To buy a small one (for example a Fiat 500 electric) I would need £26k to £34k. Plus - I think - £1,500 for a home charger inc installation.
Or I could by a small petrol (e.g. the excellent Hyundai i10) for £15k+.
So I'm not buying an electric car.
People keep saying the EV prices are going to fall. My question is do those pushing EVs really want them to?
I mean, if EVs stay eyewatering costly then this will price many out of the market when petrols become banned. Maybe this is part of the anti-car agenda? Maybe I'm cynical?
If they really expect EVs to come down to the price of an equivalent petrol then great I will buy one as soon as this happens but the government shouldn't ban petrols until this happens.
I bought my Renault Zoe for £12k. Home charger £800.
Brand new?
According to Renault, prices brand new start at £30k! You can buy an equiv petrol for almost half that.
To buy a small one (for example a Fiat 500 electric) I would need £26k to £34k. Plus - I think - £1,500 for a home charger inc installation.
Or I could by a small petrol (e.g. the excellent Hyundai i10) for £15k+.
So I'm not buying an electric car.
People keep saying the EV prices are going to fall. My question is do those pushing EVs really want them to?
I mean, if EVs stay eyewatering costly then this will price many out of the market when petrols become banned. Maybe this is part of the anti-car agenda? Maybe I'm cynical?
If they really expect EVs to come down to the price of an equivalent petrol then great I will buy one as soon as this happens but the government shouldn't ban petrols until this happens.
I bought my Renault Zoe for £12k. Home charger £800.
Brand new?
According to Renault, prices brand new start at £30k! You can buy an equiv petrol for almost half that.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
Steady on. There is a world of difference between town and country. My village has had its public transport cut harshly - 4 buses a day to the nearest town, 1 bus a day to a different town. No buses at all at the weekend, none that even head towards the big city.
There are some things that could be done to reconnect us - a few small diversions of longer bus routes into our village has been requested and refused. We have been told that to demonstrate demand we need to use dial-a-bus.
And what is dial-a-bus? A taxi! You pay a bus fare, the council subsidises the taxi fare, it is pitiful but its all we have. And many rural places have less than we do. So the car is it. Far from being the enemy of humanity, it is the only thing that makes rural living actually possible.
Anecdotally - I'm OK with driving, and dislike buses for practical reasons - because I have long legs they are uncomfortable, and you can't rely on them turning up. But when I lived in London the public transport was so good that even I could see it was just silly to have a car, so I didn't. I think that's a widespread subconscious view - people love cars because the alternative is rubbish. Make it un-rubbish and they will gradually change.
Absolutely for towns and cities - public transport, walking and cycling are the priorities. But in the sticks? It would be crazy to adopt an "if we create it they will come" approach as we'd have a lot of empty buses.
I live in New Pitsligo. We have a handful of buses to Fraserburgh a day, and a single one to Banff - with none at all at the weekend. The big bus routes come from Aberdeen - to Peterhead, Fraserburgh, Macduff & Banff etc. There just aren't enough people in villages away from these routes to justify running them. If anything the "dial-a-bus" taxi makes more sense.
For my kids it would be brilliant if the Aberdeen - Fraserburgh route was diverted to run through New Pitsligo. But its 10 extra miles and likely 15 added minutes...
I mean, why shouldn't people in the sticks have the option for public transport? If buses aren't feasible then smaller local railways. Cars are not the only way to do this. I stayed in Devon with a partner years ago in the sticks - the nearest shop was a 30 minute walk away and you had to drive as no bus went near it often enough. I don't think that's acceptable.
So what are the economics of a bus being there to transport you from your place to the shop - and then back again? What are the environmental considerations?
I am pro bus and pro public transport. Stridently so in urban areas. But what you are proposing just isn't possible or frankly sane for a number of reasons.
I'm pretty relaxed about a lack of public transport in rural areas. Motoring taxation should be set up to help that 20% of the population out (replace with congestion charging, for example).
It's the 80% in urban areas that we should focus on, and the low density of our housing stock in those areas that make public transport less efficient. The spamming of detached houses with two parking spots and a garage needs to end, from both a congestion and housing supply point of view.
IMO that is problematic for a number of reasons.
- Many people *cannot* have a driving license, eg for medical reasons. - Just under 30% of adults do not have a driving license. - 40% of disabled people do not have a full driving license. - Lack of public transport incentivises people (especially elderly) to deceive the DVLA when eg eyesight deteriorates to keep a driving license. That results in deaths and injuries on our roads. I looked into that a couple of weeks ago, and whilst comprehensive data is not collected (eg sight testing of drivers involved in KSI accidents is not routine) media reports of short sighted drivers (eg can only read a number plate at 5-10m or less) mowing people down are not uncommon.
I'd suggest that it is not really OK to decide that all these millions of people should be forced to live in urban settings.
A village does not need a bus service every 10 minutes - it needs one frequent enough and with long enough hours, for people who need public transport to get where they need to go, and have time to do what they need to have done when they are there.
eg Two buses a day out and back to the local town which only allow an hour there is not enough.
I'd say it's about the need to give sufficient options / choices, and a degree of subsidy is reasonable. Part of that is making life without a motor vehicle a viable choice, which is where teh need for social and political change comes in.
Fair enough! You make a good point - not everyone in rural areas can drive.
I big loss to the Highlands was the postbus. I wonder if a publicly funded integrated banking, postal and transport system might work in super remote parts of the country.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
To buy a small one (for example a Fiat 500 electric) I would need £26k to £34k. Plus - I think - £1,500 for a home charger inc installation.
Or I could by a small petrol (e.g. the excellent Hyundai i10) for £15k+.
So I'm not buying an electric car.
People keep saying the EV prices are going to fall. My question is do those pushing EVs really want them to?
I mean, if EVs stay eyewatering costly then this will price many out of the market when petrols become banned. Maybe this is part of the anti-car agenda? Maybe I'm cynical?
If they really expect EVs to come down to the price of an equivalent petrol then great I will buy one as soon as this happens but the government shouldn't ban petrols until this happens.
I bought my Renault Zoe for £12k. Home charger £800.
Brand new?
According to Renault, prices brand new start at £30k! You can buy an equiv petrol for almost half that.
That's not the point. My point would be equally valid if I compared a one year or two year old EV with an equivalent petrol of the same age.
But if the point is that EV is unaffordable then a £12k Zoe shows that's not true.
And the fact there is a thriving second hand market for these cars also shows that demand is not a problem. We need more supply, which if course is much more likely to happen if OEMs have predictable targets for going 100% EV.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
I agree with a few of those and in some cases would go further. But this is quite the volte-face and he has not prepared the ground politically. What affect will this have on the polls, both on the policy's own merits (which I kinda like) and the impression of a PM throwing-out policy initiatives at random (which i definitely don't)
Going by the YouGov live poll so far Sunaks u-turn won’t harm the Tories and could help them .
The u-turn currently evenly split .
A strong majority of voters do though support the 2050 net zero target .
That suggests no immediate advantage, and the danger of alienating that "strong majority" unless he can convince them the move is consistent with the 2050 target.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
So fuck business has turned into fuck the future...
There is Good News! These new policy ideas have about as much relevance as Hitler's views on how he would rebuild Berlin as the Soviets destroyed it around the bunker.
The Tories won't be anywhere near power to do any of this, and I expect that with so much momentum already existing that at best they will trying and failing to resist the car industry and others. Expect more "I'm in government not in power, why won't Keir Starmer Do Something!!!" letters.
Presumably car firms that have been investing on the basis of 2030 will be pretty pissed off as well.
As a provincial science master, I take comfort in not really understanding business, but I can't help wondering if Rishi understands even less than I do.
The interesting question is why did Boris advance this target from 2035 to 2030?
