Cold weather payments

With Britain in the grip of one of the coldest winters for nearly 30 years, it's important that anyone who is worried that they may not be able to pay fuel bills makes sure they are in receipt of all the cold weather help they're entitled to.

Labour government cold weather payments of £25 are issued for every seven day period when temperatures are at or below zero degrees centigrade in a given area; and in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields that's been this week and almost certainly next week too.

Most people who are entitled to the payments will get them automatically as part of their tax credit or pension payments, but it's not just pensioners who are entitled to claim them.

You may also be eligible for a Cold Weather Payment for each qualifying week if you are getting Income Support, income-based Jobseeker?s Allowance or income-related Employment and Support Allowance in the assessment phase and have one of the following:

• pensioner premium, higher pensioner premium or enhanced pensioner premium
• a disability premium, enhanced disability premium or severe disability premium
• a disabled child premium
• Child Tax Credit that includes a disability or severe disability element
• a child who is under five in the family

If you want to check whether you're eligible, or whether they've been issued, visit the DirectGov website. That site also now has a postcode search facility to check whether cold weather payments are triggered, which can be found here.

Pensioners also get winter fuel payments each year, and they've been dramatically increased by Labour over the last decade. If you have a query about these payments, you can call 0845 915 1515: lines are open Monday to Friday 8.30am to 4.30pm.

Brokenhagen

Back in September I wrote that I thought Copenhagen was in trouble.

It was obvious that the "COP-15" summit was becoming the COP-OUT summit weeks ago; arguably months and years ago. And it was because of mistakes by those evangelising on climate change that have been repeated and compounded.

Talking up the challenges, the costs and the sacrifices doesn't make most people want to buy-in to a solution. And getting the public to recognise the problem and buy-in to the solution isn't some irritating optional extra we can pick and choose whether to bother with. It's inseparable from dealing effectively with the problem.

It has been treating the public this way that's caused the problem. It prompted scientists to foolishly fiddle the facts, conceal information and treat us as too stupid to be able to understand the very thing scientists are supposed to do: challenge orthodoxy.

It prompted politicians to offload difficult, expensive decisions onto unelected bureaucrats who were never going to be able to deliver the answers - because the answers demand the accountability they lack.

It prompted middle-class, affluent environmental activists for whom fixing a wind turbine on their roof or paying a carbon offset after a quick holiday jaunt to the carribbean is pocket-change, to lecture families on fixed incomes about what they will have to sacrifice. And each of these groups got exactly what they deserved at Copenhagen.

How about going down a different path now?

Here are the four ways I think a substantive deal on climate change could be rescued, which can resonate with the public and which doesn?t require us to retreat into caves to bring about.

First, let?s learn from history. When I was growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the big environmental threat was something called Acid Rain. It?s not talked about very much in the West now (although it's a growing problem in China, India and Brazil) because action was taken to combat it, raise environmental standards and improve technology to tackle the problem. In the 1990s the problem was the hole in the ozone layer ? again a problem caused by the emission of damaging gasses and chemicals. It?s not talked about much because action was taken to combat it, raise environmental standards, ban CFCs ? Chlorofluorocarbons ? in fridges and technology tackled the problem.

I know that climate change is an immensely bigger problem, but in these two examples we can see that huge amounts of change can be made without scaring people that their world is going to end. And by putting investment in technology at the forefront of the battle we'll be creating new, long-term jobs in manufacturing and research, which will help our economy as we seek to come out of recession.

Second, we need to seriously challenge the way we have until now gone about tackling climate change to date. The carbon ?cap and trade? system doesn?t provide a single incentive to reduce dependence on carbon-based fuels, which remain the cheapest available. We should look instead at a means of fees and dividends: fees for those choosing to stick with carbon-based fuels; dividends to those who switch.

And when I talk about dividends, I?m not talking about rewarding everyone who consumes energy - this won't be an impenetrable scheme like cap-and-trade that only multinationals dabble in above the heads of the rest of us: it will pay cash into your bank account if you go green. Click here to read an eloquent explanation by James Hansen, Adjunct Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. As I've written about before, incentives are far more effective than taxes in producing change - and one of the reasons Britain is so tired of green issues is because green taxes have been abused by politicians.

Third, instead of just writing developing nations blank cheques to insure them against climate change, let?s make sure that a large part of the developed world?s response is the establishment of an international trust to safeguard the world?s forests and reverse deforestation. While one half of the climate change threat has been the increase carbon emissions since the industrial revolution, the other half has been massive deforestation, and as we know forests are critical carbon absorbers.

And finally, let's put an end to top-down lecturing by government and do-gooders. Back at the time of the first Earth Summit, a project called Local Agenda 21 was set up. It was supposed to enable individuals, communities and groups to make their own contribution on the environment. It never worked: councils half-heartedly seized responsibility for LA21 and whereas these groups were supposed to be about people telling their representatives what to do, the reverse happened.

But the principle of LA21 is sound. Understanding and explaining the science of climate change needs to start at the bottom - with small groups being shown in clear and unequivocal ways what greenhouse gases do to temperature; the consequence that has on polar ice and the consequences that will have on water levels, currents and weather. Just like Newsnight did fantastically well in December, in fact.

