ALTHOUGH I’m a £171 weekly state pensioner, plus small work pension, I never thought I’d need a food-bank.

Well, last week the shock suddenly arrived: my monthly direct debits for gas and electricity went up from £138 to £282, with extra increase to come in October.

I simply couldn’t  pay and was told to answer this crash by using my free ‘Smart Meter’ for ‘pay as you go’ monthly direct debit billing which only charges my actual use each month.

In other words, I’m offered a temporary solution, which ultimately will solve nothing.

To make things worse the £400 grant which every household gets now from Sunak’s leaving legacy is going to be sent in six monthly instalments of £66.

After listening in full to new PM Truss’s parliamentary statement – following Wednesday’s PMQs - on new proposals for a revised energy price cap at £2500 for two years (a big increase on the existing unaffordable £1971 cap) is to be provided from our public funds, not from the vast excess profits gifted to our giant energy generation and supply corporations, such as BP and Shell.

What a disastrous let down after keeping us all waiting for the unexplained unnecessary 8 weeks Tory leadership election chaos!

When all opposition parties are offering either a price cap freeze, paid  from these excess profits, or a big cut as in my Green Party’s case, this so-called ‘Truss tax’ is bound to cement-in recent anti-Tory big voter swings – over 24,000 recently in nearby Tiverton – and  massive loss of seats to the Liberal Democrats, or possibly Greens, in many other rural England ‘Blue Wall’ seats.  

Even Taunton’s present  Tory MP Rebecca Pow must be thinking  defeat in 2024 to yet another LibDem  return with well-proven Gideon Amos?

Astoundingly, before parliament’s wrath had settled over this Truss energy price rise debacle, voting disaster number two was announced: her determination to ignore climate and ecological emergencies’ threats to life itself and put Tory policy back to the fossil fuel madness of shale gas ‘fracking’ and big resurgence in oil and gas extraction from the North Sea. 

With the enormous recent public  surge, and all Councils’ policy making in favour of Climate Emergency Plans - especially against fossil fuels -  could  these now be the two final Tory party ‘death wishes’ which prove fatal?


Yours in sustained life on Earth,

Alan Debenham
Taunton