I’ve turned off my radiators to turn up the heat on Putin
Phone tycoon’ s plea to save energy
ONE of Britain’s richest men is turning off his heating to “make Putin a few dollars worse off”.
Billionaire John Caudwell, 70, says his family will switch off the radiators in all but one room – and urges others to do the same.
He said: “We should all be using energy less and I’m going to practise what I preach. I’m going to heat one room where we’ll live and 98% of the house will stay cold.
“Putin’s war is being funded by the fuel industry and anything I can do to make him a few dollars worse off I will do.”
The Phones4u magnate has a £1.6 billion fortune and lives in a Staffordshire mansion after working his way up from poverty in Stoke-on-trent in the 1950s.
He said: “When I was a child we didn’t have any heating. There was ice on the inside of the windows and we had just a couple of pieces of coal to burn in one room.
“We just used to put warm clothes on. I’m not saying we should all go back to living like that but there are things we can do.
“It’s almost impossible to comprehend how Putin and the Kremlin regime can go and slaughter innocent people out of their own megalomania. Something has to be done to stop them and we can all do our bit.”
The dad of six and his partner – Lithuanianborn ex-olympic cyclist Modesta 9ÇHVQLDXVNDLWH ZKR LV PXP WR /HR QLQH and William, one – took in a Ukrainian family in February. John said: “We decided to bring a family over before the government scheme started. We chose a mother and her eightyear-old son whose father stayed to fight.
Tears
“We put them up in a self-contained apartment on the estate and gave them a car and managed to get the boy into the same private school as my son, so he’s getting a great education and making friends.
“They play together and we’ve introduced them to all our friends in the area so they are building their own lives.
“But the first few months were very difficult. The mum was very emotional and would just keep breaking down in tears.
“Sometimes it was because she feared for her husband.
“It made me see we need to do more. We especially need to get more medical aid over to Ukraine and help them with ambulances and supplies.”
John revealed how he has faced criticism from people who disagree with his philanthropy towards Ukrainians He added: “People have condemned me for supporting Ukrainian families because they say, ‘What about British families here who need help in the cost of living crisis?’
“But the thing that touched my heart is that it IS so close to home… I was horrified Putin could just go in there and start killing innocent people and taking their homes.”
John, who is donating all his proceeds from a new rags-to-riches memoir – Love, Pain & Money, The Making of A Billionaire – to the Caudwell Children charity, also complains that PM Liz Truss has snubbed his offer of advice. “I offered to work for Boris as a special business adviser for free and he never took me up on it,” he said. “Now I’ve offered Liz the same but she hasn’t even got back to me and all I see is mistakes being made that would never have happened with my help.
“We need to get the economy moving. With vision, we could have the Silicon Valley of the environment and could promote all environmentally friendly technologies and spark a brain drain from other countries into our country with people desperate to centre themselves in our enterprise zone.
“I find it depressing we’re not taking these opportunities. If they would let me help I would do it without hesitation and I think they need it.”