2035 is the Europe wide target so I have no idea why the UK is 5 years earlier
Because car manufacturers are going to beat the 2030 deadline, some by several years.
This is anti-green posturing, with no basis in what is going on in the real world. You must be delighted.
Jim Pickard 🐋 @PickardJE · 19m is he really suggesting that delaying green reforms will make Britain a better place “for our children”?
This type of commentary is completely divorced from the economic concerns of the average voter. For some people's children it might mean the difference between being able to afford a car and not being able to afford one.
Yes, the banning of new ICE cars would have pushed down the price of used ICE cars. So you are right - but in the opposite way to that you are intimating.
The banning of new ICE cars, is way likely to lead to them going up in value used, as a consequence of the constraint in supply. We saw this in 2021 and 2022 thanks to the pandemic.
Which is why the policymakers are determined to implement ULEZ everywhere, to stop people holding on to their last car and keep it running, leaving petrol as a weird enthusiast thing that people do on Sundays, as they do with horses at the moment.
What is really worrying the Germans is a potential EU ban on manufacturing petrol-powered cars, for export to countries that buy lots of cars and aren’t interested in banning petrol.
Except ULEZ is about air pollution in cities, and the transition away from ICE cars is about reducing carbon emissions (though helps a bit with the former).
A sensible policy would be to allow low emission but air polluting cars to keep driving outside of cities. Which is basically what the policy is at the moment 👍
That’s a polite way of telling people to either buy an EV or get the bus. As people start to realise that this is what’s happening, expect public opinion to swing considerably.
Of course everyone is in favour of ambiguous “net zero” pledges, provided they’re not personally affected.
It's happening naturally though. 20% of all new cars being sold are already EVs. By 2030, most large manufacturers will have been selling EVs only for several years.
Second hand petrol cars will be around for another 15 - 20 years. It's a pretty chill revolution, as they go. 66 years between flight and the moon.
This is a weird issue for the tories to go culture wars on as the future of cars is largely shaped by global commercial pressures that are outside their control. People who get an EV generally like them. Lots more people don't give a fuck one way or the other so the target audience for this nonsense is a small group people with an ideological attachment to ICE cars.
Our hybrid is great. Really like it. It is a big improvement on the ICE car we had before.
But I do think this is sensible from the govt as the infrastructure is just not there to support the rollout of EV's and unless they really got their skates on with regards to charging points and energy generation it won't be there in time for 2030.
I already get limited, at times, at the rate at which I can charge my EV. That will only get worse.
The infrastructure thing is I imagine the reason that the timescales have been moved from 2030 to 2035. People keep talking about EVs being 20% of all cars sold but the installation of new communal charging points continues at a snails pace. A company like I work for should be installing thousands of EV charging points each year, so far in 2023 we have installed 4. We work for Councils who publish documentation that they will be carbon zero by 2040, yet the projects such as rewires that we are quoting on for them do not include EV charging at public buildings such as schools, museums etc. or even their own works depots.So much talk, so little action.
Easily answered, given how local government funding has been run down. It's not social care or some other *immediate* legal obligation? Forget it.
In any case, schools and museums don't currently provide petrol for the public. (There is a good case for them providing EV charging for their own vehicles, of course. Edit: but that assumes they have any.)
Schools,museums and other public building are the ideal location for an EV charging point as you will need something to do for the hour it takes to charge the vehicle.
LAs are certainly spending fortunees advertising their green credentials and then not doing anything about it.
Thanks - interesting thought. It would fit into the commercial activities of the average museum. Bookshop, cafe, room hire, so the budgetary setup and sales desk will be there. But schools, perhaps not so much.
There's also the point that (re Nerys's 'something to do for the hour it takes to charge the vehicle') that there are EVs out now that will get to 80% charge within 18 minutes (e.g. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-02/cars-on-hyundai-s-electric-platform-can-charge-80-in-18-minutes - there are more recent videos etc showing this actually in action) The assumption would be that by 2030 that charging time will be reduced further. There's a big need for infrastructure roll out and it does make sense to pop it in places that people go anyway, such as supermarkets, car parks, but by the time that all you can buy is an EV then it's likely that a top-up at a dedicated charging station* is going to take a comparable time to putting fuel in an ICEV.
Now, there will be second hand EVs with longer charging times at that point, but there will also be plenty of second hand ICEVs too, so people can choose - those without home charging might stick with ICEVs longer as a long-charge EV without home charging may not be viable, depending on use and existing patterns of visits to locations with chargers with long enough duration to make that convenient.
*will be interesting to see whether these will exist, given the other options. But given that petrol stations are all, pretty much, convenience shop hosts anyway, I'd guess they probably will, perhaps in smaller numbers.
There are 3 kinds of charging.
One is basically plugging it into the equivalent of a wall socket - take a whole day to charge a serious amount.
There is charging from a specialist unit, still compatible with a domestic electricity supply. It would take hours to completely
The last is "Supercharging" - charging as fast as possible. Your filling station replacement - requires serious infrastructure.
Providing the first costs very little. Providing the second costs thousands. The last is really only sensible as as a pump replacement.
Sure. Pump replacement is the viable setting for these, mostly. And petrol stations will not survive without implementing them - the convenience store is not going to hold people for the time taken for the middle rank chargers, nor do they have the space to allow sufficient throughput to make it viable.
So, fast chargers at major sites such as motorway service stations. Probably also at existing filling stations, but it's not impossible that there's a more viable alternative in e.g. supermarkets, work places, other car parks, on street etc. Will be interesting to see how that plays out.
ETA: the possible 'more viable alternative' being the slower, easily implemented on existing supplies, chargers
Tesla are steadily taking over chunks of the parking at pretty much all motorway services.
The other place they seem to like is the carparks in business parks.
To buy a small one (for example a Fiat 500 electric) I would need £26k to £34k. Plus - I think - £1,500 for a home charger inc installation.
Or I could by a small petrol (e.g. the excellent Hyundai i10) for £15k+.
You can get a second-hand Jag for about £5-10K and posh people will want to do rude things with you in [heavily redacted] ways. Or so I am unreliably informed.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
Going by the YouGov live poll so far Sunaks u-turn won’t harm the Tories and could help them .
The u-turn currently evenly split .
A strong majority of voters do though support the 2050 net zero target .
That suggests no immediate advantage, and the danger of alienating that "strong majority" unless he can convince them the move is consistent with the 2050 target.
Interesting point here too:
"And from our own research, lots of the public will assume the reason the target has been watered down is because the government is too incompetent to meet it"
I've just booked at 6 hour train across Australia for £5. The tram network I'm using is the largest in the world, and is capped at £5 per day. I can cycle through the whole city either through full-fat LTNs or on segregated cycle ways. The housing stock is almost entirely one or two storeys high.
A point of order
A 6 hour train journey in Australia is like a commute here
We travelled on the Ghan from Adelaide to Alice Springs and it took 21 hours
To buy a small one (for example a Fiat 500 electric) I would need £26k to £34k. Plus - I think - £1,500 for a home charger inc installation.
Or I could by a small petrol (e.g. the excellent Hyundai i10) for £15k+.
So I'm not buying an electric car.
People keep saying the EV prices are going to fall. My question is do those pushing EVs really want them to?
I mean, if EVs stay eyewatering costly then this will price many out of the market when petrols become banned. Maybe this is part of the anti-car agenda? Maybe I'm cynical?
If they really expect EVs to come down to the price of an equivalent petrol then great I will buy one as soon as this happens but the government shouldn't ban petrols until this happens.
Two markets: the west, which is going EV at a huge pace, and the rest, where ICE will still be on offer for ages.
The problem with small EVs currently is that they are designed and built by legacy car makers who need to fit vehicles to what they have. An example being the Peugeot e208. Built on a platform designed for ICE and EV which means an engine under the bonnet and all the ancially gubbins such as a fuel tank and exhaust.