Talk about what we can do together, not what sacrifices must be imposed upon us from on high. Give us some confidence that what we?re being asked to do will address the concerns ? that the goalposts won?t suddenly be moved once those targets are met. Invest much more in stuff that works and produces clear, visible achievements. And who knows, we might actually get not only a deal to reduce temperatures by 2 degrees or more - but a deal that governments can actually deliver because they will have the buy-in of their citizens.

From bangers to boilers

Well, maybe not boilers as antiquated as this one, but following the success last year of the government's car scrappage scheme, focus is turning to replacing old, fuel-inefficient, polluting and in some cases dangerous boilers.

Each inefficient boiler adds over £200 to household bills and one tonne of carbon to the atmosphere. Household carbon emissions dwarf some of the polluters some in the environmental lobby obsess about, like aircraft. 90% of these household emissions come from boilers.

Those modernising and upgrading their boiler through this Labour initiative will get £400 towards the cost of the new one. Money is available for up to 125,000 households to change initially - but with the car scrappage scheme, demand was so high that we extended it back in October.

In the pre-budget statement at the end of last year the government also announced that anyone who's gone to the trouble of generating their own energy - through solar panels, principally - and who channel surplus energy back into the national grid will from April get on average £900, which, with Labour, will be tax-free.

We're serious about tackling both our environmental and energy challenges; and saving you money in the process. Something which, during this cold spell, I suspect looks particularly appealing to many right now!

Who's really in denial on climate change?

A poll in Saturday's Times found that only 41% of voters believe that climate change has been caused by the human race.

This poll is already causing huge shock among the political classes who arrogantly assume that because they accept the science of climate change, automatically everyone else must follow suit. But I've warned about this arrogance consistently: about over-claiming and exaggerating the risks; about claiming summits are the be-all and end-all when everyone knows that another summit is just around the corner; about championing supposedly green products that actually cause more environmental damage, and about exploiting green taxes for other political ends.

It is this arrogance that goes to the heart of the political failure on climate change. No wonder the overwhelming evidence of global warming is ignored or disbelieved by huge swathes of the public.

Here's one local example. When I led the Labour Opposition in Wandsworth in 2006, I proposed that residential parking charges in the borough be abolished - paid for, principally, through higher charges on second and subsequent vehicles in each household.

For what reason do controlled parking zones exist? They are introduced because parking stress: the number of cars fighting for each parking space on a street - is a particular problem in certain areas. By giving residents permits, and charging visitors significant amounts to "pay and display", parking space is freed up and local people can usually park close to their homes. In other words, controlled parking charges are a tax on commodity: parking space.

They were not set up as a crusade for the environment: their point was never to banish cars from our roads, punish gas guzzlers, encourage energy efficient vehicles or incentivise motorbikes or cycling. Their purpose was simply to free up parking space. And they've been remarkably effective at doing that.

My policy was criticised by green groups, who see parking as a way to moralise on the environment: parking space, should be warped into some sort of green tax to punish anyone who drives. Since then, we've seen wrong-headed, cynical councillors in next-door Richmond start charging more for parking permits for polluting vehicles.

Do I believe that polluting vehicles are a bigger threat to our environment than cleaner ones? Yes - and if someone was to put forward and argue for a local pollution tax (something the Labour government has already introduced by raising Vehicle Excise Duty on older, more polluting vehicles anyway) in exchange for lower council tax, I might well support that idea.

The public aren't stupid - they know full well when stealth taxes are being piled on them - they knew it when Tories here ratcheted up parking charges by 27% a year ago too.

So when politicians can't be honest about something as straightforward as parking charges, why on earth should anyone believe them when they talk about climate change and the consequential need for more taxes, or ever higher energy bills? Especially when we then see these ever-higher taxes just being hoovered up by the Treasury or the energy companies' shareholders rather than being used to persuade people to try greener, cleaner, more sustainable products.

Yet there is plenty of evidence that the public is receptive to genuine green initiatives. Labour's car scrappage scheme has been the massive success it has because it provided a typical £2,000 incentive to trade up to a cleaner model. People still have to pay for the majority of their new car themselves but they have done so - in huge numbers. Had the Government brought this scheme in when revising Vehicle Excise Duty months ago then an unpopular move seen by many as just another money grab would have gone down far better.

Politicians keep digging these massive holes, then burying their heads in them. Whether it's their outrageous expenses greed, or their misapplication of taxes, or an over-reach on issues like climate change: these are all symptoms of the same hubris that results in the sort of views the Times found at the weekend.

And that's a real problem for those of us who recognise the urgency of the problem. We need to stop trying to drag a public kicking and screaming behind us as we impose ridiculously punitive measures upon them. Instead, we need to bring them with us: yes by charging more for pollution and carbon-generation; but by cutting energy bills for those using green fuels; minimising their carbon footprint, recycling more and reducing their household waste.

