden, exposed stone walls that feature throughout, and a cosy interior of wooden cabinetry, timber floors, terracotta tiles and lattice windows. Barn-style doors are also found throughout the two-storey house, with the kitchen, lounge, and outdoor porch on the ground floor and two bedrooms and a shared bathroom on the first floor. Images: Rightmove

Real Estate

7 tricks to use less phone data – and lower your phone bill

Turn off background app refresh <img src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/2022/10/01-background-simple-ways-use-less-data-770.jpg" alt="" width="770" height="514" /> When this feature is enabled, your apps are constantly refreshing so that they can show you the most recent content when opened. This includes email synching, weather widgets updating, and feeds refreshing. For the iPhone: Turn off the background app refresh by going to Settings > General > Background App Refresh. For Android: Go to Settings > Data Usage > Restrict app background data. This will allow you to turn the feature off for all apps or you can pick and choose which ones you want to turn off. Disable apps that use a lot of data <img src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/2022/10/02-disable-simple-ways-use-less-data-770.jpg" alt="" width="770" height="514" /> There are certain apps that use more data than others, whether you use them frequently or not. For ones that you don’t use often, turn off cellular data. For the iPhone: Go to Settings > Cellular > then under “Use Cellular Data For” switch certain apps to off. Turn off app updates <img src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/2022/10/03-updates-simple-ways-use-less-data-770.jpg" alt="" width="770" height="514" /> If your apps update automatically your phone will start the download whether you are connected to Wi-Fi or not. To turn this off on an iPhone, go to Settings > iTunes & App Stores > turn off Use Cellular Data. For an Android, go to Settings > under General click Auto-update apps > Auto-update apps over Wi-Fi only. Then, your apps will only update when you are connected to Wi-Fi. Turn off Wi-Fi assist <img src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/2022/10/04-wifi-simple-ways-use-less-data-770.jpg" alt="" width="770" height="514" /> Wi-Fi assist automatically uses your cellular data when the Wi-Fi signal is poor. To disable Wi-Fi assist for an iPhone go to Settings > Cellular > turn off Wi-Fi Assist. Turn off iCloud drive <img src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/2022/10/05-icloud-simple-ways-use-less-data-770.jpg" alt="" width="770" height="514" /> When iCloud is enabled it is constantly moving documents in and out of the cloud. Use less cell phone data by turning iCloud off. To do this on the iPhone got to Settings > iCloud > turn off iCloud Drive. Download music <img src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/2022/10/06-download-simple-ways-use-less-data-770.jpg" alt="" width="770" height="514" /> When you are on the go, streaming music, podcasts, or videos can really eat away at your data. Both the iPhone and Android phones let you restrict these apps to Wi-Fi only. Turning this setting on will force you to download them when connected to a Wi-Fi network and then allow for data free listening on the move. Turn off cellular data completely <img src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/2022/10/07-turn-simple-ways-use-less-data-770.jpg" alt="" width="770" height="514" /> If you know that you are about to reach you data limit or are saving it for the road trip you have coming up, you can simply turn off cellular data. This way, no data will be used, and certain apps will only work if you are connected to a Wi-Fi network. Written by Morgan Cutolo. This article first appeared in <a href="https://www.readersdigest.co.nz/culture/7-tricks-to-use-less-phone-data-and-lower-your-phone-bill" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Reader’s Digest</a>. For more of what you love from the world’s best-loved magazine, <a href="http://readersdigest.innovations.co.nz/c/readersdigestemailsubscribe?utm_source=over60&utm_medium=articles&utm_campaign=RDSUB&keycode=WRA87V" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here’s our best subscription offer.</a> Images: NICOLE FORNABAIO/RD.COM

