We need radical thinking now to fix energy emergency and save Brits from ruin

Thinking caps

AT last there is serious talk of limiting the soaring energy price cap, following weeks of ever-worsening predictions of unaffordable fuel bills and vague promises of handouts.

The Treasury is working up plans to cut the proposed price cap increase by at least £400 with a government-backed lending scheme for energy suppliers.

Meanwhile industry leaders have proposed their own more radical plan to keep the price cap at its current level for two years, in return for access to loans to meet the cost.

Even missing Keir Starmer has finally broken cover and come up with a suggestion for freezing the price cap and milking the gas and oil giants’ record profits to pay for it.

Labour’s “fully-costed” plan sounds anything but. Nevertheless, it is worth looking at.

Because given the scale of the crisis, nothing should be off the table.

There are no easy remedies, but at the start of the Covid pandemic the outlook was similarly apocalyptic and huge resources were concentrated on a solution.

The result was a world-beating vaccine in record time.

We need more radical thinking now for the new emergency.

Hard-working householders having nightmares about frankly terrifying energy bills won’t care who comes up with an idea that saves them from ruin.

Save the cash

WE’RE only halfway through August and already the number of migrants making the dangerous Channel crossing in small boats is nearly double the number last year.

More than 1,000 arrived in the past few days, taking advantage of the hot, calm weather.

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But don’t think for a second the smugglers will halt their wicked operation when the weather deteriorates.

The ruthless criminals are getting far too rich to care about the safety of customers paying them thousands.

Now ministers are working on giving France a new multi-million pound package to help disrupt the trade.

They shouldn’t bother.

The French just pocket our cash and laugh at our expense as they watch the boats leaving.

Splash floods

THANK God for the impending rain…well almost.

We’ve had weeks of complaints about the scorching hot weather and the lack of rain reducing our green and pleasant land to a parched tinderbox.

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Now we are finally set for some rain and, of course, the imminent thunderstorms threaten to bring power cuts and flash flooding, but will do little to end the drought.

At least it will continue to feed our national obsession with moaning about the weather.

It never rains but it pours.