Even utility bosses are admitting that we need urgent action on energy bills

Letters to the editor: our readers share their views. Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Renationalisation of the utility companies is looking like an increasingly attractive solution (Getty/iStockphoto)

Kevin Hollinrake MP is right to warn of people “on the streets”, as is Bill Bullen, the boss of Utilita, to demand the prime minister be replaced (or, at least, the current one get off his holidaying behind and act).

But here’s the thing. With gas prices 11 times higher than the doubling that caused so many energy companies to go bust last year, a forecast trebling of the price cap by April and the vacuous government we currently enjoy, there’s likely to be unrest as people face starvation, freezing or homelessness. We’ll also see the transfer of revenues to profitable mega companies while the smaller utilities go to the wall.

I’m sorry to say that renationalisation of the utility companies is looking like an increasingly attractive solution to the national emergency this government seems unwilling, or unable, to grasp. 

Lights need to stay on. People need to keep warm, fed and housed in winter. Action is required to permit that. We need action, now.

Ian Henderson

Norwich

In praise of a well-fitted bra

I fully understand and respect Emma Dooney’s choice not to wear a bra. Men should just get over nipples. They have them too. The whole media thing is generally critical of women, and I hate that.

I wish I was young, slimmer and smaller breasted. I too would go braless!

I feel emancipated by well-fitted underwear. I spent most of my life as a 3E, then F then G. Running, going to the gym, ice skating, and working in a physical, male-dominated job all became accessible to me with my assets out of my face!

Candy Matterson

Southampton

Britain has a labour problem

In reply to Des Brown’s “higher quality jobs” letter yesterday, I don’t believe it is just people wanting higher-paid jobs of better quality. Although that is as true today as it was in my day, there are also many other reasons why there is a shortage of labour in Britain.

Like many baby boomers, I am now retired ( although I worked until I was 71). Additionally, since we left the EU, many foreign nationals who worked here previously decided that they either didn’t want to work in Britain anymore or could not legally stay.

If coupled with the theoretical benefits that higher education brings and the decreasing birth rate, then you have a perfect storm for the situation we find ourselves in now.

Successive governments and employers have not helped in the need for extra labour. Bad planning and policies (or none at all) have failed to produce the skills and people needed to replace retirees and those leaving the country. Having a higher-skilled job market is not as simple as politicians would have us believe. It is not a question of simply switching to higher-graded work, but more of a slow transition.

Britain has a problem – we have oodles of graduates with fewer degree requirement jobs. There are many graduates who are working for supermarkets as shelf-stackers and labouring in building firms.

Des Brown is right when he says people aspire to better-paid, quality jobs which challenge and provoke awareness, but British governments and employers have failed to provide the resources and planning for British workers to take advantage of these opportunities.

Keith Poole

Basingstoke

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Victorian throwback

The principal reason for the periodic flash flood pollution is our Victorian single-sewer drainage system. If you have your house rainwater running off to soakaways, or to a stream, you can get a reduction in your wastewater charges, but you will still have to pay for the treatment of water from road drains.

When I was studying drainage, many years ago, much stress was put on the separation of foul and surface water, with two separate sewage networks. What happened to this ideal?

Other countries, where flash flooding is the norm, seem to deal with this in ways that avoid the situation we are in. Given our embedded single-sewer system, I can see no easy solution to a problem that is going to recur ever more frequently in the years to come.

Leon Williams

Dover