Technology

Five myths about Shakespeare’s contribution to the English language

Shakespeare’s language is widely considered to represent the pinnacle of English. But that status is underpinned by multiple myths – ideas about language that have departed from reality (or what is even plausible). Those myths send us down rabbit holes and make us lose sight of what is truly impressive about Shakespeare – what he did with his words. The <a href="http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/shakespearelang/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Encyclopedia of Shakespeare’s Language</a> project at Lancaster University, deploying large-scale computer analyses, has been transforming what we know about Shakespeare’s language. Here, incorporating some of its findings, we revisit five things that you probably thought you knew about Shakespeare but are actually untrue. <h2>1. Shakespeare coined a vast number of words</h2> Well, he did, but not as many as people think – even reputable sources assume more than 1,000. The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust puts it at <a href="https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/shakespeares-words/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">1,700</a>, but carefully add that this number concerns words whose earliest appearance is in Shakespeare’s works. The word “hobnail” first appears in a text attributed to Shakespeare, but it’s difficult to imagine it arose from a creative poetic act. More likely, it was around in the spoken language of the time and Shakespeare’s use is the earliest recording of it. Estimates of just how many words Shakespeare supposedly coined do not usually distinguish between what was creatively coined by him and what was first recorded in a written document attributed to him. Even if you don’t make that distinction and include all words that appear first in a work attributed to Shakespeare, whether coined or recorded, numbers are grossly inflated. Working with the literature and linguistics academics <a href="https://english.asu.edu/content/jonathan-hope-professor-literature" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jonathan Hope</a> and <a href="https://slt-cdt.sheffield.ac.uk/students" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sam Hollands</a>, we’ve been using computers to search millions of words in texts pre-dating Shakespeare. With this method, we have found that only around 500 words do seem to first appear in Shakespeare. Of course, 500 is still huge and most writers neither coin a new word nor produce a first recording. <h2>2. Shakespeare IS the English language</h2> The myth that Shakespeare coined loads of words has partly fuelled the myth that Shakespeare’s language constitutes one-quarter, a half or even all of the words of today’s English language. The number of different words in Shakespeare’s texts is around 21,000 words. Some of those words are repeated, which is how we get to the total number of around one million words in works attributed to Shakespeare. (To illustrate, the previous sentence contains 26 words in total, but “of”, “words” and “to” are repeated, so the number of different words is 22). The Oxford English Dictionary has around 600,000 different words in it, but many are obscure technical terms. So, let’s round down to 500,000. Even if every word within Shakespeare had been coined by him (which is of course not the case, as noted above), that would still only be 4.2% of today’s English language. So, Shakespeare could only ever have contributed a very small fraction, though quite possibly more than most writers. <h2>3. Shakespeare had a huge vocabulary</h2> Ludicrously, popular claims about Shakespeare’s huge vocabulary seem to be driven by the fact that his writings as a whole contain a large number of different words (as noted above, around 21,000). But the more you write, the more opportunities you have to use more words that are different. This means Shakespeare is likely to come out on top of any speculations about vocabulary size simply because he has an exceptionally large surviving body of work. A few researchers have used other methods to make better guesses (they are always guesses, as you can’t count the words in somebody’s mind). For example, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/sq/article-abstract/62/1/53/5064657?redirectedFrom=fulltext" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hugh Craig</a>, a Shakespearean scholar who has pioneered the use of computers for analysing language in literature, looked at the average number of different words used across samples of writings of the same length. He found that, relative to his contemporaries, the average frequency with which different words appear in Shakespeare’s work is distinctly … average. <h2>4. Shakespeare has universal meaning</h2> Sure, some themes or aspects of the human condition are universal, but let’s not get carried away and say that his language is universal. The mantra of the historical linguist is that all language changes – and Shakespeare isn’t exempt. Changes can be subtle and easily missed. Take the word “time” – surely a universal word denoting a universal concept? Well, no. For each word in Shakespeare, we used computers to identify the other words they associate with, and those associations reveal the meanings of words. “Time”, for instance, often occurs with “day” or “night” (for example, from Hamlet: “What art thou that usurp'st this time of night”). This reflects the understanding of time in the early modern world (roughly, 1450-1750), which was more closely linked to the cycles of the moon and sun, and thus the broader forces of the cosmos. In contrast, today, associated words like “waste”, “consume” and “spend” suggest that time is more frequently thought of as a precious resource under human control. <h2>5. Shakespeare didn’t know much Latin</h2> The myths above are popular myths, spread by academics and non-academics alike (which is why they are easy to find on the internet). Myths can be more restricted. Within some theatrical circles, the idea that Shakespeare didn’t know much Latin emerged. Indeed, the contemporary playwright Ben Jonson famously wrote that Shakespeare had “small Latin, and less Greek”. Shakespeare lacked a university education. University-educated, jealous, snooty playwrights might have been keen to take him down a peg. Working with the Latin scholar <a href="https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/english/staff/caterina-guardamagna/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Caterina Guardamagna</a>, we found that Shakespeare used 245 different Latin words, whereas in a matching set of plays by other playwrights there were just 28 – the opposite of what the myth dictates. That Shakespeare used so much Latin without a university education makes his achievement in using it all the greater. This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-myths-about-shakespeares-contribution-to-the-english-language-189402" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. Image: Shutterstock