So the EV 208 is a compromise, having to create a motor-invertor stack to be assembled like an engine and dropped into the engine bay. More parts, crap packaging, expensive manufacturing. So it costs more.
An EV doesn't need any of that. Motor or motors on the axle or in the wheel hubs, move the invertor and other electronics and you have few parts packaged neatly. More space, less parts, less assembly. Lower cost.
But if you are Stellantis, and make a bomb from servicing and repair, why build something that is low cost that makes you no money ongoing? So we need to wait for China to accelerate more cars like the MG4 and Ora Cat.
Happily, chunks of the rest (of the world) will be sold old tech ICEs for a while, and many of those drive on the left. Unless we accelerate our EV adoption we will be stuck driving round in cars more aimed at 2nd and 3rd world consumers.
The Wales and Net Zero issue seem to stem from one problem - cars. I think cars break peoples' brains. The individually owned car is a creation of neoliberalism and is emblematic of it - the hyper individualised space that you own and can give you hyper mobility and is forever tied to oil production. When cars are sold to you they are not selling you an item, they are selling you the concept that you can be free; free to travel where and when you like, free to take things with you, free from home.
But cars are, in my view, a driver of atomisation. Driving and interacting with other drivers has the weird sensation of making everyone else a threat (because if they aren't driving safely then you could crash) and an annoyance (if they drive too safely they prevent you being free and driving how you want). You don't see the other driver as much as you see the other car - so immediately you separate the will of the driver from a human and assign it to an object, the car, dehumanising them. The internal environment of the car is fake and highly regulated - increasingly you don't have to experience the wind or noise or bumps or anything from the outside environment. You are cozened from the world, kept comfy from anyone else, you can control that space and not be influenced by anyone else whilst in it.
The process to get to mass driving also atomised society. London and most urban centres had miles of tramways, the country had significantly more local train and bus stops, and "15 minute cities" were just considered the norm because you would have a local grocer, butcher, post office etc. Transport infrastructure was purposely dismantled in a manner to increase car sales, and when everyone has a can that distorted peoples' idea of time and distance to lead to the creation of huge shopping centres and supermarkets, which led to the first wave of high street death (pre mass internet shopping). Whether it is apocryphal or not, the idea attributed to Thatcher that if you're "25 and using public transport, you're a failure" is a below surface feeling in the UK - the car is a symbol of success and freedom that is necessary to feel good.
That mass car production is unsustainable (even if we went fully electric) is neither here nor there for people - cars stay the solution. With every year that goes by traffic gets worse, the proposed solution of widening roads or building more lanes occurs, and yet whenever more roads appear the traffic is still bad. Because when you have hundreds of thousands of people, all making basically the same journeys with small variations on leaving point and destination, the movement of traffic cannot be efficient the smaller you make the travelling unit. If the same resource was put into trains or buses, I think we could have an amazing system of transport that allows most people to get where they want, when they want just more efficiently than individual car ownership currently allows.
The car is the enemy of humanity.
Steady on. There is a world of difference between town and country. My village has had its public transport cut harshly - 4 buses a day to the nearest town, 1 bus a day to a different town. No buses at all at the weekend, none that even head towards the big city.
There are some things that could be done to reconnect us - a few small diversions of longer bus routes into our village has been requested and refused. We have been told that to demonstrate demand we need to use dial-a-bus.
And what is dial-a-bus? A taxi! You pay a bus fare, the council subsidises the taxi fare, it is pitiful but its all we have. And many rural places have less than we do. So the car is it. Far from being the enemy of humanity, it is the only thing that makes rural living actually possible.
I live semi rurally - in a village orbiting a small city that has good links into London. The public transport is substandard - if it was made better then more people could live without a car. I think people prefer cars to public transport because they associate them with being crap in comparison - change that and we're halfway there.
I think we can make some exceptions - new parents should be allowed a car for a few years, those with specific disabilities or health requirements that need specialist space or constant trips to the hospital. But generally speaking I think the car based society we have built is bad.
Your sentiments are deeply authoritarian and faintly sinister.
Is car ownership an inalienable right? A tool that has existed barely 100 years? Like, I can understand that the idea of the individual car was appealing at some point in history, but as an experiment I think it is a complete failure. It has completely warped how we view all infrastructure - housing, shopping, work, school; all wrapped around the individual driver. They are always going to be extractive - whether it's oil or lithium, the resources to make new cars are exhaustible. Active measures were taken to destroy the infrastructure we already had in part to create car dependency - why was it not authoritarian when those were destroyed?
People look at a world that has been designed with the car in mind and say "wait a minute, if you got rid of cars, life would be shit". Yes - because of the choice to revolve everything around cars. Invest in a world without cars, and it can be positive.
Over the course of centuries, humankind has grown ever more prosperous and free. We will continue to do that, despite the odd stutter introduced by those who don't value freedom or prosperity, and want to shut it off for everyone.
It is a Ponzi Scheme. And we are realising this, slowly but surely.
Bollocks. We will keep moving forward, and by the time we're at capacity here, there will be other planets.
By the time we've totally fucked up this planet, we'll have the technology to go and fuck up other planets as well.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
This is often my argument now - we have a party listening to a large proportion of older voters / older ERGers in the party without acknowledging there’s a real possibility lots of us under 40s will never “become conservative”.
Steady on. There is a world of difference between town and country. My village has had its public transport cut harshly - 4 buses a day to the nearest town, 1 bus a day to a different town. No buses at all at the weekend, none that even head towards the big city.
There are some things that could be done to reconnect us - a few small diversions of longer bus routes into our village has been requested and refused. We have been told that to demonstrate demand we need to use dial-a-bus.
And what is dial-a-bus? A taxi! You pay a bus fare, the council subsidises the taxi fare, it is pitiful but its all we have. And many rural places have less than we do. So the car is it. Far from being the enemy of humanity, it is the only thing that makes rural living actually possible.
Anecdotally - I'm OK with driving, and dislike buses for practical reasons - because I have long legs they are uncomfortable, and you can't rely on them turning up. But when I lived in London the public transport was so good that even I could see it was just silly to have a car, so I didn't. I think that's a widespread subconscious view - people love cars because the alternative is rubbish. Make it un-rubbish and they will gradually change.
There is a difference between making the alternative un-rubbish and making eg rural, or semi-rural ( @148grss) public transport equivalent to that in London.
It's comparing apples and chalk.
I think that infrastructure should be designed such that a bus stop is never more than a 10 minute walk away, you shouldn't have to wait more than 15 minutes for a bus, and that local amenities (shops, doctors, schools, hospitals, libraries etc) should all be accessible by bus. I also absolutely hate the anti homeless design of bus stops with slanted benches or irregular armrests that also make it massively uncomfortable for people who need to sit whilst waiting.
Do you have any idea how much that would cost? The number of bus drivers it would require?
If it's equal to the manufacturing, upkeeping and selling capacity of cars and roads primarily for cars in the UK - I'm okay with that. Again - I accept this is utopian and not necessarily practical, but I would prefer that to be the utopian vision than the atomising vision of everyone in their own 4 seater buzzing around roads and motorways like beetles.
It's not utopian to divert so much human energy to pointlessly driving empty buses around the countryside.
There's a utopian vision where you have very good public transport for urban areas, where efficiency, convenience and freedom are maximised, but it simply isn't possible for rural areas.
I can't think of much that would be more soul-destroying than being a rural bus driver hoping that on this time round the route you'll actually pick up a passenger, instead of completely wasting your time. How is that utopian?
