AS THE cost-of-living crisis escalates, new issues arise almost daily and last week it was unregulated fuels.

Now energy costs are rising across the board, but electricity and gas are at least subject to OFGEM regulations and can be capped; though the lifting of it has seen bills double and which is why Government must intervene.

But that’s not so for unregulated ones which include oil, LPG and other such types of fuel. No restrictions or controls apply to them. Now that’s a big problem not just in the north of Scotland but in rural parts here in the county. Many folk in isolated cottages or even living in the smaller villages aren’t on the gas network. Hence they require to use oil or LPG and the cost of them is rocketing.

I asked the Energy Department if they planned to regulate them to ensure that action to cap them and address pricing could be taken, but they declined. Yet many using those fuels are already in fuel poverty and failure to act will further harm them. This is a crisis and action is needed on all fuels to stave off poverty and hardship.

Another issue that arose was pesticides and post-Brexit trade deals. With the latter, the understandable fear has been on chlorinated chicken from the USA and lamb from Australia, both of which will harm consumers and threaten our farmers.

But pesticides, both fertiliser and in food, are equally a threat, as a campaign group was explaining to me. The UK currently operates on high standards which are a legacy from the EU. But that isn’t the same in the USA, Australia or India, all of whom the UK is seeking to strike deals with.

There, and especially in India, pesticides are used that are harmful to the environment and which threaten public health, as well as undermining our own farming industry. We’ve already seen a decline in insects that’s harmful to nature’s great circle of life and we cannot allow pesticides into the country that could eradicate what remains, as well as food which will harm us.