We have to give power to people

The shocking rise in energy prices has finally seen me turn into my dad as I’m permanently on patrol going from room to room turning lights off.

The younger members of the family at Thornton Towers have an ambivalent outlook on energy conservation.

One minute they are insisting we sit in the dark to “save the polar bears’’ and the next they want me to pause their favourite TV programme overnight (don’t worry as soon as they’re on the stairs to bedfordshire I turn it off – they never remember the next morning!)

Of course we should all use as little energy as we can – even if it was as cheap as chips – although I’m not sure the planet is worth saving if children in the fifth biggest economy in the world have to go cold and hungry.

In Peterborough 11,000 children are living in poverty – and these days that doesn’t mean not having an X-Box it means going cold and hungry.

Cocoa Fowler is the founder of Food for Nought, which saves surplus food from supermarkets and farms from going to landfill and delivers it to food banks and he sees the situation getting worse.

Food banks are a wonderful service but it’s a disgrace that in the UK in 2022 they are needed.

I’m one of the luckier ones and though the energy price rises will affect me, we won’t be cold or hungry.

Times are tough for most of us (unless you’re besties with a Russian oligarch) and the country is facing difficulties – some of it (Brexit) is self inflicted – but if making sure children don’t go cold and hungry isn’t top of your priority list there’s something wrong with you.

Power to the people is what we need now.