This, as mentioned by Cyclefree, in the article is just staggering
Surely there has to be some comeback for the auditor for making, basically, untruthful statements to the high court or will it just be a case of "lessons will be learned" and kick it into the long grass again.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
Global problems need global solutions. Democracy and "progress" is the problem.
So let's have an overarching world government comprising naturalists and scientists, run strictly on non democratic lines making decisions for the benefit of the planet, non-human animals and the rest of life.
That won't happen so perhaps a better virus given there is no God to smite us...
Steady on. There is a world of difference between town and country. My village has had its public transport cut harshly - 4 buses a day to the nearest town, 1 bus a day to a different town. No buses at all at the weekend, none that even head towards the big city.
There are some things that could be done to reconnect us - a few small diversions of longer bus routes into our village has been requested and refused. We have been told that to demonstrate demand we need to use dial-a-bus.
And what is dial-a-bus? A taxi! You pay a bus fare, the council subsidises the taxi fare, it is pitiful but its all we have. And many rural places have less than we do. So the car is it. Far from being the enemy of humanity, it is the only thing that makes rural living actually possible.
Anecdotally - I'm OK with driving, and dislike buses for practical reasons - because I have long legs they are uncomfortable, and you can't rely on them turning up. But when I lived in London the public transport was so good that even I could see it was just silly to have a car, so I didn't. I think that's a widespread subconscious view - people love cars because the alternative is rubbish. Make it un-rubbish and they will gradually change.
Absolutely for towns and cities - public transport, walking and cycling are the priorities. But in the sticks? It would be crazy to adopt an "if we create it they will come" approach as we'd have a lot of empty buses.
I live in New Pitsligo. We have a handful of buses to Fraserburgh a day, and a single one to Banff - with none at all at the weekend. The big bus routes come from Aberdeen - to Peterhead, Fraserburgh, Macduff & Banff etc. There just aren't enough people in villages away from these routes to justify running them. If anything the "dial-a-bus" taxi makes more sense.
For my kids it would be brilliant if the Aberdeen - Fraserburgh route was diverted to run through New Pitsligo. But its 10 extra miles and likely 15 added minutes...
I mean, why shouldn't people in the sticks have the option for public transport? If buses aren't feasible then smaller local railways. Cars are not the only way to do this. I stayed in Devon with a partner years ago in the sticks - the nearest shop was a 30 minute walk away and you had to drive as no bus went near it often enough. I don't think that's acceptable.
So what are the economics of a bus being there to transport you from your place to the shop - and then back again? What are the environmental considerations?
I am pro bus and pro public transport. Stridently so in urban areas. But what you are proposing just isn't possible or frankly sane for a number of reasons.
I'm pretty relaxed about a lack of public transport in rural areas. Motoring taxation should be set up to help that 20% of the population out (replace with congestion charging, for example).
It's the 80% in urban areas that we should focus on, and the low density of our housing stock in those areas that make public transport less efficient. The spamming of detached houses with two parking spots and a garage needs to end, from both a congestion and housing supply point of view.
IMO that is problematic for a number of reasons.
- Many people *cannot* have a driving license, eg for medical reasons. - Just under 30% of adults do not have a driving license. - 40% of disabled people do not have a full driving license. - Lack of public transport incentivises people (especially elderly) to deceive the DVLA when eg eyesight deteriorates to keep a driving license. That results in deaths and injuries on our roads. I looked into that a couple of weeks ago, and whilst comprehensive data is not collected (eg sight testing of drivers involved in KSI accidents is not routine) media reports of short sighted drivers (eg can only read a number plate at 5-10m or less) mowing people down are not uncommon.
I'd suggest that it is not really OK to decide that all these millions of people should be forced to live in urban settings.
A village does not need a bus service every 10 minutes - it needs one frequent enough and with long enough hours, for people who need public transport to get where they need to go, and have time to do what they need to have done when they are there.
eg Two buses a day out and back to the local town which only allow an hour there is not enough.
I'd say it's about the need to give sufficient options / choices, and a degree of subsidy is reasonable. Part of that is making life without a motor vehicle a viable choice, which is where teh need for social and political change comes in.
Fair enough! You make a good point - not everyone in rural areas can drive.
I big loss to the Highlands was the postbus. I wonder if a publicly funded integrated banking, postal and transport system might work in super remote parts of the country.
And the HIDB integrated timetable book - it went long, long before the technoarses could start their usual howling about mobile phones (and well before mobiles became reliable in hilly country and the islands).
I often wonder why buses appear to have to be quite so big. I’m sure minibuses or similar would be perfectly adequate on many rural and suburban routes.
Minibuses, known as "Bread Vans" in the bus enthusiast community, do operate on many routes.
However, I guess some operators want operational flexibility, a common fleet, etc., so you end up with big buses on every route.
One of the most ridiculous railway decisions of recent times was the decision to lengthen only some of the Pendolinos. In times of disruption, it's common for nine-car units on services scheduled as an eleven-car.
This is the DfT again. Absurdly the initial orders were for 8-car sets with almost half being first class. Then an extra car added. More was needed but the DfT refused to allow it, hence the mixed lengths. Similar idiocy with TransPennine - their Class 185 trains are 3-car as opposed to the planned 4-car because the DfT blocked it.
Plus TPE will be withdrawing their 5-car loco-hauled sets in December when they chop back the timetable. Now there should be enough 185s to run them doubled-up, but we all know that 3 car trains will be rocking up in Leeds and Manchester in rush hour while the 5-car sets rot away in some sidings for the convenience of passengers.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
This is often my argument now - we have a party listening to a large proportion of older voters / older ERGers in the party without acknowledging there’s a real possibility lots of us under 40s will never “become conservative”.
Millennials are not doing the traditional rightward shift. Indeed, it might be past 2050 when the Tories next get into power.
With the cost of electricity - is owning an EV actually saving you any money over driving a petrol hybrid, IE a toyota Yaris that does 70 mpg, if you do 10000 miles a year?
Also if you buy a second hand EV - ie out of warranty - are you not at risk of something failing and it being uneconomic to repair? Usually you can repair ICE vehicles and keep them running, not sure it is quite the same with needing to replace a battery in an EV.
I'm just interested in what people think about this - I've been interested in EV's for a while but never seen them as feasible other than if you are happy to pay £300+ a month to lease one, which is way out of the reach of most people.
My sense is that in the real world people opt for old ICE cars and there is no viable EV option.
If the concern is about the environment, it seems to me that perhaps we could subsidise electric bikes and scooters and tax heavily large EV's and their ICE equivalents.
Steady on. There is a world of difference between town and country. My village has had its public transport cut harshly - 4 buses a day to the nearest town, 1 bus a day to a different town. No buses at all at the weekend, none that even head towards the big city.
There are some things that could be done to reconnect us - a few small diversions of longer bus routes into our village has been requested and refused. We have been told that to demonstrate demand we need to use dial-a-bus.
And what is dial-a-bus? A taxi! You pay a bus fare, the council subsidises the taxi fare, it is pitiful but its all we have. And many rural places have less than we do. So the car is it. Far from being the enemy of humanity, it is the only thing that makes rural living actually possible.
Anecdotally - I'm OK with driving, and dislike buses for practical reasons - because I have long legs they are uncomfortable, and you can't rely on them turning up. But when I lived in London the public transport was so good that even I could see it was just silly to have a car, so I didn't. I think that's a widespread subconscious view - people love cars because the alternative is rubbish. Make it un-rubbish and they will gradually change.
There is a difference between making the alternative un-rubbish and making eg rural, or semi-rural ( @148grss) public transport equivalent to that in London.
It's comparing apples and chalk.
I think that infrastructure should be designed such that a bus stop is never more than a 10 minute walk away, you shouldn't have to wait more than 15 minutes for a bus, and that local amenities (shops, doctors, schools, hospitals, libraries etc) should all be accessible by bus. I also absolutely hate the anti homeless design of bus stops with slanted benches or irregular armrests that also make it massively uncomfortable for people who need to sit whilst waiting.