Books

Simple tricks to reduce your winter energy bills

It’s that time of the year when the temperature drops and your energy bills start to go in the opposite direction – up! Stay warm and reduce your bills with these simple tricks to help you save energy. Winter is a time when we love to hibernate at home and stay toasty warm but the impact this can have on the electricity bill can be enormous. Having said that, it’s possible to stay warm and reduce the chill on your hip pocket with smart ways of keeping your home and yourself warm during winter. Rug up An easy way to save electricity and stay warm in winter is to put on suitable clothing. A big woolly jumper, warm pants and indoor slippers are not only comfortable for relaxing around the home, they’ll also keep you toasty warm. While you don’t have to resort to wearing a big coat or jacket inside your own home, it’s a good idea to put on an extra couple of layers and save having to switch on the heater. However, don’t endure being cold for the sake of not putting on your heater. Find what works for you, as long you’re comfortable and warm. Seal your home Chilly draughts from poorly sealed windows and doors can be both a nuisance and account for a big percentage of heat loss from naturally insulated rooms or the heater. Keep the heat inside by sealing any gaps and cracks in external walls, floors and the ceiling. You can seal external doors with draught stoppers or those classic door snakes at the bottom of doors, and install weather stripping around the frames. Load up on blankets Who needs an electric blanket when you can add any number of layers to your bed? It can be duvets, doonas, quilts and comforters, just keep layering until your bed is a warm haven. A good tip is when you’re about to go to bed, to get the same instant warmness as an electric blanket, heat a hot water bottle and pop it between the sheets. While it won’t heat the entire bed evenly, it can make the bed feel warmer while your body adjusts to the enclosed space. Let the sun in Winter can sometimes offer up a surprise in the form of a clear blue sky and some warming sunlight. When it does, open up the windows and doors (if there’s no cool breeze) and allow the natural rays to heat your home naturally. Shop around for energy providers This is the best way to make sure you’re getting a good deal on your energy usage. Depending on what state you live in, you should be able to find a range of energy retailers offering competitive prices for their services. Image: Getty Images

Money & Banking

Woman “harassed” over previous tenant’s 78 cent bill

A furious Sydney has slammed energy provider Dodo for “harassing” her over an unpaid energy bill belonging to the previous tenant. Since moving into her new rental apartment just two months ago, she has received several urgent notices concerning the “outrageous debt” of just 78 cents. “Who the f*** is running this company?” she wrote in a fuming post to Facebook on Friday, answering her own question, “A pack of f**kin dodos”. “I’ve been in this apartment two months, this is the third – that’s THREE – letter of demand for the outrageous debt of 78 cents owed by the former tenant,” she wrote. The woman then speculated that it cost the energy provider more than the amount owing on the bill to send the letters in the first place. “It’s cost them a sh**tonne more than that in postal costs, let alone the wages of the person I gave an ear bashing to,” she wrote, instructing the company to “bog off”. She then included a photo of the bill in question, which read, “This notice is to advise you that your final electricity amount remains unpaid and is overdue, as a result of your Pay on Time discount has been removed and the total amount of $00.78 is now overdue.” The company’s persistence caused many online to react in a similar way to the recipient of the letter, with many in disbelief at why they don’t just let it go. The woman clarified in a comment she called Dodo after receiving the invoice for a second time, but it seemed her effort had been wasted. “I have called them after the second letter to inform them the dude was no longer living here. They wanted to know my name … and eventually said they’d fix it up,” she wrote. “Maybe they thought they’d give it one last go – after all, it’s the princely sum of 78 cents at stake! Next time I will demand a recompense.” Image credits: Facebook

