Best Of

Sounds a reasonable theory of the case.

https://x.com/MikeLevin/status/1999625620549161290
For those, who still had ANY doubts or hopes, let me explain the simple truth of our reality.

1) The only interest the current US administration has is making sure everyone in Trumps circle gets their profit. People in that circle are extremely cynical, possess no moral compass or empathy, and they have employed aggressive business practices throughout their lives. Nothing personal, just business.

2) Whenever some “humanitarian” deeds happen, they happen ONLY as a cover for getting a new source of profit. For example, the release of Belarusian political prisoners was done in exchange for desanctioning the BelarusKaliy* ; I can bet €100 that somebody from the Trump’s circle is already in touch with the company, and has arranged some very profitable scheme.

3) Same goes with all negotiations with Russia. Putin, according to Trump, is a typical man of his circle. One you can do business with, disregarding all these boring ethical and national security concerns. Again, I am pretty sure, the main content of the private “negotiations” has nothing to do with ensuring peace; it is purely business talk.

4) Russia is an immensely rich country in terms of resources. Many American (and quite some European) businessmen are waiting impatiently for any solution that gives them access to the Russian resources and money associated with.

5) People tend to live in denial when something so earth-shuttering as the large scale, open corruption in the US happens. They start searching for a second layer, say there are deeper forces in play. No, it is what it looks like: the people who currently rule the most powerful country on Earth, try to make as much profit as possible. No matter how...

*At the same time the Administation desanctions Belarus potash, it's imposing tariffs on the Canadian supply.

"Conservatives to scrap plans to ban new petrol and diesel cars by 2030"

https://www.itv.com/news/2025-12-14/conservatives-to-scrap-plans-to-ban-new-petrol-and-diesel-cars-by-2030

So the Tories who won't get a say before late 2028 at the earliest and probably 2029, will try to reverse something that will be 99% by then...

It's the sort of stupid headline that looks like they are doing something when really it's a complete nothingburger.

I don't think that is the point

There is an increasing demand both here and in the EU to delay the ban and Badenoch's call is much in line with a changing mood on this policy

The irony is I believe Euro 7 is going to increase petrol engine costs to the point that BEV's will be cheaper.

Euro 7 has stricter rules on unburnt hydrocarbons. The only (cost effective) way to meet them will be to reduce cylinder count. Unburnt HC emissions vary with cylinder radius but engine output is proportional to displacement and hence the square of the cylinder radius. This raises a marketing problem, as Mercedes discovered, because people will not pay shitloads of money for 4 (and fewer) cylinder cars regardless of whether achieve or even exceed performance parity.

ICE engines will hang around in hybrid form for a while but KB is just railing against the inevitable to catch the attention of GB News watching morons who hate BEVs on principle.

Meanwhile BYD and similar are eating the legacy automakers market. The market for ICE cars is dying. Its like trying to sell C41 and E6 film in the digital age.

For anyone with a driveway or other off-road parking where charging at home is an option, it absolutely is.

For people who needs public charging on the other hand, which includes tens of millions of people, the market is not dying.

Even before the foolhardy introduction of an EV per mile tax, it was already cheaper to drive an efficient petrol vehicle over a publicly-charged electric one, despite the fact that the petrol tax is almost entirely taxation and the EV charging cost is not. With the per mile EV tax, that disparity has grown even worse.

Should private transportation only be the preserve of those with off-road parking?

It's quite possible to have charging with on-road parking, I have seen it in the Netherlands

just upgrade street lights surely and stick plugs in them

Yes - it's a good idea, but that would be limited to a small fraction of streetlights (perhaps 10%), without replacement of the entire infrastructure.

The current free for charging is the difference between the headroom created by the move to LED bulbs, and the max rating of the distribution cables.

On the upside that also means that turning one or two spaces per street into charging points means that they can be set aside without too much distruption.

The near future for road transport is fully autonomous and electric. People are going to look back on conversations about “bans” for new hydrocarbon road vehicles with a nostalgic chuckle. It’s not illegal to ride about in a horse and cart but the only people my way who do are the local scrap metal merchants.

Only if we can sort out charging issues.

When it is considerably cheaper to charge a petrol vehicle than an electric one, as it is currently for those without off-road parking, people will act rationally according to their incentives.

If you want the transition to electric to proceed, and I do, then we need to tackle this problem, not just stick our heads in the sand and pretend it does not exist.

4 years is not long to sort out this issue for the tens of millions of homes without off-road parking, that currently have and require a car.

Don’t worry about it. There will be little economic incentive for those without off street parking to own their own fully autonomous EV.

That's the point. 🤦‍♂️

The alternative to owning their own EV, is owning their own ICE vehicle. As much as some people would wish away the private ownership of vehicles, it has not happened and is not going to happen within 4 years.

