SOME people might think it is immoral to cut taxes for the richest people and lift the cap on bankers’ bonuses, when others are relying on food banks to feed their children and are terrified of the coming winter.

Some might also see a moral objection to scrapping the sugar tax and lifting the ban on junk food advertising before 9pm, when one in four 10 or 11-year-olds are now obese.

Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget may be welcomed by those earning more than £150,000 per year, and by the multinational food companies.

But it does little for those who aren’t on six-figure salaries, and even less for the health of our youngsters.

Maybe it will promote economic growth, as he claims, and the fact that the pound immediately slid to a record low against the dollar doesn’t matter. But it just seems morally wrong to me.

There was another announcement from the ‘new government’ last week that shouldn’t be overlooked, and that our children and grandchildren are likely to view as immoral in decades to come.

In 2019, the drilling for fossil fuels across our countryside was stopped. But now the party who changed their emblem to an oak tree have decided it can resume.

Fracking is short for ‘hydraulic fracturing’, and involves drilling holes deep into the earth and directing a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals into shale rock to release the gas inside.

And comedy Business, Energy and Climate Change Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg has now confirmed that firms can apply to the government for new licenses for fracking.

Of course shale gas is a fossil fuel and the last thing we should be doing is burning more of them.

Fracking also uses huge amounts of water, and transporting it to fracking sites will add an extra environmental cost.

In a letter to the prime minister more than 100 businesses urged the Government to prioritise energy efficiency, decarbonisation and renewables, and shift away from fossil fuels.

Whatever the answer to the energy crisis, it can’t be to exacerbate the climate crisis.

Fracking company Cuadrilla began work in Blackpool and 120 earth tremors were felt in the surrounding area.

Geologists are shaken up by this news, and warn they don’t yet know whether it’s safe.

That’s not to mention the damage to the appearance of the countryside. Even Flat Earth Society climate change deniers are against it.

Besides it would be at least 10 years before we felt any benefit. Consider the warning from one politician back in March this year. He said: “If we lifted the fracking moratorium, it would take up to a decade to extract sufficient volumes – and it would come at a high cost for communities.

“No amount of shale gas from hundreds of wells dotted across rural England would be enough to lower the European price any time soon.”

He was former business secretary, one Kwasi Kwarteng.

But it seems his successor Mr Rees-Mogg has no patience for the sceptics, declaring crossly: “It is sheer ludditery that opposes it.”

‘Luddite’ wasn’t a term I’d heard for years, since its replacement by ‘technophobe’.

The original Luddites were a group of skilled weavers and textile workers in the early 1800s who feared that the new machines would take away their jobs.

They began breaking into factories and smashing them, and named themselves ‘Luddites’ after Ned Ludd, who was rumoured to have wrecked a textile apparatus in 1779.

It’s not known if he actually existed. But he became the mythical leader of the movement.

The first major outbreaks of ludditery took place in 1811 in Nottingham, and spread across the countryside.

But it was brutally suppressed. In April 1812 a few Luddites were shot by soldiers and in the days that followed dozens were hanged or transported to Australia. I doubt whether today’s anti-frackers will meet the same fate.

Planning permission won’t be a problem for the fracking companies. The Government is considering making fracking sites ‘nationally significant infrastructure projects’, so that they are not subject to the usual planning process.

You can’t build an extension to your house without planning permission, but you may be able to drill for shale gas.

There is only one way you could persuade me that fracking is safe and worthwhile. Shale gas reserves have been identified in Somerset. So let the first of the drilling take place in North-East Somerset, Mr Rees-Mogg’s constituency.

If he has such faith in it, he should put his substantial money where his mouth is.

Or is he too much of a Luddite to allow it in his backyard?