Real Estate

Mother and daughter in shock over $900 restaurant bill

A mother and daughter on holiday on the beautiful island of Mykonos have been left reeling at the price of two drinks and a share plate. The pair were sitting outside the restaurant on their deckchairs for a while before deciding to order two cocktails and share plate of crab legs. The relaxed duo then asked for the bill – but were left in shock when it arrived at a huge cost of $900. The two drinks and the share plate altogether cost €520 ($A775) and a €78 ($A116) tip was added on top. Shocked at the bill, the mother and daughter refused to pay and tried to leave but were stopped by staff. The mother then said she would file a police report after finding out that it was a common thing that happened to tourists. She also informed her travel agent to let other tourists be wary of the scam when arriving at the restaurant. “We knew that the bill would not exceed €200 ($A300); suddenly they asked us to pay €600 ($A900),” she told the travel agent. Image: Shutterstock

Travel Trouble

US Senate to vote on abortion rights bill – but what would it mean to codify Roe into law?

The U.S. Senate is <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/05/11/1097980529/senate-to-vote-on-a-bill-that-codifies-abortion-protections-but-it-will-likely-f">expected to vote on May 11, 2022</a>, on a bill that would enshrine the right to an abortion into law. The Democrats’ bill, the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3755/text">Women’s Health Protection Act</a>, isn’t expected to pass – a previous attempt was blocked by the Senate. But it reflects attempts by abortion rights advocates to find alternative ways to protect a woman’s right to the procedure following the publication of a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473">leaked draft opinion</a> from Justice Samuel Alito indicating that a majority on the Supreme Court intend to overturn Roe v. Wade. But is enshrining abortion rights via legislation feasible? And why has it not been done before? The Conversation put these questions and others to <a href="https://www.bu.edu/law/profile/linda-c-mcclain/">Linda C. McClain</a>, an expert on civil rights law and feminist legal theory at Boston University School of Law. What does it mean to ‘codify’ Roe v. Wade? In simple terms, to <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/codify#:%7E:text=To%20codify%20means%20to%20arrange,by%20subject%2C%20into%20a%20code.">codify something</a> means to enshrine a right or a rule into a formal systematic code. It could be done through an act of Congress in the form of a federal law. Similarly, state legislatures can codify rights by enacting laws. To codify Roe for all Americans, Congress would need to pass a law that would provide the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/03/us/what-is-roe-v-wade.html">same protections that Roe</a> did – so a law that states that women have a right to abortion without excessive government restrictions. It would be binding for all states. But here’s the twist: Despite some politicians saying that they want to “codify Roe,” Congress isn’t looking to enshrine Roe in law. That’s because <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/70-18">Roe v. Wade</a> hasn’t been in place since 1992. The Supreme Court’s <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1991/91-744">Planned Parenthood. v. Casey</a> ruling affirmed it, but also modified it in significant ways. In Casey, the court upheld Roe’s holding that a woman has the right to choose to terminate a pregnancy up to the point of fetal viability and that states could restrict abortion after that point, subject to exceptions to protect the life or health of the pregnant woman. But the Casey court concluded that Roe too severely limited state regulation prior to fetal viability and held that states could impose restrictions on abortion throughout pregnancy to protect potential life as well as to protect maternal health – including during the first trimester. Casey also introduced the “<a href="https://reproductiverights.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/WWH-Undue-Burden-Report-07262018-Edit.pdf">undue burden” test</a>, which prevented states from imposing restrictions that had the purpose or effect of placing unnecessary barriers on women seeking to end a pregnancy prior to viability of the fetus. What is the Women’s Health Protection Act? Current efforts to pass federal legislation protecting the right to abortion center on the proposed <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3755/text">Women’s Health Protection Act</a>, introduced in Congress by Rep. Judy Chu and sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Richard Blumenthal in 2021. It was passed in the House, but was <a