OPINION
The government’s misguided priorities means the Chancellor is taking money away from those who need it most (Image: Getty Images Europe)
Three out of four OAPs are living in uncomfortably cold homes after Labour cut off But they only needed the extra money because energy is so costly in the UK.
Some nine million senior citizens are at risk of according to charity Age UK, which delivered a 650,000-strong signature petition to Downing Street this week calling for the reinstatement of these vital payments.
The government should be heartily ashamed of themselves for allowing such a dire situation to prevail in Britain today. But the answer is at hand if only they ditched their ideological prejudices.
Last week ten years’ worth of natural gas was discovered beneath Lincolnshire. This could give us all cheaper household bills and help industry retain jobs, but we can’t access it because of Energy Secretary net zero fixation.
Why are we freezing in our homes and stifling growth, when we have a bounty of energy beneath us? It’s time that Sir overruled Miliband and copied with his “drill, baby, drill” pledge.
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Egdon Resources, the company behind the spectacular find, said the gas field could replace declining supplies from the , reduce our dependency on foreign imports and provide thousands of jobs. Even the Climate Change Committee has said we face a shortfall of a trillion cubic metres of gas between now and 2050, so why aren’t we celebrating the discovery of this veritable energy gold mine?
In part, because has been demonised by the Left who claim it causes earthquakes. But all kinds of construction and mining causes these minor tremors and shale gas experts have vastly improved their extraction techniques since they were last used in Britain in 2011.
has offered to carry out these updated forms of extraction for free to prove its safety to the Government, but Miliband and his zealots are blind to the proposal. Yet the fact is that the impact on the environment made by fracking is far smaller than fields covered with windfarms or solar panels, and when the extraction is finished the countryside is easily returned to its former self.
Miliband has constantly claimed that renewables will bring down the cost of energy, pledging before the election it would save us . But that promise has now been dropped as the true cost of transitioning away from traditional forms of power becomes apparent. We need a whole parallel energy system to stop blackouts when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine.
The National Grid has estimated it will cost at least £60billion to upgrade our electricity distribution network, including a thousand miles of power lines hanging from pylons across our countryside.
And why are we enduring all this misery? In order to stop climate change, say the zealots. But Britain produces less than 1% of global carbon emissions. Besides, has always happened and it makes better sense to spend money on alleviating any of the actual issues associated with a changing climate rather than attempting to stop nature in its tracks.
The reality is that climate change alarmism has been hijacked by Left-wing activists who see it as a way of undermining our capitalist system. Socialists have failed to change society in the past but now see the green agenda as the best way to achieve their utopian ends.
Miliband is the key cheerleader for this dangerous nonsense and must be stopped, otherwise Britain will cease to be a competitive nation able to achieve any sort of growth. We will become poorer and colder in order to satisfy a privileged green elite. It is simply not sustainable.
We are not generating enough wealth because we have some of the highest industrial electricity bills in the world – at least four times higher than the US – and so will not be able to attract foreign investment, particularly in future technologies that are power hungry like AI.
Our growing national poverty thanks in part to the high cost of renewables is why is seeking to cut government expenditure by taking winter fuel payments away from our older citizens. Wouldn’t it make more sense to make the most of our energy bounty of shale gas and reduce our
That way we won’t have to cradle hot water bottles on our laps to survive the winter. Quite frankly it is a national embarrassment that our most vulnerable citizens should be exposed to freezing homes when we have so much cheap accessible energy beneath our feet.