Do you have any idea how much that would cost? The number of bus drivers it would require?
If it's equal to the manufacturing, upkeeping and selling capacity of cars and roads primarily for cars in the UK - I'm okay with that. Again - I accept this is utopian and not necessarily practical, but I would prefer that to be the utopian vision than the atomising vision of everyone in their own 4 seater buzzing around roads and motorways like beetles.
It's not utopian to divert so much human energy to pointlessly driving empty buses around the countryside.
There's a utopian vision where you have very good public transport for urban areas, where efficiency, convenience and freedom are maximised, but it simply isn't possible for rural areas.
I can't think of much that would be more soul-destroying than being a rural bus driver hoping that on this time round the route you'll actually pick up a passenger, instead of completely wasting your time. How is that utopian?
For some public transport is a religion. Just as, for some, cars are a religion. nd for others we MUSST HAVE MORE TRAINS.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
Unfortunately I agree with you completely. I think the oldies and the 1% know they've fucked everything up. They just want to make sure they don't have to suffer any of the consequences themselves and are perfectly happy throwing the young to the wolves. It is disgusting.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
This is often my argument now - we have a party listening to a large proportion of older voters / older ERGers in the party without acknowledging there’s a real possibility lots of us under 40s will never “become conservative”.
Millennials are not doing the traditional rightward shift. Indeed, it might be past 2050 when the Tories next get into power.
The Tory Pluto-gerontocracy doesn't care about the young.
Many of us older GenX rather want to leave a better world for our posterity.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
Seems pretty bleak - how many people are there your age and below? Enough to elect precisely the government you want, I have no doubt.
The Wales and Net Zero issue seem to stem from one problem - cars. I think cars break peoples' brains. The individually owned car is a creation of neoliberalism and is emblematic of it - the hyper individualised space that you own and can give you hyper mobility and is forever tied to oil production. When cars are sold to you they are not selling you an item, they are selling you the concept that you can be free; free to travel where and when you like, free to take things with you, free from home.
But cars are, in my view, a driver of atomisation. Driving and interacting with other drivers has the weird sensation of making everyone else a threat (because if they aren't driving safely then you could crash) and an annoyance (if they drive too safely they prevent you being free and driving how you want). You don't see the other driver as much as you see the other car - so immediately you separate the will of the driver from a human and assign it to an object, the car, dehumanising them. The internal environment of the car is fake and highly regulated - increasingly you don't have to experience the wind or noise or bumps or anything from the outside environment. You are cozened from the world, kept comfy from anyone else, you can control that space and not be influenced by anyone else whilst in it.
The process to get to mass driving also atomised society. London and most urban centres had miles of tramways, the country had significantly more local train and bus stops, and "15 minute cities" were just considered the norm because you would have a local grocer, butcher, post office etc. Transport infrastructure was purposely dismantled in a manner to increase car sales, and when everyone has a can that distorted peoples' idea of time and distance to lead to the creation of huge shopping centres and supermarkets, which led to the first wave of high street death (pre mass internet shopping). Whether it is apocryphal or not, the idea attributed to Thatcher that if you're "25 and using public transport, you're a failure" is a below surface feeling in the UK - the car is a symbol of success and freedom that is necessary to feel good.
That mass car production is unsustainable (even if we went fully electric) is neither here nor there for people - cars stay the solution. With every year that goes by traffic gets worse, the proposed solution of widening roads or building more lanes occurs, and yet whenever more roads appear the traffic is still bad. Because when you have hundreds of thousands of people, all making basically the same journeys with small variations on leaving point and destination, the movement of traffic cannot be efficient the smaller you make the travelling unit. If the same resource was put into trains or buses, I think we could have an amazing system of transport that allows most people to get where they want, when they want just more efficiently than individual car ownership currently allows.
The car is the enemy of humanity.
Steady on. There is a world of difference between town and country. My village has had its public transport cut harshly - 4 buses a day to the nearest town, 1 bus a day to a different town. No buses at all at the weekend, none that even head towards the big city.
There are some things that could be done to reconnect us - a few small diversions of longer bus routes into our village has been requested and refused. We have been told that to demonstrate demand we need to use dial-a-bus.
And what is dial-a-bus? A taxi! You pay a bus fare, the council subsidises the taxi fare, it is pitiful but its all we have. And many rural places have less than we do. So the car is it. Far from being the enemy of humanity, it is the only thing that makes rural living actually possible.
I live semi rurally - in a village orbiting a small city that has good links into London. The public transport is substandard - if it was made better then more people could live without a car. I think people prefer cars to public transport because they associate them with being crap in comparison - change that and we're halfway there.
I think we can make some exceptions - new parents should be allowed a car for a few years, those with specific disabilities or health requirements that need specialist space or constant trips to the hospital. But generally speaking I think the car based society we have built is bad.
Your sentiments are deeply authoritarian and faintly sinister.
Is car ownership an inalienable right? A tool that has existed barely 100 years? Like, I can understand that the idea of the individual car was appealing at some point in history, but as an experiment I think it is a complete failure. It has completely warped how we view all infrastructure - housing, shopping, work, school; all wrapped around the individual driver. They are always going to be extractive - whether it's oil or lithium, the resources to make new cars are exhaustible. Active measures were taken to destroy the infrastructure we already had in part to create car dependency - why was it not authoritarian when those were destroyed?
People look at a world that has been designed with the car in mind and say "wait a minute, if you got rid of cars, life would be shit". Yes - because of the choice to revolve everything around cars. Invest in a world without cars, and it can be positive.
Over the course of centuries, humankind has grown ever more prosperous and free. We will continue to do that, despite the odd stutter introduced by those who don't value freedom or prosperity, and want to shut it off for everyone.
It is a Ponzi Scheme. And we are realising this, slowly but surely.
Bollocks. We will keep moving forward, and by the time we're at capacity here, there will be other planets.
Possibly, possibly not. What other planet did you have in mind? Any, even vaguely, possible plans?
We have been on the earth for a miniscule amount of time. Nearly 100% of life has/had been here longer than we have and nearly 100% of it has become extinct. Why do you think we are any different?
Steady on. There is a world of difference between town and country. My village has had its public transport cut harshly - 4 buses a day to the nearest town, 1 bus a day to a different town. No buses at all at the weekend, none that even head towards the big city.
There are some things that could be done to reconnect us - a few small diversions of longer bus routes into our village has been requested and refused. We have been told that to demonstrate demand we need to use dial-a-bus.
And what is dial-a-bus? A taxi! You pay a bus fare, the council subsidises the taxi fare, it is pitiful but its all we have. And many rural places have less than we do. So the car is it. Far from being the enemy of humanity, it is the only thing that makes rural living actually possible.
Anecdotally - I'm OK with driving, and dislike buses for practical reasons - because I have long legs they are uncomfortable, and you can't rely on them turning up. But when I lived in London the public transport was so good that even I could see it was just silly to have a car, so I didn't. I think that's a widespread subconscious view - people love cars because the alternative is rubbish. Make it un-rubbish and they will gradually change.
Absolutely for towns and cities - public transport, walking and cycling are the priorities. But in the sticks? It would be crazy to adopt an "if we create it they will come" approach as we'd have a lot of empty buses.
I live in New Pitsligo. We have a handful of buses to Fraserburgh a day, and a single one to Banff - with none at all at the weekend. The big bus routes come from Aberdeen - to Peterhead, Fraserburgh, Macduff & Banff etc. There just aren't enough people in villages away from these routes to justify running them. If anything the "dial-a-bus" taxi makes more sense.