href="https://time.com/6152473/abortion-roe-v-wade-democrats/">blocked in the Senate</a>. Democrats put the bill forward for a procedural vote again after Alito’s draft opinion was made public. Supporters of the bill are still expected to fall short of the votes they need. Rather, the vote is being used, in the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/05/10/1097820801/senate-democrats-plan-a-vote-on-abortion-rights-but-its-unlikely-to-pass">words of Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar</a>, “to show where everyone stands” on the issue. The legislation would build on the undue burden principle in Casey by seeking to prevent states from imposing unfair restrictions on abortion providers, such as insisting a <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbnqw4/abortion-clinics-are-closing-because-their-doorways-arent-big-enough">clinic’s doorway is wide enough</a> for surgical gurneys to pass through, or that <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/targeted-regulation-abortion-providers">abortion practitioners need to have admitting privileges</a> at nearby hospitals. The Women’s Health Protection Act uses the language of the Casey ruling in saying that these so-called TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws place an “undue burden” on people seeking an abortion. It also appeals to Casey’s recognition that “the ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.” Has the right to abortion ever been guaranteed by federal legislation? You have to remember that Roe was very controversial from the outset. At the time of the ruling in 1973, most states had restrictive abortion laws. Up to the late 1960s, a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1973/01/28/archives/gallup-poll-finds-public-divided-on-abortions-in-first-3-months.html">majority of Americans opposed abortion</a>. A poll at the time of Roe found the public evenly split over legalization. To pass legislation you have to go through the democratic process. But if the democratic process is hostile to what you are hoping to push through, you are going to run into difficulties. Under the U.S. system, certain liberties are seen as so fundamental that protecting them should not be left to the whims of changing democratic majorities. Consider something like interracial marriage. Before the Supreme Court ruled in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1966/395">Loving v. Virginia State</a> that banning interracial marriages was unconstitutional, a number of states still banned such unions. Why couldn’t they pass a law in Congress protecting the right to marry? It would have been difficult because at the time, the <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/163697/approve-marriage-blacks-whites.aspx">majority of people were against</a> the idea of interracial marriage. When you don’t have sufficient public support for something – particularly if it is unpopular or affects a non-majority group – appealing to the Constitution seems to be the better way to protect a right. That doesn’t mean you can’t also protect that right through a statute, just that it is harder. Also, there is no guarantee that legislation passed by any one Congress isn’t then repealed by lawmakers later on. So generally, rights have more enduring protection if the Supreme Court rules on them? The <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/constitutional.aspx">Supreme Court has the final word</a> on what is and isn’t protected by the Constitution. In the past, it has been seen as sufficient to protect a constitutional right to get a ruling from the justices recognizing that right. But this leaked opinion also points out that one limit of that protection is that the Supreme Court may overrule its own precedents. Historically, it is unusual for the Supreme Court to take a right away. Yes, they said the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/163us537">Plessy v. Ferguson ruling</a> – which set up the legal basis for separate-but-equal – was wrong, and overruled it in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown v. Board of Education</a>. But Brown recognized rights; it didn’t take rights away. If Alito’s draft ruling is to be the final word, the Supreme Court will be taking away a right that has been in place since 1973. For what I believe is the first time since the end of the Lochner era, the Supreme Court would be overriding precedent to take away a constitutional right from Americans. While Justice Alito notes that, in 1937, the Court overruled “an entire line” of cases protecting “an individual liberty right against federal health and welfare legislation,” that “right” to economic liberty and freedom of contract was as much one of businesses as much as for individuals. The Court has not overruled of the long line of cases (in which Roe and Casey fit) protecting “liberty” in making significant decisions about intimacy, sexuality, family, marriage, and reproduction. Moreover, the leaked opinion is dismissive of the idea that women have to rely on constitutional protection. “Women are not without electoral or political power,” <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/read-justice-alito-initial-abortion-opinion-overturn-roe-v-wade-pdf-00029504">Alito writes</a>, adding: “The percentage of women who register to vote and cast ballots is consistently higher than the percentage of men who do so.” But this ignores the fact that women <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/roe-v-wade-overturned-supreme-court-abortion-draft-alitos-legal-analys-rcna27205">rarely make up close to half</a> of the members of most state legislative bodies. So are the promises to get Congress to protect abortion rights realistic? Republicans in the Senate successfully blocked the proposed Women’s Health Protection Act. And unless things change dramatically in Congress, there isn’t much chance of the bill becoming law. There has been talk of trying to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-abortion-move-sparks-calls-ending-senates-filibuster-2022-05-04/">end the filibuster rule</a>, which requires 60 votes in the Senate to pass legislation. But even then, the 50 votes that would be needed might not be there. What we don’t know is how this Supreme Court leak will affect the calculus. Maybe some Republican senators will see that the writing is on the wall and vote with Democrats. Republican senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski <a href="https://www.collins.senate.gov/newsroom/senators-collins-and-murkowski-introduce-bill-to-codify-supreme-court-decisions-on-reproductive-rights_roe-v-wade-and-planned-parenthood-v-casey">introduced legislation</a> earlier this year that would codify Roe in law, but isn’t as expansive as the Women’s Health Protection Act. Senator Collins has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/05/sen-collins-voices-opposition-legislation-that-would-create-statutory-right-abortion/">recently indicated</a> that she will not support the Act out of concern for religious liberty of anti-abortion health providers. And then we have the midterm elections in November, which might shake up who’s in Congress. If the Democrats lose the House or fail to pick up seats in the Senate, the chances of pushing through any legislation protecting abortion rights would appear very slim. Democrats will be hoping that the Supreme Court ruling will mobilize pro-abortion rights voters. What is going on at a state level? Liberal states like Massachusetts have <a href="https://www.boston.com/news/policy/2020/12/29/massachusetts-senate-override-abortion-access/">passed laws that codify Roe v. Wade</a>. Now that the Supreme Court’s apparent intentions are known, expect similar moves elsewhere. Massachusetts and other states are looking to go a step further by <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/05/01/1095813226/connecticut-abortion-bill-roe-v-wade">protecting residents who help out-of-state women</a> seeking abortion. Such laws would seemingly counter moves by states like Missouri, which is seeking to <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-03-11/editorial-missouri-might-make-it-illegal-to-help-a-woman-get-an-abortion-elsewhere-thats-ridiculous">push through legislation that would criminalize helping women</a> who go out of state for abortions. Wouldn’t any federal law just be challenged at the Supreme Court? Should Congress be able to pass a law enshrining the right to abortion for all Americans, then surely some conservative states will seek to overturn the law, saying that the federal government is exceeding its authority. If it were to go up to the Supreme Court, then conservative justices would presumably look unfavorably on any attempt to limit individual states’ rights when it comes to abortion. Similarly, any attempt to put in place a federal law that would restrict abortion for all would seemingly conflict with the Supreme Court’s position that it should be left to the states to decide. This is an updated version of an article <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-would-it-mean-to-codify-roe-into-law-and-is-there-any-chance-of-that-happening-182406">originally published on May 5, 2022</a>.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182908/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/linda-c-mcclain-1343287">Linda C. McClain</a>, Professor of Law, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/boston-university-898">Boston University</a> This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-senate-to-vote-on-abortion-rights-bill-but-what-would-it-mean-to-codify-roe-into-law-182908">original article</a>. Image: Getty Images

