In praise of Irn Bru

Gasbags

Sir: Seb Kennedy tells us that, like Covid, our looming energy crisis came from China (‘Power grab’, 9 October). Its roots are nearer home. The capitulation of successive governments to doom-mongers such as Insulate Britain and the catastrophists who are due to fly to Glasgow in a few weeks for COP26 is just as much to blame. Britain has sufficient shale gas reserves to last hundreds of years, yet in the face of a few illegal demonstrations, the government abandoned the opportunity to secure gas supplies for generations to come. It caved in to those who opposed planning permission for shale mines in Lancashire and elsewhere.

The naivety of aspiring to net zero without a realistic and costed transition plan is now hitting home. Perhaps COP26 presents the opportunity to tone down the rhetoric and adjust policies to reality. I’m not counting on it.

Cameron Rose

Edinburgh

Turn to tide

Sir: The UK no longer has much oil or natural gas but we are surrounded by water which moves continuously, powered by the gravitational effects of the sun and moon. Harnessing this can produce electricity without poisoning the air or creating dangerous waste. Nor can Mr Putin interrupt the movement of celestial bodies. I have yet to hear a cogent reason for not using tidal power as the main way to heat our homes and power industry.

Robert Walls

Forgetting the flock

Sir: The church closers’ charter boringly titled GS 2222 (‘Power to the parish’, 25 September) is not the only smoking gun when it comes to the archbishops’ protestations that there is no threat to the parishes. My diocese, Leicester, has this very week been asked to approve an uncosted, unstaffed, untrialled scheme whereby some 234 parishes will be subsumed into 20-25 giant minster areas, which may be lay-led.