Gas row sends shiver through icy Europe

[Chilperich]

I can't speak for other countries, but I suspect that their story is pretty much the same as ours.

Here in the UK far-away countries such as Russia and the Ukraine wouldn't have been able to hold us to ransom if the free-market economic geniuses who have held sway since the 1980s hadn't insisted on privatising our utilities in general and ending domestic town gas production in particular.

[Philidor]

Plus Britain's sitting on a mountain of coal, there's ever-more efficient clean coal technology, yet vast quantities of North Sea gas were burned in power stations to defeat the National Union of Mineworkers.