Legal

From wedding bells to wedding bills

Your wedding day is one of the happiest days of your life, but that is short lived not long after saying “I do”. Psychologists from Denver University tracked 168 people before and after they got married to prove their hypothesis where individuals who transition to marriage would report increases in general health. However, they could not prove their hypothesis with the physical and mental wellbeing only increasing before the wedding and takes a dip after the ceremony. Newlyweds also reported lower life satisfaction, higher levels of psychological distress as well as an increase in alcohol consumption. The findings were published in the Journal of Family Psychology but could not clearly explain it. Could possibly be from the huge wedding bill? Who’s to say. It did note that couples were extremely excited in the lead up to the wedding, to have all their close family and friends, to celebrate love which helps increase the physical and mental wellbeing. When the wedding is over, everyone goes their separate way and reality hits, all we know is that it takes two to tango and make the relationship work and support each other. Image: Shutterstock

Relationships

Energy bills are spiking after the Russian invasion. We should have doubled-down on renewables years ago

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is happening half a planet away from Australia. But the ripple effects are plain to see at every petrol station and, potentially soon, your electricity bill. As a result of the invasion and Western sanctions on Russian exports, energy prices have skyrocketed. If that makes you think nations should have taken steps to secure alternatives to fossil fuels years ago, you’re not alone. As it is, the much higher energy prices are likely to accelerate the exit of coal – and gas – from our energy grids. This should be a wake-up call. It doesn’t matter that Australia is far from the battlefield. Everyone in the world will be affected in some way. <h2>What’s the link between the invasion and Australian energy prices?</h2> You might think Australia’s domestic supply of coal and gas means we’d be immune to price rises. Not so. Due to formal sanctions and informal shunning of Russian exports, oil, coal and gas are now extremely expensive on a global scale. Thermal coal prices have increased five-fold to an unprecedented ~$A500 per tonne. Oil is ~$140 a barrel and up 60% year on year. Natural gas in Europe is around 50% higher than last October, but since the invasion, prices have spiked as high as ~200% higher than 2021 levels. Coal buyers are locking in supply, concerned that Russian sanctions will continue. Russia is the <a href="https://www.spglobal.com/commodity-insights/en/market-insights/latest-news/metals/030722-factbox-russian-metals-industrys-reliance-on-china-set-to-rise-as-sanctions-disrupt-supplies">third largest exporter of coal</a> and its existing customers are now under pressure to find alternative supplies. Russia’s aggression is not just resulting in a major humanitarian and political crisis. It is also causing pain at the bowser for Australian consumers due to the surge in oil pricing and may soon result in higher electricity bills. Australia’s east-coast electricity market is still heavily reliant upon coal. While many coal-fired power stations have existing supply contracts, the much higher global coal price may increase the cost of any extra coal purchases by existing power stations. Not only that, but our gas-fired power stations are facing potential increases in operating costs due to much higher global gas prices. Unfortunately, we may see the result in rising power bills. The price of future contracts for wholesale electricity next year in NSW are now twice what they were a year ago. Assuming this flows through to end-users, prices for residential customers could increase by as much as 10–15%. <h2>So what should Australia do?</h2> While it’s too late to dodge this bullet, we can prepare for future shocks by doubling down on firmed renewables. The faster we move, the less we’ll be hit by the price and reliability risks of coal. Already under pressure from cheaper renewable technologies, coal power station operators now find themselves potentially facing much higher costs in the short-term. There’s no relief for coal in the long term either, with the rapid rise of renewables and other zero-carbon technologies. Not only that, but most of our coal power stations are near the end of their lives, and industry doesn’t want to build new ones. That means coal will become more and more expensive, as the plants become <a href="https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/files/electricity/nem/planning_and_forecasting/inputs-assumptions-methodologies/2020/aep-elical-assessment-of-ageing-coal-fired-generation-reliability.pdf">increasingly unreliable</a>. Wind and solar technologies are now much cheaper per unit of energy generated and can be integrated with energy storage to provide dispatchable “firmed” energy. The faster we transition to renewables firmed by storage, the better. If we do this, our new grid will also be more reliable. Continuing to rely upon coal is like relying upon a 1970s car to travel from Sydney to Melbourne on the hottest day of the year. State governments around the nation are already embracing this approach, with the New South Wales government moving ahead with plans for 12 gigawatts (GW) of new renewables and storage and the Victorian government announcing plans for 9GW of offshore windfarms. Governments must carefully design policies to avoid guaranteeing profits for private sector players while socialising any losses across taxpayers and energy consumers. In NSW, <a href="https://econpapers.repec.org/article/blaajarec/v_3a66_3ay_3a2022_3ai_3a1_3ap_3a136-163.htm">alternatives</a> are being considered. As European and many other nations scramble to reduce their dependency on Russian coal, oil and gas, Australia now has a once in a generation opportunity to become a leading exporter of new clean energy. We have truly enormous clean energy resources in the form of free sunlight and wind. To export it, we can either run underseas cables to neighbouring countries, or convert cheap renewable power into <a href="https://theconversation.com/green-hydrogen-is-coming-and-these-australian-regions-are-well-placed-to-build-our-new-export-industry-174466">green hydrogen</a> and ship this to the world just as we currently do with LNG. <h2>What else can we expect to see?</h2> Surging fossil fuel prices has supercharged the existing disruption to an already rapidly changing domestic energy industry. In the past month, Origin announced it would abandon coal more rapidly, with the closure of its NSW coal-fired power station, Eraring, in 2025. Meanwhile, AGL has been pursuing a “demerger” with a view to splitting off its coal assets and pursuing new energy technologies. This comes as Australian tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes and Canadian asset fund Brookfield <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-06/brt-agl-brookfield-bid-rejected/100887042">offered to buy AGL</a> for $8.25 a share, though they were not successful. Their plan was to accelerate the closure of AGL’s coal assets, which would move AGL from the <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org.au/news/new-government-data-reveals-agl-as-australias-biggest-climate-polluter/">highest carbon emitter in Australia</a> to a clean energy company. The age of coal power is ending, and much faster than most of us realise. This crisis should spur us to build a future-proofed fleet of “firmed” and well-distributed renewables with a known cost structure. By doing this, we will protect ourselves from the pain of geopolitically driven fossil fuel prices. And we will have a platform ready if we want to provide clean energy to the world in the form of green hydrogen. We have had decades to make full use of our wealth of renewable energy resources. We haven’t embraced this as fully as we should have. It turns out localised clean energy production is not just necessary to tackle climate change. It will prove a vital resource as we navigate the highly turbulent decade we have found ourselves in. Image credits: Getty Images This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/energy-bills-are-spiking-after-the-russian-invasion-we-should-have-doubled-down-on-renewables-years-ago-179336" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>.