This isn't rocket science. It certainly isn't climate science. It's just good old common sense. The Times poll wasn't a denial of climate change. It was just another denial of trust in politicians.

Labour: making Britain a low carbon world leader

What if Copenhagen fails?

The Copenhagen summit this Autumn is hugely important. It will, it is to be hoped, create a new climate change treaty to replace Kyoto.

The summit represents the culmination of months of negotiations - negotiations that are taking place right now between civil servants of the world's leading and emerging powers. We have some inkling of how those negotiations are going.

Not very well.

But even if the negotiations were going perfectly and in December the world signs up to the Copenhagen Treaty, it might not be enough to deliver the massive cuts in carbon emissions scientists say are needed to avert catastrophic climate change. After all, Kyoto promised much and delivered not enough.

It would be negligent beyond words for the world's leaders to put all their eggs in the basket of a Copenhagen deal. And it would be unrealistic to believe that a deal of the extent needed is deliverable. Not because politicians are weak, or short-sighted, or fail to grasp the scale of the problem - though some are, some will be and some do. No; simply because the scale of the action - and the amount it will cost, is probably going to be too great for their - and our - electorates to swallow.

As much as politicians need to recognise the catastrophe of climate change, so too must the most fervent environmentalists recognise that politics is about the art of the possible (and I mean possible in a democracy); and what's possible is - I suspect - less than what is actually needed. The full extent of the sacrifice required of the developed world is not likely to be tolerated by its voters. And the developing world, where carbon emissions are rising exponentially, will not tolerate a curtailment of their massive growth. On that basis the most likely outcome of Copenhagen is failure - albeit that it will be presented as a success.

So what happens next? This doesn't necessarily have to be the end of the world as we know it, though many will claim it to be and if nothing else is done, that will be the consequence.

The Royal Society - Britain's UK Academy of Science - published a report recently looking at what they call geo-engineering - using science to combat climate change. One option being investigated isn't as speculative as some other options that have been considered and is relatively low risk. We know this because it has already worked. It's called "stratospheric aerosols".

You may remember the eruption of the Philippine volcano Pinatubo in 1991. It was by all accounts a remarkable sight - the second largest eruption of the 20th century. It lasted several weeks and in the process it pumped millions of tonnes of dust and ash high into the atmosphere. These were stratospheric aerosols: a giant spraycan clouding the outer atmosphere in dust fine enough so as not to obscure the sun but substantial enough to act as a block to a proportion of its rays.

In the year immediately following that eruption, the world's climate cooled by half a degree centigrade because of that one event. Because remember: greenhouse gases in themselves do not cause global warming - the damage they do is in trapping heat; preventing it from rebounding back out into space. And that's why the world is gradually warming.

We know that injecting particles of ash high into our atmosphere works in cooling global temperatures. Second, its subsidiary impact on our climate systems is short-term and minor if it exists at all. Third, it's viable to replicate that volcano effect without the mass destruction that accompanies natural eruptions. And finally, it's possible to do it without blowing the bank.

We should continue reducing carbon emissions radically - if for no other reasons than carbon-based fuels are finite, are concentrated in unstable regions governed by hostile, erratic regimes, and are damaging in all sorts of ways, not just climactically.

But isn't there a better way than simply insisting that the only way we can combat climate is by vast sacrifices that will dramatically curtail the quality of life the developed world has come to enjoy and the developing world is growing to expect? Wouldn't a far better way be to make carbon reductions part of a package that includes safe geo-engineering?

And even if you think we should continue to meet the climate change targets the world has set solely by carbon reduction, wouldn't it be wise to have a fall-back in case the scientists' forecasts are wrong and we need to go even further - a far from implausible scenario?

I can't see a downside to investing in this option. If you're cynical about politics and politicians it deserves backing. If you're a climate change sceptic it deserves backing. If you baulk at the vast costs of climate change it deserves backing. And most importantly, if you want to save the planet it deserves backing.

Three years matters

This week you're going to hear a lot about climate change as the Labour government sets out, in detail, how the UK's energy industry is going to meet our ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions. Because that's this week's news agenda, organisations all over the place will be scrambling to jump on the bandwagon. Wandsworth's Conservative Council is no exception.

Yesterday it announced that it has plans to reduce its own "carbon footprint" by increasing the amount of renewable energy it buys and reducing energy consumption.

This is good news. But it's nowhere near progressive enough. Three years ago, Labour's manifesto for Wandsworth in the council elections argued for everything the Council announced today, and then some. It including incentives for local communities to produce their own energy and, if that production exceeded their own uses, to invest it back into the national grid, much like the one Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband talked about yesterday.

Three years is not that long in the overall scheme of things. But we've all seen how slow progress towards curtailing climate change has been: lots of targets, little delivery. Every year that passes is one less year that we have to prevent the effects of climate change transforming London and the south east.

All I'm saying is that if we had ambitious, progressive local leadership we would have got us to the point Wandsworth Conservatives have now staggered to - and in fact much further beyond it - three years sooner. Those three lost years matter.

Click on the manifesto extract above to read a larger, clearer version of it.