For my kids it would be brilliant if the Aberdeen - Fraserburgh route was diverted to run through New Pitsligo. But its 10 extra miles and likely 15 added minutes...
I mean, why shouldn't people in the sticks have the option for public transport? If buses aren't feasible then smaller local railways. Cars are not the only way to do this. I stayed in Devon with a partner years ago in the sticks - the nearest shop was a 30 minute walk away and you had to drive as no bus went near it often enough. I don't think that's acceptable.
So what are the economics of a bus being there to transport you from your place to the shop - and then back again? What are the environmental considerations?
I am pro bus and pro public transport. Stridently so in urban areas. But what you are proposing just isn't possible or frankly sane for a number of reasons.
I'm pretty relaxed about a lack of public transport in rural areas. Motoring taxation should be set up to help that 20% of the population out (replace with congestion charging, for example).
It's the 80% in urban areas that we should focus on, and the low density of our housing stock in those areas that make public transport less efficient. The spamming of detached houses with two parking spots and a garage needs to end, from both a congestion and housing supply point of view.
IMO that is problematic for a number of reasons.
- Many people *cannot* have a driving license, eg for medical reasons. - Just under 30% of adults do not have a driving license. - 40% of disabled people do not have a full driving license. - Lack of public transport incentivises people (especially elderly) to deceive the DVLA when eg eyesight deteriorates to keep a driving license. That results in deaths and injuries on our roads. I looked into that a couple of weeks ago, and whilst comprehensive data is not collected (eg sight testing of drivers involved in KSI accidents is not routine) media reports of short sighted drivers (eg can only read a number plate at 5-10m or less) mowing people down are not uncommon.
I'd suggest that it is not really OK to decide that all these millions of people should be forced to live in urban settings.
A village does not need a bus service every 10 minutes - it needs one frequent enough and with long enough hours, for people who need public transport to get where they need to go, and have time to do what they need to have done when they are there.
eg Two buses a day out and back to the local town which only allow an hour there is not enough.
I'd say it's about the need to give sufficient options / choices, and a degree of subsidy is reasonable. Part of that is making life without a motor vehicle a viable choice, which is where teh need for social and political change comes in.
Realistically, a lot of those people are going to struggle to walk to a rural bus stop. What tends to happen more often is that they have friends, family, etc, who can drive and who help them get around.
I've known quite a few people who still lived in rural areas after they were incapable of walking to the nearest bus stop, let alone driving.
This, as mentioned by Cyclefree, in the article is just staggering
Surely there has to be some comeback for the auditor for making, basically, untruthful statements to the high court or will it just be a case of "lessons will be learned" and kick it into the long grass again.
In the timeline we live in, a judge made some statements during the Kids Company case.
He said that it would be invidious to hold the legally responsible trustees legally responsible for their legal responsibilities. Because the trustees were such Busy (and Proper) People that they couldn't be expected to carry out their legal responsibilities.
I sat in a judges chambers where the judge literally said that she would not enforce her judgements on one party in the case, but would enforce them on the other side.
Is it possible to be in contempt of your own court?
I have previously said that there are potential political benefits to be mined for being a bit more cautious on certain green measures. BUT, and here is the big but, that comes from things that people are immediately worried are going to be impacting on their daily lives. Ulez is a good example. 20mph speed limits and LTNs are another.
Arbitrary dates in the future for phasing out things etc that might happen and of which the public are only mildly aware? Doubtful. The public are going to be more concerned about (1) who pays for the changes (2) that they won’t leave them worse off and (3) how they will be managed by government. The changes themselves, in principle, I can’t see many people getting upset about other than the climate denialist fringe.
It is clear that the Tory Party, having so utterly mismanaged and broken pretty much every area of government, are gearing up for a last-ditch, desperate roll of the dice on an exceptionally cynical, nasty, hypocritical GE campaign.
Expect all the hits to be brought out. Labour are on the side of loony green policies, Labour want more immigrants, Labour don’t know what a woman is, Labour want woke police forces and border agencies, Labour will reverse Brexit, everything is the fault of a far left agenda, mainstream media don’t speak for the people, rinse, repeat.
To buy a small one (for example a Fiat 500 electric) I would need £26k to £34k. Plus - I think - £1,500 for a home charger inc installation.
Or I could by a small petrol (e.g. the excellent Hyundai i10) for £15k+.
So I'm not buying an electric car.
People keep saying the EV prices are going to fall. My question is do those pushing EVs really want them to?
I mean, if EVs stay eyewatering costly then this will price many out of the market when petrols become banned. Maybe this is part of the anti-car agenda? Maybe I'm cynical?
If they really expect EVs to come down to the price of an equivalent petrol then great I will buy one as soon as this happens but the government shouldn't ban petrols until this happens.
I bought my Renault Zoe for £12k. Home charger £800.
Brand new?
According to Renault, prices brand new start at £30k! You can buy an equiv petrol for almost half that.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
Unfortunately I agree with you completely. I think the oldies and the 1% know they've fucked everything up. They just want to make sure they don't have to suffer any of the consequences themselves and are perfectly happy throwing the young to the wolves. It is disgusting.
What a miserable existence you seem to live. Get out and buy one of the many books explaining to you clearly how fucking lucky you are to be alive right now in this age and not at any time previously in history.
The thing is, that such system will count people going out as well as in.
I predicted exactly this on Pb a year ago - when people were moaning about Brexit passport queues. Soon ALL passport queues will disappear
You will be facially scanned as you walk out of your plane and any miscreants will be apprehended at customs - everyone else will just waltz straight through
The Wales and Net Zero issue seem to stem from one problem - cars. I think cars break peoples' brains. The individually owned car is a creation of neoliberalism and is emblematic of it - the hyper individualised space that you own and can give you hyper mobility and is forever tied to oil production. When cars are sold to you they are not selling you an item, they are selling you the concept that you can be free; free to travel where and when you like, free to take things with you, free from home.
But cars are, in my view, a driver of atomisation. Driving and interacting with other drivers has the weird sensation of making everyone else a threat (because if they aren't driving safely then you could crash) and an annoyance (if they drive too safely they prevent you being free and driving how you want). You don't see the other driver as much as you see the other car - so immediately you separate the will of the driver from a human and assign it to an object, the car, dehumanising them. The internal environment of the car is fake and highly regulated - increasingly you don't have to experience the wind or noise or bumps or anything from the outside environment. You are cozened from the world, kept comfy from anyone else, you can control that space and not be influenced by anyone else whilst in it.
The process to get to mass driving also atomised society. London and most urban centres had miles of tramways, the country had significantly more local train and bus stops, and "15 minute cities" were just considered the norm because you would have a local grocer, butcher, post office etc. Transport infrastructure was purposely dismantled in a manner to increase car sales, and when everyone has a can that distorted peoples' idea of time and distance to lead to the creation of huge shopping centres and supermarkets, which led to the first wave of high street death (pre mass internet shopping). Whether it is apocryphal or not, the idea attributed to Thatcher that if you're "25 and using public transport, you're a failure" is a below surface feeling in the UK - the car is a symbol of success and freedom that is necessary to feel good.
That mass car production is unsustainable (even if we went fully electric) is neither here nor there for people - cars stay the solution. With every year that goes by traffic gets worse, the proposed solution of widening roads or building more lanes occurs, and yet whenever more roads appear the traffic is still bad. Because when you have hundreds of thousands of people, all making basically the same journeys with small variations on leaving point and destination, the movement of traffic cannot be efficient the smaller you make the travelling unit. If the same resource was put into trains or buses, I think we could have an amazing system of transport that allows most people to get where they want, when they want just more efficiently than individual car ownership currently allows.
The car is the enemy of humanity.
Steady on. There is a world of difference between town and country. My village has had its public transport cut harshly - 4 buses a day to the nearest town, 1 bus a day to a different town. No buses at all at the weekend, none that even head towards the big city.