Unless we can tackle the fact it is considerably cheaper to fuel an efficient vehicle by petrol (despite that being almost all tax already), than it is via public-charging, which tens of millions of homes require, the market alone is not going to magic away that problem.

We need serious investment in a solution for charging, or the transition is not going to be completed. Saying I'm alright as I have at-home charging is not a serious solution for those who don't.

The Government have just introduced a BEV per mile tax that makes it even more expensive to drive electrically, even if you don't charge at home, and is doing absolutely nothing I can see to sort out charging issues nationwide to have them be resolved within 4 years if the 2030 cessation of ICE sales is meant to take effect.

I know you don’t understand what I’m saying. That’s ok. You will do once the crushing certainty of economic gravity is measured. Not long now.

I know exactly what you're saying, that taxis are going to displace private ownership.

Taxis are not a new invention, and yet people want their own vehicles anyway. For a plethora of very good reasons.

The idea that within 4 years that is magically going to change, let alone ever going to change, is just insanity and wishful thinking by you.

Roadside charging would be easier if residents had a maximum of one car each. I know there are good reasons why one car per household is not always practical, but why does anyone need more than one personal car?

Sometimes people have more than one because the vehicles serve different purposes, eg a personal car for driving and a van for work.

Sometimes there's more than one person in the household and each of them might need their own vehicle.

If there's 2 parents working in a household they might both need a vehicle. If there's adult children who have not yet been able to afford a home of their own yet, they might too on top of their parents vehicles.

Either way though, roadside charging solutions have not been rolled out yet, and I don't see any concrete plans in place to do so by 2030, which makes a mockery of the 2030 deadline for ICE. Either tackle the issue, or be realistic.

If there’s not a generalised autonomous EV in mass production for the UK market then you are right. But if there is, the issue of road side charging will become redundant. Even for privately owned robotaxis, it will be far cheaper and quicker to build charging hubs that your car drives itself to park and charge at overnight.

It’s going to take a while to replace the whole fleet of course. But by 2040 (?) we will likely have see a transformative impact on our urban road architecture. Rows and rows of parked cars in narrow streets sitting there doing nothing is unlikely to be a thing any more.

Is the 2030 deadline the right one? I dunno. But it might surprise you how quickly demand for brand new ICEs gets crushed when this product is widely launched.

When you think about it, it's actually pretty strange that people are allowed to store their cars on the public highway, thus obstructing other users of said highway. If I had my way, I'd ban the storage of cars on the road completely. This would both free up our streets and eliminate the need for roadside charging. However, I appreciate this policy might be a little difficult to push though politically, and I will keep quiet about it during my paper candidacy for the upcoming council elections.

Ukrainian air strikes are certainly escalating. But so are Russian ones. Given Trump cut off all US aid to Ukraine it could certainly be worse but I'm not optimistic about things right now.

Trump is trying to force Zelensky into an awful deal because he wants to make money from business with Russia. Russia is happy to keep fighting, because Putin believes his army is winning, so is sticking to its maximalist war aims. The Europeans are running around like headless chickens with no direction or cohesion.

It's a bad situation.

Ukrainian successes with long-range strikes, or the counterattack around Kupiansk, are welcome, but they're not enough to turn the tide. And they're kinda bittersweet because they show what would be possible if Europe found the resolve and sense of purpose to fully back Ukraine.

Instead we're choosing to do enough to keep Ukraine fighting, but not enough to help them win. It's such a big mistake.

Very sad news coming out of Australia. Of course the media won’t dare state the obvious that there’s a direct link with this massive increase in anti-Semitic attacks and the Gaza War .

And that Netenyahu and the IDF actions have increased anti-Semitism globally .

How utterly sick victim blaming.

The Gaza War was not caused by Netanyahu, it was caused by Hamas. It ended when Hamas surrendered and released the hostages, which could have happened at any point prior or if they had not done the attack the war would never have happened.

And now you blame a terror attack, not on the terrorists, but the people who went to war to defend themselves after Hamas atrocity?

You are sick.

Jeez stop the lecturing . I never victim blamed and you’d have to be a fruit fly to not connect the Gaza War with increased anti -Semitism . No one said Israel didn’t have a right to react to the October massacre . If you think the response was proportionate then really there’s nothing more to say !

The poster calling you sick reacted to the destruction of Gaza and its population with "Good. Well done, Israel".

What destruction of its people? The people are still there.

The destruction of Hamas on the other hand was entirely merited. The second Hamas surrendered, the war ended.

An awful lot of them are not and most of those that are have lost everything. Oct 7th was an atrocity. The response was an atrocity. We have another today in Sydney. I'm not interested in hearing attempts at justification for any of it.