European elections this Thursday

European elections this Thursday

Government right on clean coal

If both electricity generating company E-On and the green lobby are cheering a Government announcement, it suggests that we might have got it right.

That's what's happened over the announcement that the Kingsnorth power station in Kent will only be upgraded as and when it is capable of carbon reclamation, something I argued for here a few weeks ago.

The argument now moves on to what minimum proportion of carbon should be extracted from the coal before burning; because the risk is that it will be too low - and the less that is extracted the harder it will be to reach our carbon targets.

The UK was - thanks to Labour - the first country in the world to set legally binding carbon emissions targets and now we are first at making the building of new coal-powered stations conditional upon their ability to extract carbon and, in our case, bury it deep under the North Sea.

But our long-term energy situation remains critical. We have to reduce dependence on Russian Gas and Saudi Oil. And just as we cannot meet our energy needs just by renewable energy, we can't do it just by clean coal power-plants either. We need a basket of energy sources: clean coal, renewable and nuclear - all three of which will enable the UK to meet the targets we have set ourselves on climate change by 2020.

Why I won't be sitting in darkness tomorrow night

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. So it is with the planned "Earth Hour" by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) who want us all to turn off our lights for one hour on Saturday evening from 8.30pm.

This stunt underlines my concern about the disconnect between those who are so absolutely driven by the cause they believe in - climate change - to the point where their judgement is clouded and they actually damage themselves and their cause.

Let's be clear: sitting in the dark on Saturday night, waiting for the clocks to go forward is not going to save our planet. Nor is the attitude implicit in the thinking behind such a gimmick: that the only way to avert catastrophic climate change is for us, essentially, to return to the caves.

WWF is well intentioned but gimmicks like these fundamentally undermine their important cause because they associate it with unpopular, unpleasant and self-denying measures that people simply won't sign up to en masse.

Far more productive - because it's something that might prompt people to make changes for life, would be a campaign to turn off all equipment that's normally on standby that entire night.

If WWF can get business to turn off their lights on a Saturday evening - great - though surely business in the city could and should turn their lights off for more than an hour when they're closed? But those of us who are committed to tackling climate change seriously need to use better judgement about how to persuade people to engage with the issue in future.

If you want to find out more about WWF's earth hour, however, click here.

No to coal at Kingsnorth

The Government should reject plans to build a coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent later this week.

The case against conventional coal-power is overwhelming: it is the principal generator of greenhouse gas emissions. But it is not just the global environment that suffers: locally, coal production pollutes the environment because of associated hazardous chemicals like strychnine which so easily contaminate ground water.

It is worth trying to sort out some of the myths about Kingsnorth before developing this argument. First the Kingsnorth plan won't build an additional power station - it will replace an existing one. To present both sides of the argument, here's what EOn - its owner - argues; and here's the anti-Kingsnorth website. And if you want - in my opinion - a balanced briefing on the pros and cons of this energy debate, click here for an article in The Observer.

I accept E-On's claim that the new Kingsnorth will be cleaner than the old. It just isn't going to be clean enough.

So called "clean coal" technology - that is, a process which extracts the carbon from coal before or during its burning and then injects it deep into the earth, is positive, although it's vastly expensive and needs three separate processes to make the coal clean enough to be useful.

At the weekend, one of the leading climate-change environmentalists, Professor Chris Field, said that the models he himself had been part of creating for the UN panel were looking wrong principally because his panel under-estimated the impact the massive increase in coal-burning power stations in India and China (where one new coal-fired generator is being opened each week) has had.

I wrote recently about the problems with these models - the arctic expedition setting off in just a few days' time is about making cliamte change modelling much more accurate - and this is just another example of why environmentalists need to be so much more careful about the way they use and present their statistics.

Because if they happen to be right and climate change is accelerating, we are getting so close to fatigue among the general public about these issues we could be faced with a "cry wolf" situation where no credibility is left among those who don't care as much as they need to about the environment.

We in the already industrialised West have a very difficult case to make to the still-developing world about halting their use of coal. From their perspective such arguments are very much about kicking away the ladder we have already climbed to wealth and prosperity. Instead, we should be working with these countries to build and subsidise clean coal plants rather than trying to impose limits and targets they won't sign up to.

We should say no to coal at Kingsnorth - because it isn't clean enough coal - but that does mean saying yes in a big way to nuclear energy. And now.

Buzz Lightyear...no, Buzz Greening!

Today's Wandsworth Guardian reports that Putney's Tory MP has discovered that Putney has been beset by power shortages - some three months after they started!

I know some MPs get a little absorbed in the Westminster bubble and lose touch with their constituency but even I didn't realise that it takes three months for local news to reach them there. Maybe she should reconsider her decision to close down her constituency office in Putney soon after she got elected - something I pledge I will never do.

On this basis, it'll probably be round about March when she discovers that I've already raised the catalogue of power outages with EDF Energy and had a really positive response from them over two weeks ago, back on 13 January, as I reported here and my original letter to the National Grid, back in November here, and on the putneysw15 website here.

But if 90% of success is showing up, I'm just happy that Justine Greening's standing up for the other 10%.