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"There's no way": Man receives $52 billion tax bill

Tourist slapped with $225k bill after simple mistake

"My unexpected $223,000 overseas bill"

How to avoid mobile phone bill horror stories when travelling

A brief history of the mortgage, from its roots in ancient Rome to the English ‘dead pledge’ and its rebirth in America

1 in 4 households struggle to pay power bills. Here are 5 ways to tackle hidden energy poverty

The most misused word in the English language

Dad’s horror at six-year-old’s massive bill

Banksy: who should foot the bill to protect his work in public spaces?

From Elfin to Garlick: Take inspiration from this list of medieval dog names

"Is this real?" Family in shock after Kate Winslet pays $30k power bill

English cottage comes with free theme park tickets

7 tricks to use less phone data – and lower your phone bill

Five myths about Shakespeare’s contribution to the English language

Simple tricks to reduce your winter energy bills

Woman “harassed” over previous tenant’s 78 cent bill

Mother and daughter in shock over $900 restaurant bill

US Senate to vote on abortion rights bill – but what would it mean to codify Roe into law?

From wedding bells to wedding bills

Energy bills are spiking after the Russian invasion. We should have doubled-down on renewables years ago

News

Shop

Catalogues

Travel

Health

Lifestyle

Finance

Entertainment

Property

Information

Keep up to date

Search

"There's no way": Man receives $52 billion tax bill

Tourist slapped with $225k bill after simple mistake

"My unexpected $223,000 overseas bill"

How to avoid mobile phone bill horror stories when travelling

A brief history of the mortgage, from its roots in ancient Rome to the English ‘dead pledge’ and its rebirth in America

1 in 4 households struggle to pay power bills. Here are 5 ways to tackle hidden energy poverty

The most misused word in the English language

Dad’s horror at six-year-old’s massive bill

Banksy: who should foot the bill to protect his work in public spaces?

From Elfin to Garlick: Take inspiration from this list of medieval dog names

"Is this real?" Family in shock after Kate Winslet pays $30k power bill

English cottage comes with free theme park tickets

7 tricks to use less phone data – and lower your phone bill

Five myths about Shakespeare’s contribution to the English language

Simple tricks to reduce your winter energy bills

Woman “harassed” over previous tenant’s 78 cent bill

Mother and daughter in shock over $900 restaurant bill

US Senate to vote on abortion rights bill – but what would it mean to codify Roe into law?

From wedding bells to wedding bills

Energy bills are spiking after the Russian invasion. We should have doubled-down on renewables years ago

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