Bring energy back into public’s hands
I AM writing in order to highlight the government’s poor response to the cost of living crisis that is leaving older people in particular having to choose between eating and heating their homes in the coldest months of the year.
From April it will cost up to £700 more to heat the average home, and by October it will rise again by a further £300.
With OFGEM now saying they will review gas prices every three months this price hike may even be sooner than October.
Experts have forecast these price increases are likely to continue over the next three years.
All the government is doing is handing out a loan of £200 that will be paid back over the next five years, and giving a council tax rebate of £150, that will not be paid to those who live in properties rated E and above.
The arrangements are less clear for the 25% of households who do not pay their council tax by direct debit, or to renters or sharers whose bills are included.
The government’s £150m to local authorities for discretionary payments to poorer families is a pittance when you consider those defined as being in fuel poverty will now increase to six million households.
The extra burden of inflation and the extreme hike in fuel costs will put what is already the poorest state
WORDS LURCH TO THE RIGHT
BRIAN Silvester has previously suggested that the Tories need to replace Boris Johnson with a true Conservative MP. Bearing in mind Boris Johnson himself removed a number of Tory MPs from the party, including the former MP for Eddisbury, voters might be forgiven for asking just which Conservative Party they are going to be supporting when faced with the ballot paper at an election.
He seems to want to lecture the Conservative Party on who is and is not a true Conservative, and offers a confusing variety of demands to address the cost of living crisis.
It’s good to see however that he agrees with Keir Starmer and the Labour Party that householders should be helped with rising fuel costs by removing VAT from domestic fuel. A promise Boris Johnson made as part of the Brexit campaign, a promise Boris now seems to have inadvertently forgotten.
The rest of his letter recommends a lurch to the right, but the Conservatives are already the most extreme centre-right party in Western Europe and are way out of line with the public.
His attacks on green levies to decarbonise our energy supply and tackle global warming risk making us more dependent on fossil fuels, and thus more exposed to world prices for them.
It’s precisely because of levy-funded investment in non-fossil fuel sources of energy such as wind and solar power that we are generating a lot of electricity from renewable sources in Britain, creating jobs here and reducing our exposure to Vladimir Putin’s malign influence on the world gas price. pension in the industrial world under severe pressure.
The government has betrayed pensioners by axing their manifesto promise to keep the state pensions triple lock for the length of parliament.
In doing so, it has in one fell swoop consigned pensioners to a pension cut even before it comes into place in April 2022.
Before the crisis, older people were already making critical decisions on whether to heat their homes or cook hot food.
Rishi Sunak’s ‘support’ puts us in debt to the tune of £200 without even asking us.
This package is too little too late and will push more pensioners into poverty.
In what is still the fifth richest country in the world, the package is ill conceived, and will certainly not give older people the comfort of knowing they will not go cold or hungry this winter.
Over the last 10 years £120 billion was paid out in profits to Britishbased fuel companies.
This clearly demonstrates the folly of privatisation.
It is time to bring energy back into public ownership so that the money handed out in profits can be used instead to ensure low cost fuel to help pensioners and consumers generally.
Roger Bannister Merseyside Pensioners Association
He then criticises the level of taxation under the Conservatives which he claims to be the highest since 1945. But taxes are not high because we have wonderful public services – they are worse funded here than in the rest of Western Europe.
It’s because 40 years of free market policies started by Margaret Thatcher, and a deindustrialised economy run for the benefit of the financiers in the City of London, have given us poorer productivity than most European countries.
The Economist magazine rates Britain’s economic recovery from Covid as 22nd out of the 23 countries they examined. The national debt doubled in the 10 years from 2010 under the Conservatives, that is before Covid had been heard of.
Taxes are high under this Government because they are following failed policies, and because they will not tax the rich, everyone else has to pay more.
Phil Tate