Power cuts

I've just received the following reply from EDF Energy to my recent letter about the power cuts that have affected Putney over the past few months. It's really good to learn that as a result of the problems I raised, EDF are now taking action to strengthen the power cable network in Putney, which should reduce the likelihood of outages in future.

Dear Stuart

Thank you for your correspondence regarding the electricity supply in the SW15 area. I was sorry to learn of the power cuts that may have affected both domestic and commercial properties and for any inconvenience this caused.

On receipt of your email I contacted the Lead Field Engineer (LFE) for your area and he has provided me with the following which I hope will be useful.

SW15 is fed from our Carslake Main Substation and in recent months we had four faults on our high voltage underground cable network:

• 17 September 16:56hrs - 256 customers restored in under 3 minutes by remote control
• 10 November 17:54hrs - 1578 customers affected with final restoration at 21:14hrs. This fault affected a shopping centre
• 27 November 06:55hrs - 817 customers affected with final restoration at 10:56hrs. This fault affected Upper Richmond Road including the railway station
• 1 December 19:19hrs - 213 customers affected with final restoration at 20:15hrs

We strive to give all our customers a safe and secure supply of electricity. However, despite our best efforts, interruptions to supply can occur for a variety of reasons. Some of these are not within our control and for this reason we cannot guarantee a continuous supply.

However, I wish to assure you as soon as we become aware of a problem on our network every effort is made to restore supplies quickly so the resulting impact is kept to a minimum.

I can confirm that the above faults are unrelated and we are not aware of any inherent problems with the network in your area but we will continue this area closely and should further problems arise we take the necessary action to resolve them. At the time of writing we have not had any faults on our high voltage network so far this year.

However, in order to reinforce the network which we believe to be vulnerable we are going to replace and upgrade a considerable amount of underground cable. The first 100metre section has now been commissioned and will be in the area of Carslake Road, Westleigh Road and Genoa Avenue.

The above relates to our high voltage network but as mentioned in my message yesterday there may have been more faults, such as the one you mention on 6 January 2009, that we will only be able to look at via specific postcodes.

I appreciate the links you provided but due to company security I only have access to sites regarded as business critical. Therefore I would once again ask for specific postcodes if possible, coupled with dates of the failures relating to that postcode.

Should you have residents who would like to know about specific faults particular top their properties please as them to either email our Customer Relations team at customer.relations@edfenergy.com or write to Customer Relations, EDF Energy Networks, Fore Hamlet, Ipswich, IP3 8AA.

They can also call a free phone number 0800 028 4587.

I hope the information I have provided is useful to you. However, you have my details below and if you require any further assistance please let me know.

Regards,

Mark

Mark Methven
Senior Customer Relations Officer

Putney power outages

I have today written to the Chief Executive of the National Grid plc asking them to explain why central Putney has suffered three power outages in recent months. Here's the text of my letter:

30 November 2008


Mr Steve Holliday
Chief Executive, National Grid plc
1-3 The Strand
London
WC2N 5EH


Dear Mr Holliday,

Power outtages in Putney, London SW15

I am writing because, in the past four months - the most recent being on Wednesday - there have been three power outages in the centre of Putney in the evening.

These blackouts have affected the town centre including the High Street, the Royal Mail sorting office for Putney and Putney mainline rail station, as well as thousands of local homes. Having an overcrowded mainline rail station go dark in the middle of the rush hour is exeptionally dangerous. Supermarkets including Sainsbury's and Tesco have lost perishable items, other shops have lost trade having to close early - and have been exposed to a greater risk of break-ins as electronic security systems have failed; and huge numbers of residents have been inconvenienced.

The High Street is one of the busiest roads in the constituency and for it to be without light is dangerous, especially given the number of pedestrians seeking to cross the road throughout its length. And a huge number of households have been inconvenienced for several hours at a time.

I am writing to find out the cause of these outages and what you as the body responsible for ensuring stable electricity supplies is doing to ensure that this does not recur. Furthermore, if there is a long-term structural problem with electricity supplies in Putney that cannot be quickly resolved this must surely call into question planned development in the area if the existing demand is regularly exceeding supply.

The constituency is obviously deeply interested in your reply so I hope you will let us know the answers to these questions at the earliest opportunity.

Yours sincerely,

Stuart King

Keep warm this winter

Help the Aged has produced a handy guide of helpful tips and contacts to help pensioners keep warm and keep bills as low as possible this Winter.

It's been produced in association with British Gas and includes advice on insulating your home, claiming everything you're entitled to, and who to call for further information on all these issues.

You can download the guide here in Adobe pdf format.
















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Greening's preposterous petrol policy performance

A few days ago, I drew attention to the Conservatives' policy on fuel duty, which is that right now all drivers would be paying a lot more tax.

That being the case, it is the most obscene hypocrisy for Putney's Conservative MP to be complaining about increases in road tax. Yet at Treasury questions on Thursday, there she was, shamelessly and shamefully whining about road tax changes that reward smaller, less polluting cars and penalise larger, more polluting vehicles.

