Govt is asleep at the wheel as UK runs out of gas

tive of their age, show little honesty and moral strength. Kemi Badenoch states that the UK car industry is “worldleading” because an EV battery factory will be constructed in Somerset while the EU has more than 30.

Not so long ago Jacob ReesMogg famously said that food banks were a “good thing” and Nigel Farage, insisting that he is a good Christian, praises Donald Trump as “the bravest person he has ever met ... with unbelievable resilience”.

The same Trump who has been arrested four times recently and is facing charges involving 91 crimes and is accused of encouraging an attack on the basic institutions of American democracy.

Do we have any pride in our country, the sixth richest in the world?

Are we really content with newspapers that cannot deal with politics without stating that the politicians they favour have “slapped down, blasted, slammed or destroyed” their opponents.

This is at present a Tory nation with a Government that refuses to accept that the statement by its most generous donor “you just want to hate all black women” is not racist.

And an ex-Tory vice president, who thinks the Tories are not abrasive enough, “destroys” any statement that our country includes and respects different religions as “virtue-signalling claptrap”.

However, voting for Reform would be to accept that the dominant feature of Britishness is now hatred of others. How on earth do we accept that Reform’s “leaders”, extremist right-wing critics of an increasingly right-wing Tory Government, are fit to decide our futures?

Their immoral and infantile bile makes worse the divisions in our society that they have helped to create.

Can we not show that Britishness is more than disrespect for those differing in ethnicity and culture?

We must not accept such self-appointed “influencers” who juggle their personal bitterness and monstrous conceit in order to ride roughshod over our society which they claim to be improving.

And the Tory party, if allowed to stay in power, will provide us in the next five years with “an opportunity” to do what?

Continue to put on the “back burner” the crying need for united inspirational action on the climate crisis.

If we give up, we load it all onto the shoulders of our grandchildren.

Jeremy Hall Exeter ✒ OUR North Sea gas reserves are in terminal decline. Production has fallen by two-thirds in the last 20 years.

In the early 2000s, the UK was still self-sufficient in gas. Now, just 20 years later, we import half the gas we need.

New reserves being licensed by the Government will only marginally slow the decline in production. The North Sea Transition Authority, responsible for maximising the economic recovery of oil and gas from the North Sea, predicts that gas production will fall by another twothirds within only 10 years and the UK will be almost entirely reliant on gas imports.

The sad truth is that to meet our basic energy needs, we are increasingly competing with other European countries to buy gas from Norway, the US and Qatar, exposing us to international gas prices which will stay high and volatile so long as most of Europe, which used to depend on Russian gas, is chasing the same supplies of gas.

Other European countries and even the US through the Inflation Reduction Act are reducing their reliance on gas by investing in renewable energy, improving the energy efficiency of their buildings and supporting households to come off gas and switch to electric heat pumps.

They are working to reduce their energy costs and become more economically competitive. We need to keep up or lose out.

Our Government is asleep at the wheel – despite our dwindling supplies, gas still provides more than 84% of our heating needs and around 40% of our electricity generation. The Government’s failure to act means we will continue to import gas at sky-high prices, driving inflation and the cost-of-living crisis, damaging our economy and causing hardship for so many households.

Caroline Snow via email