Zero chance
THE Government’s Net Zero “review” is the traditional mix of fantasy and denial.
It blends extreme wishful thinking with a casual disregard for the ruinous cost to households and the political catastrophe facing anyone trying to impose it too fast on a nation which is not ready.
Take heat pumps. We would love to live in a greener country where they replaced gas boilers.
But they are vastly more expensive and may not keep many British homes anything like as warm.
Proposing to bring forward the date to outlaw new gas boilers before knowing these problems can be resolved is insane.
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So is banning people from selling their homes without green upgrades, thus trapping those who cannot afford them in properties they can never shift.
Magical thinking is further applied to electric cars, which remain impractical for longer trips and wildly unaffordable for most.
Yet in just seven years that’s all you’ll be able to buy new. How?
We’d love it all to work and for all the green jobs the Tories and Labour expect to create to be more than theoretical.
But we predict a calamitous U-turn.
When wealthy and out-of-touch London politicians finally realise they cannot meet their arbitrary, self-imposed deadlines without destroying the finances of millions.
A bad Bill
OUR exclusive about a deadly shipment of uranium at Heathrow made global headlines.
Chillingly, a badly-worded new Government Bill would have outlawed it.
The National Security law would mean a potential 14-year jail term for a reporter securing and publishing information they know could aid a foreign power.
It does not distinguish between a hostile state like Russia and, say, our US allies.
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And it uses a definition so woolly it could refer to countless stories squarely in the public interest.
Like our Heathrow expose.
Or our revelations years ago about our troops being sent to war with lethally poor kit.
Such investigations might indisputably help a foreign power.
But the priority MUST be the public’s right to know.
Exposing scandals is vital to end them.
Most rely on leaks.
Yet this Bill would criminalise disclosing sensitive Government documents that could “prejudice the safety or interests of the UK”.
Who decides that?
UK interests might be better served by making a story public.
This Bill, currently in the Lords, will deter whistleblowers and the Press.
The Government must rethink it.
Tanks a lot
UKRAINE needs major new Western hardware.
So we applaud Rishi Sunak’s pledge to deliver British tanks.
Zelensky cannot just hold off the Russians.
He needs to be able to kick them out.
And while 12 of our Challenger tanks alone aren’t a game-changer . . .
They’re a decent start.