Before she gets up to make another spectacle of herself - and Putney - in the House of Commons she should at least try to come up with an answer to the question posed to her by Treasury Minister Angela Eagle MP:

"Why is the hon. Lady talking about that, when her policy would put 5p on fuel duty now, creating an increase that would feed right through to the pumps? That is bad judgment."

Fancy paying more tax on petrol?

In July, when oil prices - and therefore the price at the pumps - reached record levels, David Cameron and George Osborne came up with a short-term tactic to score political points. They announced that there should be a variable tax rate on petrol so that when oil prices were high tax would fall and when petrol was cheap taxes would rise.

Today, oil prices have almost halved from their Summer high. Under the Tories, that means we would now be paying more tax on our petrol. Just as the price fall is beginning to put a little money back in our pockets - some of which we might save for Winter fuel bills - the Conservatives would take it away from us.

Once again David Cameron and George Osborne demonstrate that now is no time for a novice to be given the keys to the Treasury.

Time to act on fuel speculation

I've written before about some of the reasons why fuel prices are currently at record levels, causing some hardship and considerable anger here and around the world.

For me, the least acceptable reason fuel costs so much is that oil is currently the focus of some of the most cynical speculation on the financial markets. Without speculation, oil would be trading at somewhere around $99 a barrel, as opposed to around $140 a barrel at the moment. In other words, some of the richest people in the world are getting even richer speculating on oil prices, driving them up, while we pay for their greed at the petrol stations.

There have already been stirrings in the US Government about clamping down on speculating on oil prices in their NYMEX market, but of course the financial markets are global so for any move to restrict or ban oil speculation we'd need simultaneous action from Tokyo and the London Stock Exchange among others. And even if we could get a global governmental pact to regulate the markets, e-trading could simply move speculation to other, unregulated channels - even e-Bay!

That, however, is not a reason we should not try to sort this out. Let's be clear: nation states need to prove that they are still relevant in tackling problems like fuel scarcity, the credit crunch or environmental degradation.

If they don't we will face a choice between further seepage of power (with or without the consent of we, the people) towards far less accountable pan-national bodies like the European Union, the G8, the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank because only these bodies have the muscle to exercise control over the markets.

The even less appealing alternative is a democratic vaccuum where the market does what it wants unfettered with any issues of social justice, fairness or equity. That's utopia for the money men, but it's the nightmare scenario for the rest of us.

Biofueling the food shortage

After writing about my concerns about Biofuels here back in February, the issue is now beginning to get some serious coverage (you may have seen the feature on BBC Newsnight on Monday).

Biofuels are causing catastrophic environmental damage: because they're one of the main reasons tropical rainforests are being cleared (in order for farmers to produce crops used to make biofuels) - thereby worsening climate change; and because hundreds of thousands of acres of arable farmland that was once used to produce staple crops like corn, rice and wheat have now also been turned over to the biofuels industry.

This in turn is causing food shortages around the world; in turn pushing up food prices and in turn again making it harder and harder for the very poorest to afford these staple crops. Far from being the environmental godsend, biofuels are actually worsening international environmental and humanitarian problems.

Let's be clear: biofuels are not clean and they are not that green. The energy needed to process this fuel negates its benefits from the outset. They are not economical - or they wouldn't receive the vast and unsustainable subsidies governments pass on to ethanol producers. And any environmental good they (questionably) bring through reduced reliance on carbon-based fuels is eradicated by the loss of rainforests (which greatly reduces the planet's capacity for converting carbon dioxide into oxygen) they have been directly responsible for.

However, it is a fair question to ask - as Jeremy Paxman did on Newsnight - what's the alternative? We do, after all, need to find a sustainable fuel source to drive our vehicles. I think the answer is twofold.

First, we need to use electric, gas and hydrogen powered vehicles far more: they're not sexy, they're not especially fast, but there's no reason that for business use and urban travel they cannot be used. The Prius (featured in the photo above) is not a particularly beautiful car - it's popularity has simply been sourced from its claim to be a "green" car.

And second, we need to stop paying lip-service to the need for better public transport and rail freight. We can get so much of our transit off the roads and onto rail - reducing congestion for those who have no choice but to drive, improving the cost-effectiveness of public transport services, giving people a clean, safe, reliable and efficient service.

Although there's a limit to how convenient public transport can be - because it will never be more convenient than our own private, comfy, car - there's also a reason why London is the only major capital city where public transport use is rising: and that's because our Mayor, Ken Livingstone, has spent the last eight years investing in public transport.

There's one further, deeply ironic consequence of those environmentalists still championing biofuels despite the damage they're doing. This is that they are pushing the need for genetically modified crops - which can be grown in less favourable environments, in larger numbers, yielding larger harvests - higher up the political agenda.

Biofuels

I wrote last week about rising food prices and their impact on poorer households. In that post I criticised biofuels as creating more problems than they solve.

I'll talk a bit more about why biofuels aren't a green solution in a minute, but also last week - entirely coincidentally - the House of Commons Environment Select Committee came out in favour of axing EU biofuels targets; if for slightly different reasons.

