Don’t fall for this new phone scam over energy crisis – Yorkshire Post Letters

NEWS of a rise in energy prices has fuelled a new scam. The other morning “Chris” rang me, claiming to be from the Government’s loft insulation department. He kept speaking over my repeated demands of “how did you get my number?”

I rang off and tried the ‘Which’ complaints system. It started with straightforward requests for relevant information and reached what I assumed would be ‘send’.

Alas no; I was shunted into the morass of Telephone Preference Service ‘cookies’ and resorted to brick-chewing. I understand that the TPS is funded by the telephone sales industry; a prime example of gamekeepers turned poachers? “Chris” rang back later, now as “your local energy consultant”. I rang off.

The 1471 service claimed that both calls were from a Bournemouth number. I won’t be ringing it, but how much longer must we wait for Westminster/Ofcom to take decisive action?

From: Jerry Diccox, Main Street, Darley.

THE most appropriate response to the current “fuel crisis” would be for the Government to hasten the transition to electric vehicles.

Ministers can do so by dramatically and immediately increasing incentives, installing many, many more charging points and introducing funding mechanisms which redistribute the relatively high capital cost of EVs (currently a strong disincentive to many) into a longer-term running cost.

It beggars belief that we are still so dependent, despite what the scientists are saying, on fossil-fuelled tankers driving fossil fuels all over the country to be turned, wastefully, into carbon dioxide.

In the same week we learn that in a different part of the economy, a shortage of carbon dioxide rather than an excess constitutes a problem worthy of Government intervention.

From: Mick Walton, Mercel Avenue, Armthorpe, Doncaster.

HEARING the Government was paying a US company to reopen a plant at Billingham due to the CO2 shortage took me back 30 years ago to when I worked for ICI there.

It’s a pity so many of the industrial plants in this country are owned by foreign companies. When problems such as these come forth, it would be much cheaper to overcome them if we, ourselves, owned the infrastructure back-up.

The short-termism of government doesn’t help.

From: Mr DS Boyes, Upper Rodley Lane, Leeds.

WITH the HGV driver shortage now affecting not only food suppliers but fuel deliveries to garage forecourts, this should be a wake-up call to the Government to make proper post-Brexit plans. The overall problem is very longstanding.

I speak as a former driver in the 1960s when you just got a job as a driver, and learned on the job, working up from small, medium to large vehicles.

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