I'm John Bachelor with Joseph Sternberg, a member of the

editorial board of the Wall Street Journal. He writes political

economics column. He's based in London, which is why he can help me with a news

item that keeps coming back. The heat pump charade is unraveling faster than a

pound shop, a cardigan. That's the metaphor that was used. It took me a while to study that.

Pound shop cardigan. What could that mean? Aha! That's a dollar store, right Joe? A dollar

store cardigan, which is not knitted very well but the heat pump is the

twist here apparently there are some who live in counselor flats that is they

live close to each other,

are discovering that putting heat pumps into their flat,

their home, their apartment,

exceeds the noise levels permitted in these council flats.

Now that's one aspect of the heat pump.

You were never happy with the idea of a heat pump being forced on the whole population.

Has it all fallen apart, Joe?

Is this an Edsel of heat pumps?

Hey John, well I mean first we need to explain what a heat pump is because remember

most British households don't have a furnace in the way that American homes do. They have a

what's called a boiler often fired with natural gas or oil, which is about the

size of a kitchen cabinet that provides both the hot water for the radiators with your

central heating and then also hot water to your taps.

And so the plan for a couple of years now has been to try to encourage households to ditch the fossil fuel fired boilers and switch to heat pumps that would be climate friendly and we keep discovering all of the problems with us.

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