Alok Sharma's COP26 tears mean nothing without action

I thought of this while watching the excellent Channel 4 Dispatches programme Why Is My Car So Expensive? Dispatches is very much a programme that fearlessly uncovers the type of uncomfortable truths this UK Government wishes to remain under the carpet. Put it this way, once it privatises Channel 4, Dispatches, along with the current Channel 4 News, will be “no more”, as The Proclaimers would say.

Although this wasn’t included in the programme, in 2019 the International Energy Agency found that sport utility vehicles (SUVs) were the second largest cause of the global rise in CO2 emissions over the previous decade, eclipsing all shipping, aviation, heavy industry and even trucks. Also that worldwide they belch out 700 mega-tonnes annually, around the entire output of the UK and Netherlands combined

Surely then, for the sake of the environment, SUVs should only account for a tiny minority of cars with incentives in place for folk to buy smaller, more environmentally friendly ones but ideally be weaned off them for electric cars? However, Dispatches outlined that 10 years ago one in five cars sold were SUVs, but depressingly last year that proportion had doubled. Car manufacturers love them because they sell for so much more than small cars. SUVs also use far more precious computer chips and other components currently in short supply, sometimes double the numbers used in a small car.

As for incentivising folk to buy more expensive but environmentally friendly electric cars, everyone in Britain who bought a new one under £60,000 used to receive a government grant of up to £2500. Last December this was cut to £1500 for cars under £32,000. Only six months later in June 2022 the Government scrapped this altogether! In Luxembourg, it was up to €8000 for buying electric; Spain, up to €7000; Romania, up to €10,000. Overall, 13 EU countries give incentives to buy electric cars, all larger than the £1500 the UK government has just scrapped.

Why is it so vital to incentivise the purchase of electric cars? The consumer magazine Which? found if in 2021 only purely electric cars had been sold, it would have taken three million tonnes of CO2 out of car tailpipes every single year for just that one year’s sale of cars. A huge chunk of the UK’s total output of CO2. It would take 144 million trees to absorb that amount of CO2 or the amount produced by heating 1.1 million UK households in a year or 650,000 of us flying right around the world.

So for the UK Government to totally scrap the grant to buy an electric car just over six months after COP26, even Sharma’s tears were effectively blah, blah, blah!

Ivor Telfer

Dalgety Bay, Fife

IT is harrowing and frightening that according to the latest research by the University of York, 72% of households in Scotland are expected to be in fuel poverty in January next year.

Scots are constantly being hammered with bitter blows on the cost of living, which is just spiralling out of control. With inflation tipping the scales at 10.1%, it’s vitally important that politicians and decision-makers join forces to tackle this complex, but urgent national crisis.

It’s worrying for all – pensioners, families, working-age adults. But I’ve no doubt that it’s placing extra burden on the shoulders of terminally ill people. They are at heightened risk of experiencing fuel poverty, as their symptoms will often make them feel colder and they will spend increasing amounts of time at home with the heating on as their condition deteriorates.

Shockingly, living in a house that is cold and damp can hasten a terminally ill person’s death.

The UK and Scottish governments have a moral obligation to take immediate action and provide terminally ill people with targeted financial support for the continually rising costs of energy bills.

This is why we are calling for the Scottish Government to commit to extending eligibility of the Winter Heating Assistance to terminally ill people under 65 years old as it will help reduce the risk of working-age people in Scotland falling into, and potentially dying in, poverty as a result of their condition.

Ellie Wagstaff

Policy and public affairs manager, Marie Curie

WRITING as someone who worked for one of the utilities at the time of privatisation, and even having gained significant financial benefit from the process over the subsequent years, I completely agree with the sentiments expressed in Gerry Hassan’s column (August 16).

The ideological belief that only the private sector can deliver value to customers is completely false. The utilities are natural monopolies, in that it makes no economic sense to build competing water, gas, electricity and rail systems, and as has been demonstrated without doubt over the last few months, the market system created to allow pseudo-competition in the supply of utilities, while it may appear on the surface to work adequately in normal circumstances, is totally incapable of functioning in a crisis situation.

The illusion of competition is maintained by the installation of a regulatory process that simply allows the government to offload its responsibility for the provision of public services on to a scapegoat-in-waiting. The regulators exert a veneer of supervision over companies with no interest, whatever they may assert, in anything apart from shareholder value.

