Alex Phillips: We shouldn't have to choose between heating or eating as energy costs soar

Heating or eating.

It shouldn’t be this way in the 5th largest economy in the world - a country that spends £11 billion a year in foreign aid when its own citizens can’t keep warm and feed themselves.

Oh, it’s easy to blame Putin. But it's our energy policies over the past decades that have played right into his hands.

David Cameron made you pay wealthy landowners like his father in law to have wind turbines. Then the wind didn’t blow.

Theresa May said she would frack in 2015. By now perhaps we could be selling our gas, adding to the national coffers and spiking Putin’s plans.

Then the abject failure to invest in nuclear, allowing Chinese state backed companies in on critical national infrastructure before dramatically having to pull the plug, leaving many sites hanging in the balance.

And if you think things are bad now? Wait for the extreme targets we signed up to at COP as Boris showboated about going further than any other developed nation in cutting carbon.

And now Shell, the UK energy giant, has boasted the highest quarterly profits in 8 years, rewarding shareholders with a £6billion windfall it amassed as a result of being the largest trader in liquefied natural gas.

It's enough to make your blood boil, even if you can't switch on the kettle.