FEW will have remained unmoved by images of innocent women and children hugging soft toys and pets as they escaped Mad Dog Putin’s blitzkrieg.
Big-hearted Sun readers immediately dug deep for our Red Cross Ukraine Fund as the shocking humanitarian crisis unfolded on our TV screens.
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It is part of our DNA to help terrified neighbours even as our own family finances are squeezed by events beyond our control.
But this Government must remember charity still begins at home.
As petrol hits a record £7 a gallon and household energy bills treble, it should begin with the urgent scrapping of Britain’s blinkered green-at-any-price obsession.
First to go should be Boris Johnson’s crazy net zero emissions target and the sly green energy taxes that pay for it.
Next we must uncap still abundant reservoirs of North Sea oil.
And, first thing this morning, we should lift the stupefying ban on shale oil and gas.
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Britain, starved of fuel, is literally standing on the source of its own salvation.
Beneath our feet lie trillions of cubic feet of accessible energy.
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Yet we have not only banned exploration but, in a grotesque act of vandalism, we will next week pour tonnes of concrete into the one viable shaft almost ready to go.
Britain is on the brink of a self-inflicted energy crisis, thanks to decades of wrong-headed decisions by governments of all parties.
We have been left high and dry by Labour and Tories — their arms twisted by Greens and Lib Dems.
We are pouring billions into “renewable” wind, solar and tidal energy sources. All wholly commendable.
One day, hydrogen fusion will also power our lights.
But we will rely on carbon fuels for decades to come, almost entirely drilled on the other side of the planet.
Meanwhile, we are wearing hairshirts and dancing to the tune of unaccountable Greta Thunberg.
Low-income families and pensioners are choosing to eat or heat while billionaire eco-minister Zac Goldsmith, a pal of Boris Johnson’s missus, sets the net zero agenda.
WEARING HAIRSHIRTS
It could have been so different.
We could by now be self-sufficient in clean shale gas.
Thanks to a few infinitesimal tremors — equal to a plane flying overhead — we are importing fuel fracked freely in the US.
Instead of digging our own high-quality coal, we are shipping inferior stuff across oceans at huge environmental cost.
Zealotry has left us exposed to volatile world prices and the through-the-roof cost of Vlad Putin’s belligerence.
Now, rattled by gunfire in Ukraine, we are scrambling to catch up. But it is far too late.
Taxpayers were already facing an average £250 hike in National Insurance to pay for NHS pandemic bills — a blow for families just emerging from lockdown.
This was swiftly overtaken by soaring inflation and a full-blown cost-of-living crisis for the poorest in our society.
Now with Ukraine — the world’s breadbasket — shut for business, we face steeper prices for a loaf, pasta and other basic foods.
Last week, gas, electricity and petrol prices shot up by the fastest rate in recent memory.
Motorists are counting out almost £100 in crisp twenties to fill their tank.
Inflation could crash through the ten per cent barrier for the first time in generations.
POLITICAL NEGLIGENCE
Heating and lighting bills are exploding — from £900 a year in 2020 to as much as £4,200 for a fixed one-year deal.
Nobody has that sort of spare cash.
Last night, former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith warned green madness risked costing the Tories power at the next election.
“We owe it to UK citizens to take a long hard look at the path to be taken,” he said.
“Policymakers must be honest and open about how much all this will cost and how much change to our everyday lives may be required.”
This is the price we are all paying for Putin’s war.
But it is also the price of political negligence and wilful ignorance over decades.
So far, Boris Johnson has had a good war.
All that could be swept away by public fury over this yawning new hole in our household finances.
Xi was complicit
AS far back as last November, Defence supremo Ben Wallace told me Vladimir Putin would invade Ukraine “while there is still snow on the ground”.
I wish I’d taken him more seriously!
But if Ben Wallace knew, and the Americans knew, so did China.
It is impossible to believe “Mad Dog” did not discuss his plans with President Xi Jinping at the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Which means Xi was complicit.
He probably assumed it would be a walkover, leaving Taiwan as easy pickings for his People’s Liberation Army at a later date.
Well, he knows better now.
