It was an hour I will never get back.

My friend was very proud of her new electric car, but driving around the place looking for a charging point took the shine off it quite a bit.

We eventually found one but were very late for our appointment and I’m not sure our hosts have forgiven us yet.

This was in the London area - and if there was a struggle there, how are we meant to survive here in the Helensburgh hinterland?

But if you drive, in an electric car or not, across the country to the east you will eventually hit a vast expanse of salt water where there still lie, above and beneath, vast swathes of energy – finite and infinite. And this bonanza is set to be exploited even further.

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My opprobrium to the current Prime Minister has nothing to do with his politics, rather his background. It seems more than a little odd and mammothly hypocritical to me that someone with his vast wealth should do anything other than lie on a beach or play golf all day. That he thinks he has the right to tell other people how to exist during a colossal cost of living crisis baffles me, when he has not a clue about a life sans silver spoon.

But I tell you what. Rishi Sunak is bang on about the North Sea.

The UK government has given the green light for 100 new licences to extract oil and gas from the North Sea in a move which has understandably outraged the environmental lobby.

From the autumn there will be a renewed effort to bring ashore vital fossil fuels. His claim that we will still be carbon neutral by 2050 remains to be seen, but in the short term this is news we should all welcome.

There’s no question in my mind that all big city public transport should be electrically-powered. And having inner-city fossil fuel free traffic zones with charges for vehicles which don’t comply? Bring them on.

Park and ride facilities, allowing commuters to leave their cars at the end station then take the train or bus into town, should be introduced everywhere. And large office blocks which are lit 24/7 the world over, but particularly in places like New York, should simply have the master switch turned off.

But at a time when the world’s oil comes from febrile areas such as the Gulf and Russia/Ukraine, with the hand of despots like Putin on the taps, it makes more than good sense that we continue to produce, use and sell our own until the last drop is gone.