Trials ahead for Truss: Some quick fixes and some longer term ones required NOW.

So it's just been announced that Liz Truss has been voted in as t6he new leader of the Conservative Party.

There are some things she needs to do immediately.

The first is to sort out the issue of energy bills. Right now, in the immediate term, she needs to remove VAT from energy bills and fuel. I say fuel, because there are still houses using fuel oil for heating that don't appear to be getting any rebates or any help like people on direct debit energy tariffs. So just cut the bloody VAT.

That will have an immediate effect in lowering the price and (in the short term) provide some relief.

Then she can crack on sorting things out for the medium term and then the longer term.

I'm not sure the Socialist "pay the suppliers the difference" proposal is a real, Conservative answer. It's robbing Peter to pay Paul, or more accurately spending today to claw back tomorrow.

In the medium term, increasing production from UK offshore gas fields will ease the burden and lower the price. Of course energy suppliers won't like the government telling them what to do, but I'm sure the threat of a windfall tax will whip the suppliers into line and get them producing gas. 

Somehow we need to do something about futures markets bumping up the price of resources artificially, and also removing the link between global prices and locally produced resources. If we produce our gas, then we should be getting it cheaper. How we do that, I leave to the financial wizards, but to me it seems ludicrous that we are paying the highest global price for something we extract from the ground right here in the UK. I expect something like a hideous amount of tax on exported gas and oil would be the answer.

In the long term, giving Rolls Royce firm contracts for their Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMR) would be a very good move. The technology developed should be attractive around the world. 

SMRs distributed around the country would go some way to replacing Russian gas-fuelled electricity production. Being modular, once developed the installation should be straightforward and relatively quick (in nuclear reactor terms).

In the very long term, we need to be funding alternative nuclear options like molten salt reactors. China is already going down this route. 

And looking at the longer term as well, the net zero policy needs to be binned. Instead it needs to be replaced with a more pragmatic approach that isn't as dogmatic and is affordable for the majority of the country.

It's frankly disgusting watching a government saying it is powerless to do anything, because it is hamstrung to an ideology that is actually working against the population at large.

By sticking with net zero when so many people are facing severe hardship makes the government essentially the enemy of the people. They can kiss their votes goodbye unless they do something and quickly. 

I'd even go as far as demanding recompense for the effects of the policy so far, such is my disgust at the incompetence of the energy policy that has been in play over the past decade. It's tantamount to negligent behaviour, allowing security of energy supply to be removed. 

UPDATE: It seems to me that the real crux of all this is the unchallenged export of resources out of the country. For instance my old soap box stance of global companies paying corporation tax outside the UK. Something similar is happening in the energy market: companies extracting resources in the UK and then selling them outside the UK at global market rates.

In both instances, the UK, the provider of the profits, money and the resources seems to come off worst and not receive any benefit at all. 

That has to stop.