Contempt for troops

But no term better illustrates the contemptuous attitudes of new Labour and the top brass towards these lads.

These comfortable bureaucrats, for whom the greatest danger to their well-being is that they might nick themselves shaving, are lavish in their praise of the troops on the ground when they are trying to use sympathy for their situation to win public support for illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But, when it comes to ensuring that they have appropriate equipment or that the government accepts an obligation for their safety, as far as the suits are concerned, they can go to hell.

Soldiers' bereaved families are already used to ministers putting on their mock-serious faces, lowering their voices and prattling on in Parliament about troops making sacrifices to defend our rights and freedoms.

What are these rights worth if Defence Secretary Des Browne believes that the Human Rights Act should not apply to service personnel and that coroners should not be able to criticise Ministry of Defence serious failure if it has contributed to a soldier's death?

Too many military families already bear the grief of knowing that their sons could have survived conflict if penny pinching and incompetence had not denied them adequate protection.

New Labour pays more attention to the wishes of the White House and the transnational oil companies than to the well-being of Britain's troops.

The best way to maximise their safety is to bring them all home and to redefine their role as defensive rather than as global shock troops for corporate profits.

Fuel gimmick

BUSINESS Secretary John Hutton's spurious, damp-squib scheme to deal with fuel poverty is a typical new Labour gimmick that misses the point entirely.

Mr Hutton is entirely wedded to the myth that energy market competition holds down prices and that regulation keeps the energy companies on their toes.

And, if there is a problem with fuel poverty, then charity is the answer, with poor households applying for means-tested assistance to pay the bills or effect energy-efficiency measures.

The reality is that competition in the energy-market oligopoly is illusory and energy companies' profits continue to go through the roof.

The government is happy that the energy companies are co-operating, even though, at best, this gimmick will help just 100,000 homes out of the 4.5 million suffering from fuel poverty.

Privatisation is at the heart of the problem, with bills rising by 15 per cent annually and, with reduced oil and natural gas resources, no prospect of this ending.

Reliance on the market will not solve the problems of fuel poverty and ever-rising bills.

The energy companies must be taken back into public ownership and their resources used more rationally.

But there must also be a more determined approach to ensuring energy efficiency, especially in housing, with more combined heating and power schemes for new estates and greater government assistance for home insulation of all kinds.