The critical issue in both the energy and water industries at this point is a complete lack of integrated strategic planning, with insufficient effort having been applied to storage and long-term continuity of supply. In the energy industry this is exacerbated by an inability to influence the cost of the energy inputs. Indeed, it is fortuitous that the Scottish Government has not actually implemented their plan to create a public energy company, as it would have been so immersed in this quagmire it would have been unable to alleviate any of the current problems, and would simply have attracted the usual sideswipes from both red and blue Unionists.

There is little to recommend Keir Starmer’s half-baked “plan”, which will do little apart from pumping more and more public money into the energy suppliers, but capping energy bills at their current level, imposing the resultant losses on the energy suppliers and then nationalising the debris might be a good starting point for radical restructuring of the entire industry. Further, providing a method of compulsorily purchasing the oil, gas, renewables and nuclear energy at cost plus a “reasonable” return would be a sensible method of regaining partial control of the county’s resources. If the companies concerned were unhappy with this approach, they would be at liberty to offer their assets to the government at an agreed value.

If the above paints me as an extreme left-wing radical, I am not. I am simply fed up with my country being ripped off by bandit multinationals, some of whom are ultimately owned by foreign governments.

In view of the fact that the UK will be unwilling to address any of the problems effectively for fear of upsetting their paymasters, there can be only one solution.

Cameron Crawford

Rothesay

QUITE interesting to read that one or two prominent football people are backing the new Sky football contract currently being negotiated with the SFA for the period out to 2029. Sky is a pretty smart outfit when it comes to looking after its own interest but not so hot looking after Scottish football.

Inflation running rampant at 10% this year, forecast to increase to 14% next year and God knows what level after that, will have a very significant impact on the true value of any monies received. All that glitters is not gold.

Why sign a fixed contract today when a contract worth £198 million over the seven years would only have a present-day value of approximately £169m at 4% annual inflation. The purchasing power of money quickly disappears with inflation as we all know to our cost.

For so long as Sky is allowed to legally broadcast English FA games into Scotland with its own FA jurisdiction, this will give it a totally unfair advantage in any negotiation with the SFA (one of the benefits of better together).

However, the SFA is there to protect Scottish football and should at least insert an inflation protection clause, if it finally agrees to the Sky deal (God forbid).

Gordon Morris

via email

AFTER reading Steph Brawn’s insightful and positive review of Tim Walker’s play, Bloody Difficult Women (August 12), I immediately booked tickets to see the play at the Assembly Rooms on the same day.

I thought it thought-provoking, hilarious and entertaining and I now understand why it’s as popular as it is at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. I love how it’s such a talking point.

Given the amazing cast, the brilliant script and the phenomenal staging, I thought I should express my gratitude by saying that it’s a full five stars from me too.

Good for The National for reviewing it. I am glad to be a subscriber of a newspaper that believes in freedom of expression, unlike The Daily Telegraph south of the Border whose theatre critic, I saw, blocked Tim Walker on Twitter and is refusing to review it. Why are so many newspapers south of the Border in denial about Brexit?

Elaine Macdonald

Edinburgh

THAT the Church of England in its recent Lambeth Conference has reaffirmed its opposition to same-sex marriage has implications for the British monarch given that they are “Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England”.

To his credit William has previously spoken up for the rights of LGBT people but The National Secular Society has written to both him and Charles to highlight that “A Sovereign that seeks to act as a focus for national identity, unity and pride cannot, at the same time, be the supreme governor of an officially homophobic institution.”

Fortunately the solution is obvious: disestablish the Church of England so they can do what they want.

Neil Barber

Edinburgh Secular Society

The binman, the railway worker,

the carer, and worn out nurse;

each and everyone a shirker,

according to Lizzie Truss.

They must graft a little harder,

and swallow the bitter pill;

to have some crumbs in the larder,

or pay the energy bill.

“they need to sweat, have to toil,

shed more blood and tears,

to earn a place on this mortal coil“

Liz Truss bellows to our ears.

“Do not moan, do not whine,

just put your shoulder to the wheel,

behave yourselves, toe the line“

She says with heart of steel.

Ach, Lizzie, Lizzie, oh by jings,

you are a puppet in their game;

your Tory masters pull the strings,

and you are simply tame.

George Robertson

Edinburgh