Government has rightly granted permission for drilling in Rosebank oil and gas field – despite the inevitable howling

Fuel of our own

TO inevitable howls of protest from an army of Greta Thunbergs, the Government has rightly granted permission for drilling in the untapped Rosebank oil and gas field.

It will produce 500 million barrels of oil alone.

Every single one will be crucial for our needs during the years we will spend waiting for a full switch to green sources.

Even Labour now recognise that we will have to use fossil fuels until 2050.

Recklessly, they want to import it from other countries instead of drilling in our own waters.

This not only potentially leaves energy security at the mercy of rogue states like Russia.

It is also horribly anti-green to use polluting giant tankers to ship fossil fuels here where they already exist.

Labour’s plan is, if not quite literally, a case of sending coals to Newcastle.

We need to extract our own oil and gas as cleanly as possible — without having to beg it from abroad.

So senseless

OUR hearts go out to the parents of the 15-year-old girl senselessly stabbed to death in South London yesterday.

No mother or father should ever expect their child to be brutally murdered by another child on the way to school.

London is now awash with knives.

And Mayor Sadiq Khan has lost control of his city.

Knife crime in the capital is up by 16 per cent in a year.

Sixteen teenagers have now been killed in 2023.

Robberies with blades rose by a third.

Knife-point rapes and threats to kill involving knives are also rising.

All the platitudes in the world won’t stop the killing and the violence.

So what’s your plan, Mr Mayor?

 Cost not zero

AT last an idea of the possible cost of the dash to Net Zero.

A sobering report by think tank Civitas claims that in order to reach green goals by 2050, Britain will have to fork out £4.5 trillion.

Economist Ewen Stewart says that would mean £6,000 for every UK household every year for the next 27 years.

That would be the equivalent of a dozen Covid pandemics.

Labour’s climate change cheerleader Ed Miliband boasts about Net Zero helping to create generations of well-paid green jobs.

He never tells voters how much all of this might also hit them in their wallets.

No-one is arguing against Net Zero in principle.

But what we do want is for politicians to be honest about the cost.

And to cut out the dishonest rhetoric.