COLUMN - Political View with Alastair McQuillan (Rutland and Melton Green Party)
The much-welcome rains that arrived last week hinted at the drawing to an end of a scorching summer, with five heatwaves in just a few months and wildfires ravaging homes, crops and nature across the UK and here in Melton.
Our firefighters are on the front line of climate change, tackling fires in fields around Melton, yet we have seen an astonishing dereliction of duty from the government, those whose job it is to keep us all safe.
Rather than taking concrete steps to address the issue with resources and investment, we received a message on our phones asking us not to have a barbecue one Friday evening.
Our farmers and growers are another group on the frontline of climate breakdown - facing in turn the extreme rainfall and flooding of recent winters, and now the extreme heat and drought of the summers to come.
The government must be doing more to support the custodians of the countryside to adapt as extreme weather becomes the new normal.
As we move into the autumn, energy prices are set to jump to the highest price in three years under the regulator OFGEM’s latest price cap.
For every household, it might just feel like history is repeating itself, with any savings from the £45-a-year bill reduction promised by the government already wiped out multiple times over by the increase.
The fact is, small tweaks won’t cut it.
Any government seriously tackling the needs of the British people should be dropping the green levies, getting rid of standing charges on bills immediately and moving these into general taxation. Making real and progressive savings for every household up and down the country.
That then would afford the government the breathing room to upscale renewable energy and insulate millions of homes and fully decouple the price of gas from electricity, bringing down bills for good.
Instead, it’s beginning to look ever more increasingly likely that we will see them stick to the same old tired script of green-lighting more oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, lining the pockets of the energy giants, whilst paying lip service to tackling the cost of living, and only worsening the climate crisis.