Time to stop the hand wringing

The big issues of the week leading up to this month’s BV publication have been the Windsor Framework and the Cost of Living (neatly expressed in the price of gas and electricity).

As a Lib Dem, my instincts are to head for the common ground, find the right balance, seek fairness and a basis for sustainable future growth. Why? Well, mostly because I have seen and felt the effects of a lack of compromise and misplaced ideology. July 1972 saw me volunteering at a camp for “troubled kids” from Belfast. On our last evening, around a campfire we heard of the deaths and injuries of some of their friends from a wave of attacks on the streets of their city. Five years later found me in a flat in Madrid, 15 yards from where terrorists chose to put a bomb in the gateway to a government building. I remember thinking as I briefly sailed through the air towards the wall on the far side of my bedroom, “It’s the weekend, for crissake!” Neither event was justifiable, not remotely justifiable. Both, though, were born of age-old repression and a lack of hope coupled with excess zeal and misplaced ideology. Woe betide the DUP if they prolong the current stand-off.

A pyrrhic victory

Sir Ed Davey’s call for further strong support for families and businesses in the face of continuing high gas and electricity prices is spot on. There will be those abstractminded mandarins in the Treasury who believe that the nation will soon adjust to a new normal – just as it has done with £10 for a pack of cigarettes, £5 for a pint and around £1.50/litre for petrol. We will all be praised for the environmentally sound principle of giving up non-essential energy use, when the truth is that using less is becoming the only way of affording what we need. The proliferation of pre-payment meters further drives a hand-tomouth existence for too many, especially those on low and/or fixed incomes. The original price hike was the driver of inflation; time alone solves the inflation percentage even if prices stay high – a pyrrhic victory for Rishi if ever there was one. No, the government can and must act to resolve the way in which energy from fixed cost sources such as hydro, nuclear, wind and solar is only buyable at the same rate as that produced by fossil fuels, themselves price-hiked by Putin’s grotesque war of conquest. Remember, the typical US electricity price is about half what it is in the UK. The price in France is only a little more than the US price. So, less wringing of hands and bleating that you ‘can’t beat the market’, please. Let’s see some action, some fairness and less of a blight on opportunity.

Mike Chapman North Dorset

Attempting to tidy my overburdened desk recently, I discovered a copy of Ethical Consumer magazine. The cover picture showed a Lego family, standing on top of our planet, which was shaped like a piggy bank and stained with oil. The child was asking ‘Mum and Dad, are your savings messing up my future?’ Above, the headline was ‘Can your pension and investments help to fight climate change?’ The magazine was dated spring 2014, and the article on ethical banks scored Barclays the worst of all. In 2023, they are still bumping along the bottom, with an ethical score of TWO out of 20 points. I have now finally closed my long-held Barclays account. Better late than never.

(I chose Triodos instead – other ethical banks are available!)

My pension fund is ranked second best for ethics, but it still only scores 10 out of 20 points, so the pension industry clearly has a long way to go. An October 2021 report found that the UK pensions industry enables more CO2 emissions worldwide than all the UK’s carbon emissions put together. It’s why the Dorset Action group has been urging