There are some things that could be done to reconnect us - a few small diversions of longer bus routes into our village has been requested and refused. We have been told that to demonstrate demand we need to use dial-a-bus.
And what is dial-a-bus? A taxi! You pay a bus fare, the council subsidises the taxi fare, it is pitiful but its all we have. And many rural places have less than we do. So the car is it. Far from being the enemy of humanity, it is the only thing that makes rural living actually possible.
I live semi rurally - in a village orbiting a small city that has good links into London. The public transport is substandard - if it was made better then more people could live without a car. I think people prefer cars to public transport because they associate them with being crap in comparison - change that and we're halfway there.
I think we can make some exceptions - new parents should be allowed a car for a few years, those with specific disabilities or health requirements that need specialist space or constant trips to the hospital. But generally speaking I think the car based society we have built is bad.
Your sentiments are deeply authoritarian and faintly sinister.
Is car ownership an inalienable right? A tool that has existed barely 100 years? Like, I can understand that the idea of the individual car was appealing at some point in history, but as an experiment I think it is a complete failure. It has completely warped how we view all infrastructure - housing, shopping, work, school; all wrapped around the individual driver. They are always going to be extractive - whether it's oil or lithium, the resources to make new cars are exhaustible. Active measures were taken to destroy the infrastructure we already had in part to create car dependency - why was it not authoritarian when those were destroyed?
People look at a world that has been designed with the car in mind and say "wait a minute, if you got rid of cars, life would be shit". Yes - because of the choice to revolve everything around cars. Invest in a world without cars, and it can be positive.
Over the course of centuries, humankind has grown ever more prosperous and free. We will continue to do that, despite the odd stutter introduced by those who don't value freedom or prosperity, and want to shut it off for everyone.
It is a Ponzi Scheme. And we are realising this, slowly but surely.
Bollocks. We will keep moving forward, and by the time we're at capacity here, there will be other planets.
Possibly, possibly not. What other planet did you have in mind? Any, even vaguely, possible plans?
We have been on the earth for a miniscule amount of time. Nearly 100% of life has/had been here longer than we have and nearly 100% of it has become extinct. Why do you think we are any different?
Maybe try Titan? Lots of oil on the surface. Shame the average temperature is [edit] -179degC.
The thing is, that such system will count people going out as well as in.
I predicted exactly this on Pb a year ago - when people were moaning about Brexit passport queues. Soon ALL passport queues will disappear
You will be facially scanned as you walk out of your plane and any miscreants will be apprehended at customs - everyone else will just waltz straight through
It’s the end of the passport, ultimately
But, if passports disappear and we no longer have our hard won black blue passports then... what was the point of Brexit?
With the cost of electricity - is owning an EV actually saving you any money over driving a petrol hybrid, IE a toyota Yaris that does 70 mpg, if you do 10000 miles a year?
Also if you buy a second hand EV - ie out of warranty - are you not at risk of something failing and it being uneconomic to repair? Usually you can repair ICE vehicles and keep them running, not sure it is quite the same with needing to replace a battery in an EV.
I'm just interested in what people think about this - I've been interested in EV's for a while but never seen them as feasible other than if you are happy to pay £300+ a month to lease one, which is way out of the reach of most people.
My sense is that in the real world people opt for old ICE cars and there is no viable EV option.
If the concern is about the environment, it seems to me that perhaps we could subsidise electric bikes and scooters and tax heavily large EV's and their ICE equivalents.
Battery replacements have existed for various EVs for a while.
The evidence from real world studies is that a well designed EV loses about 1% of range per year. so a 10 year old car will have 90% of the original range. a 20 year old car about 80%.
The electric motors don't seem to lose power the way that horsepower leaks out of old ICE.
A replacement battery for a Tesla is in the £10-15k range, including fitting, IIRC. It's much like replacing the engine in an old car - most people will probably never do it.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
Yeah but TV drama is better than ever
Very true. TV is in a good place right now, certainly from the viewer/customer perspective. Music isn't, mind.
The thing is, that such system will count people going out as well as in.
I predicted exactly this on Pb a year ago - when people were moaning about Brexit passport queues. Soon ALL passport queues will disappear
You will be facially scanned as you walk out of your plane and any miscreants will be apprehended at customs - everyone else will just waltz straight through
It’s the end of the passport, ultimately
But, if passports disappear and we no longer have our hard won black blue passports then... what was the point of Brexit?
You'll still need them to get into the UK, given HMG's record on (a) getting pre-EU border controls up and running, and (b) with IT generally?
With the cost of electricity - is owning an EV actually saving you any money over driving a petrol hybrid, IE a toyota Yaris that does 70 mpg, if you do 10000 miles a year?
Also if you buy a second hand EV - ie out of warranty - are you not at risk of something failing and it being uneconomic to repair? Usually you can repair ICE vehicles and keep them running, not sure it is quite the same with needing to replace a battery in an EV.
I'm just interested in what people think about this - I've been interested in EV's for a while but never seen them as feasible other than if you are happy to pay £300+ a month to lease one, which is way out of the reach of most people.
My sense is that in the real world people opt for old ICE cars and there is no viable EV option.
If the concern is about the environment, it seems to me that perhaps we could subsidise electric bikes and scooters and tax heavily large EV's and their ICE equivalents.
As always the answer is "it depends". EVs load the cost up front - they are significantly more expensive to buy than a petrol equivalent. But after that the cost per mile should be significantly less - electricity is cheaper than fuel and more efficient, and maintenance / VED are essentially zero.
As for maintenance, there was a myth deliberately planted by legacy manufacturers that batteries will need to be replaced. It just isn't true. Even the earliest EVs on ancient battery chemistry can have damaged / degraded cells replaced within their existing pack.
Compared to an ICE car there are far fewer parts to go wrong. I both have an expensive EV and recently bought an old ICE car. The latter is backup, dumped at the end of the drive awaiting use when the EV is busy, or to be driven to the airport and left there for a few days. I went ICE not EV for this simply because I wanted an old snotter I don't need to worry about getting damaged.
Food inflation might not be quite so bad as it seems. Per BBC:
"The official inflation measure uses shelf prices, not the price you pay on the till. So, it misses loyalty card discounts offered by supermarkets.
This becomes more important when the number of people using loyalty cards increases or when the discounts get steeper, which is exactly what’s happened this year."
But I can't find a source which quantifies this effect.
The thing is, that such system will count people going out as well as in.
I predicted exactly this on Pb a year ago - when people were moaning about Brexit passport queues. Soon ALL passport queues will disappear
You will be facially scanned as you walk out of your plane and any miscreants will be apprehended at customs - everyone else will just waltz straight through
It’s the end of the passport, ultimately
But, if passports disappear and we no longer have our hard won black blue passports then... what was the point of Brexit?
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
Unfortunately I agree with you completely. I think the oldies and the 1% know they've fucked everything up. They just want to make sure they don't have to suffer any of the consequences themselves and are perfectly happy throwing the young to the wolves. It is disgusting.
What a miserable existence you seem to live. Get out and buy one of the many books explaining to you clearly how fucking lucky you are to be alive right now in this age and not at any time previously in history.
Alas, I am blinded with the gift of foresight - if only I could see nothing ahead and only look behind
The Wales and Net Zero issue seem to stem from one problem - cars. I think cars break peoples' brains. The individually owned car is a creation of neoliberalism and is emblematic of it - the hyper individualised space that you own and can give you hyper mobility and is forever tied to oil production. When cars are sold to you they are not selling you an item, they are selling you the concept that you can be free; free to travel where and when you like, free to take things with you, free from home.