Their concern is not only that the target can't be met, but also about land use - because utilising land for biofuel production is one of the main causes of deforestation (which I discussed here during the Bali Climate Change Summit last year); especially in rain-forest countries like Brazil.

The Environment Committee is also looking at how green bio-fuels really are. Whenever someone supporting nuclear power makes the point that nuclear emits no carbon dioxide the anti-nuclear lobby rushes counters that a substantial amount of carbon is emitted in the construction of nuclear power plants.

Fair point. But the same is true of biofuel - and unlike nuclear, it's an ongoing cost: because the energy output is in the actual production of the fuel as well as the construction of the processing plants. Almost as much fuel is used to create biofuel than is created.

How is that sustainable? And the only reason it is vaguely affordable is the vast, market-warping subsidies bunged to the bio-fuel industry. Without them, biofuel would be uneconomic, fields that have been dedicated to producing crops for fuel would be returned to use for food production and cereals and bread would begin falling in price again.

We need to remember the distinction between power and fuel, because power can run computers, light streets, boil kettles and cook meals, but it can't drive cars or operate central heating. For that we need liquid or gas fuels. One day, we may have nuclear-cell driven cars; we already have natural gas and hydrogen-fueled vehicles as well as those powered by batteries charged with green electricity, but bio-fuels aren't the solution - apologies to anyone who's just bought a Prius or other hybrid powered car!

Here's how the BBC reported the MPs' report calling for a scrapping of EU biofuels targets.

The cost of food

I wrote recently about the huge fuel price rises and the impact that is having on low income families in fuel poverty. But there are of course other demands on household budgets, the biggest being food. Like fuel, the price of groceries has been rising rapidly: food inflation rose by 6% last year, while overall inflation was just 2.1%. And the cost of food is, in all likelihood, going to keep rising, sharply.

There are four reasons for this. The cost of fuel is the first - because not only do crops have to be transported; they have to be planted, tended, fertilised and harvested. It is four times more expensive to farm now because of fuel rises.

Fuel is also the second reason: the huge growth of the bio-fuels market. Corn-based fuels like Ethanol are diverting a huge acreage of farmland away from producing food and towards producing fuel. This is why cereals are becoming so expensive - there is simply not enough arable production being used for food any more. This is a classic example of supposedly virtuous green alternatives creating far greater problems than they solve.

The third reason is the poor harvests we've had this year - the Summer floods in this country; the drought in Australia, the impact of El Nino on the caribbean and America to name a few. This was an unusually bad year, and things should get better in 2008.

The fourth is the growth of the Asian economies. As people grow richer, they eat more, and in particular they eat more meat. 1 kilo of beef requires 8 kilos of grain which requires up to 8 tonnes of water.

Fuel costs may fall and harvests will recover but the damaging drive for biofuels and the growth of China and India are not likely to disappear. It's why food prices are forecast to rise by up to 50% in the next ten years.

Some sanctimonious middle-class environmentalists who have never had to worry about choosing between keeping the family warm and feeding them say this is a good thing: that we have been spoilt and should pay the true cost of our food. While lots of food is wasted by British shoppers; it tends not to be those who have to budget tightly who end up throwing food out - but those for whom food costs aren't an issue.

Why am I blogging about this? Because government, sooner or later will have to intervene. The government measures inflation by including things like electrical goods that are, in fact, becoming signfiicantly cheaper. Because of this, the inflation measure - which in turn is the basis for pay settlements - is falling significantly behind the everyday costs ordinary people are experiencing. And that isn't sustainable. The government needs to start measuring real inflation accurately - not just so pay keeps pace, but also because a 6% inflation rate would demand action.

Many of us are either wealthy enough to not notice, or not care too much about this inflation. But the least affluent - especially those on fixed incomes - are being horribly squeezed and it's going unnoticed. They'll will be forced to buy even poorer quality, less nutritious food - or worse, be forced to go without.

This is a serious problem that only a Labour government can be expected to address.

We need nuclear power AND green energy

The Government's announcement last week that it has decided to commission a new generation of nuclear power plants is one that I welcome.

To meet Britain's energy needs we do of course need to invest in renewable energy: I also welcome the plans for more offshore windfarms and (if the ecological issues can be overcome) the proposals for a tidal barrage across the river Severn.

Anyone who claims that you're either for the environment or pro-nuclear is being dishonest. Those who believe that the UK's entire energy contribution can be met from solar panels and wind turbines are mistaken, as prominent environmentalist George Monbiot who investigated this issue extensively has acknowledged.

Some have urged us to wait for carbon sequestration technology to be realised - yes, that will make a contribution when it arrives, but we're not there yet and we need to meet an energy gap that is just around the corner - 2015 is when our demand is forecast to outstrip supply. It's why the decision on nuclear is overdue: even on the most optimistic timescales the first new nuclear plant won't start working until 2019.

Some oppose nuclear on safety grounds; that despite far more coal miners or gas technicians being injured or killed in recent years. It has been over 20 years since Chernobyl: and that was a neglected, unsafe power station. British nuclear plants were built and maintained to far higher standards and technology has made new generation nuclear energy even safer still.

Others argue that the waste produced outweighs the benefits of zero-carbon emissions. I disagree, but even if sympathetic to that case, we can actually reprocess nuclear waste and get further energy from it. It's an expensive option, but no more so than most of the renewable alternatives.

We need a "basket" of energies to keep our country running: more renewables; combined heat and power plants which also help with our refuse problem and alongside these sources better home insulation, energy saving technology and more awareness of how much energy we each consume.

Mayor's light-bulb amnesty

You may have caught the announcement by London's Labour Mayor Ken Livingstone of a "lightbulb" amnesty; but may not have picked up on the specific details of the scheme. So here they are.

The amnesty takes place from this Friday, 11th January, and runs through to Sunday 13th January.

All you have to do is take one or two of your existing traditional lightbulbs to any of London's 28 B&Q stores - the nearest to Putney is the one in Smugglers Way just by Wandsworth Bridge (click here for a map) - and in return you'll receive free energy-efficient replacements courtesy of British Gas.

Each energy-efficient light bulb can save you up to £7 a year off energy charges and up to £60 over the lifetime of the bulb. Energy-efficient bulbs last 12 times longer than traditional bulbs and use around 80 per cent less energy. Many households now use large numbers of bulbs meaning savings of over £100 a year are possible for those that switch to entirely energy efficient bulbs.

For more about the scheme visit www.london.gov.uk/lightbulbs, phone 0800 512 012 or text 'bulb' followed by your full postcode to 62967.

Fuel poverty

Last week's double-digit fuel price rise by NPower - almost certain to be followed by similar increases by the other UK suppliers - is going to have a real impact on low-income households in Putney, Roehampton and Southfields.

Fuel poverty is when 10% or more of a household's income is devoted to paying fuel bills. There are, of course, other ways to measure fuel poverty - not least the pensioners whose homes go unheated because they can't make ends meet. So there are three measures I want to see our Labour Government take in response.

First, we need legislation to force all fuel providers to offer their very lowest fuel tariffs to everyone - not just those who pay by direct debit. The very poorest can't access such direct debit discounts because too often they don't have bank accounts. In fact, the poorest often end up paying the most because charges for electricity keys or coin-operated meters are usually the highest - and it isn't the billionaires of Chelsea who pay for their energy this way.

Second, I want the Winter Fuel Payment (WFP) increased this year. Do you remember the arcane and pernicious way the Conservatives used to administer the WFP - when temperatures had to fall below a specified amount for so many days in succession before Pensioners were permitted to apply for a measly amount of financial help? The consequence of their cruelty was older people dying because they could not afford basic levels of heating for their homes.

I'm proud that Labour scrapped the Tories' miserly formula, made the WFP universal and significantly increased it so that today can be worth up to the equivalent of £6 a week on a pension. But in light of the extra costs of fuel it's again time to consider raising the Winter Fuel Payment. And we need to consider whether the WFP should be made to all households in fuel poverty, not just to pensioners.

And finally I think we need to start measuring how successfully our energy companies are developing Britain's fuel independence. Simply put, I don't want the UK relying on Russian gas or Middle-Eastern oil and more - and it's not good enough for our energy companies to wail that they are hostages to the whims of the magnates who control these supplies. We need to generate far more of our own energy.

If you are a pensioner and haven't yet received your Winter Fuel Payment for this year, or in the past call the Helpline on 08459 15 15 15. You can also use contact them online and download a claim form here.

Bali must find practical ways to tackle climate change

One of the emerging divides in the debate about Climate Change is between those who believe that the problem should principally be addressed by draconian changes in the way we live, and those who believe incentives are far more likely to achieve the goals both sides seek.

Both sides are on display for all to see at this week's Bali Conference, which is the first step on a United Nations path to update the Kyoto Protocol.

I'm much more interested in practical ideas to tackle climate change than Domesday predictions from the fringe who only set back their own cause by overselling their case. So, for example, the news that the European Union is working on plans to provide billions of watts of solar power by building a string of solar "fields" in a ring across north Africa is exactly the sort of focus we should be providing.

Before anyone raises the spectre of EU Imperialism exploiting Africa, the plan is for two thirds of the electricity generated to be used in that continent with the added bonus that the process desalinates sea water. In other words, as well as power, Africa will also get clean drinking water. The solar fields will be in uninhabitable desert areas. And Europe will get something like 30 billion watts of power - for context Britain's entire electricity generating capacity today is 12 billion watts.

If all this sounds too good to be true, then the catch is that at the moment this clean, sustainable energy is hugely expensive - twice the cost of coal-power. It's no good for the Green movement to dismiss cost: most people are already stretched too thinly to be able to afford a doubling of their power bills, which will hit the poorest the most.

Nor should they have to - this isn't an insurmountable problem. Again, technology is the answer: more efficient means of storing and transporting the power and more powerful solar cells will bring the cost down and I'd far rather the government invest in and subsidise clean fuel than oil producers in order to level the playing field.

You can follow the Bali Conference via the UN's official website at www.unfcccbali.org.