But cars are, in my view, a driver of atomisation. Driving and interacting with other drivers has the weird sensation of making everyone else a threat (because if they aren't driving safely then you could crash) and an annoyance (if they drive too safely they prevent you being free and driving how you want). You don't see the other driver as much as you see the other car - so immediately you separate the will of the driver from a human and assign it to an object, the car, dehumanising them. The internal environment of the car is fake and highly regulated - increasingly you don't have to experience the wind or noise or bumps or anything from the outside environment. You are cozened from the world, kept comfy from anyone else, you can control that space and not be influenced by anyone else whilst in it.
The process to get to mass driving also atomised society. London and most urban centres had miles of tramways, the country had significantly more local train and bus stops, and "15 minute cities" were just considered the norm because you would have a local grocer, butcher, post office etc. Transport infrastructure was purposely dismantled in a manner to increase car sales, and when everyone has a can that distorted peoples' idea of time and distance to lead to the creation of huge shopping centres and supermarkets, which led to the first wave of high street death (pre mass internet shopping). Whether it is apocryphal or not, the idea attributed to Thatcher that if you're "25 and using public transport, you're a failure" is a below surface feeling in the UK - the car is a symbol of success and freedom that is necessary to feel good.
That mass car production is unsustainable (even if we went fully electric) is neither here nor there for people - cars stay the solution. With every year that goes by traffic gets worse, the proposed solution of widening roads or building more lanes occurs, and yet whenever more roads appear the traffic is still bad. Because when you have hundreds of thousands of people, all making basically the same journeys with small variations on leaving point and destination, the movement of traffic cannot be efficient the smaller you make the travelling unit. If the same resource was put into trains or buses, I think we could have an amazing system of transport that allows most people to get where they want, when they want just more efficiently than individual car ownership currently allows.
The car is the enemy of humanity.
Steady on. There is a world of difference between town and country. My village has had its public transport cut harshly - 4 buses a day to the nearest town, 1 bus a day to a different town. No buses at all at the weekend, none that even head towards the big city.
There are some things that could be done to reconnect us - a few small diversions of longer bus routes into our village has been requested and refused. We have been told that to demonstrate demand we need to use dial-a-bus.
And what is dial-a-bus? A taxi! You pay a bus fare, the council subsidises the taxi fare, it is pitiful but its all we have. And many rural places have less than we do. So the car is it. Far from being the enemy of humanity, it is the only thing that makes rural living actually possible.
I live semi rurally - in a village orbiting a small city that has good links into London. The public transport is substandard - if it was made better then more people could live without a car. I think people prefer cars to public transport because they associate them with being crap in comparison - change that and we're halfway there.
I think we can make some exceptions - new parents should be allowed a car for a few years, those with specific disabilities or health requirements that need specialist space or constant trips to the hospital. But generally speaking I think the car based society we have built is bad.
Your sentiments are deeply authoritarian and faintly sinister.
Is car ownership an inalienable right? A tool that has existed barely 100 years? Like, I can understand that the idea of the individual car was appealing at some point in history, but as an experiment I think it is a complete failure. It has completely warped how we view all infrastructure - housing, shopping, work, school; all wrapped around the individual driver. They are always going to be extractive - whether it's oil or lithium, the resources to make new cars are exhaustible. Active measures were taken to destroy the infrastructure we already had in part to create car dependency - why was it not authoritarian when those were destroyed?
People look at a world that has been designed with the car in mind and say "wait a minute, if you got rid of cars, life would be shit". Yes - because of the choice to revolve everything around cars. Invest in a world without cars, and it can be positive.
Over the course of centuries, humankind has grown ever more prosperous and free. We will continue to do that, despite the odd stutter introduced by those who don't value freedom or prosperity, and want to shut it off for everyone.
It is a Ponzi Scheme. And we are realising this, slowly but surely.
Not exactly. However we grew prosperous thanks to oil which is now creating global warming. We also have 8 billion people to feed clothe and house. We're reaching the limit of what can be done but technological change will always help.
Going by the YouGov live poll so far Sunaks u-turn won’t harm the Tories and could help them .
The u-turn currently evenly split .
A strong majority of voters do though support the 2050 net zero target .
That suggests no immediate advantage, and the danger of alienating that "strong majority" unless he can convince them the move is consistent with the 2050 target.
Interesting point here too:
"And from our own research, lots of the public will assume the reason the target has been watered down is because the government is too incompetent to meet it"
The thing is, that such system will count people going out as well as in.
I predicted exactly this on Pb a year ago - when people were moaning about Brexit passport queues. Soon ALL passport queues will disappear
You will be facially scanned as you walk out of your plane and any miscreants will be apprehended at customs - everyone else will just waltz straight through
It’s the end of the passport, ultimately
But, if passports disappear and we no longer have our hard won black blue passports then... what was the point of Brexit?
You'll still need them to get into the UK, given HMG's record on (a) getting pre-EU border controls up and running, and (b) with IT generally?
Nah, small boats: the UK-style passport-free route, innit?
The thing is, that such system will count people going out as well as in.
I predicted exactly this on Pb a year ago - when people were moaning about Brexit passport queues. Soon ALL passport queues will disappear
You will be facially scanned as you walk out of your plane and any miscreants will be apprehended at customs - everyone else will just waltz straight through
It’s the end of the passport, ultimately
If so, and I’m not disagreeing, what will be the proof of ID document that people will use for opening bank accounts, renting a house, engaging with a law firm, voting etc? Will they still give everyone a passport which they don’t need to travel or will there be ID cards?
Food inflation might not be quite so bad as it seems. Per BBC:
"The official inflation measure uses shelf prices, not the price you pay on the till. So, it misses loyalty card discounts offered by supermarkets.
This becomes more important when the number of people using loyalty cards increases or when the discounts get steeper, which is exactly what’s happened this year."
But I can't find a source which quantifies this effect.
Food inflation might not be quite so bad as it seems. Per BBC:
"The official inflation measure uses shelf prices, not the price you pay on the till. So, it misses loyalty card discounts offered by supermarkets.
This becomes more important when the number of people using loyalty cards increases or when the discounts get steeper, which is exactly what’s happened this year."
But I can't find a source which quantifies this effect.
The tesco clubcard reduction on my weekly shop is normally around 15-20%
I had a weird dream last night about Fiona Bruce off Antiques Roadshow sitting on my lap and giving me a long lingering kiss, shocking everyone around me, then she gave me a tiny objet d’art which I didn’t understand but everyone around me went Oooh - like it was impressive
I have decided this means I have some hidden treasure in my possession, whose value is great but I don’t yet realise it. That’s the only possible interpretation (don’t really fancy Fiona Bruce)
Food inflation might not be quite so bad as it seems. Per BBC:
"The official inflation measure uses shelf prices, not the price you pay on the till. So, it misses loyalty card discounts offered by supermarkets.
This becomes more important when the number of people using loyalty cards increases or when the discounts get steeper, which is exactly what’s happened this year."
But I can't find a source which quantifies this effect.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
Unfortunately I agree with you completely. I think the oldies and the 1% know they've fucked everything up. They just want to make sure they don't have to suffer any of the consequences themselves and are perfectly happy throwing the young to the wolves. It is disgusting.
Oldies and 1% = Post Office. Under 40s = Postmasters.
The thing is, that such system will count people going out as well as in.
I predicted exactly this on Pb a year ago - when people were moaning about Brexit passport queues. Soon ALL passport queues will disappear
You will be facially scanned as you walk out of your plane and any miscreants will be apprehended at customs - everyone else will just waltz straight through
It’s the end of the passport, ultimately
If so, and I’m not disagreeing, what will be the proof of ID document that people will use for opening bank accounts, renting a house, engaging with a law firm, voting etc? Will they still give everyone a passport which they don’t need to travel or will there be ID cards?
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
Global problems need global solutions. Democracy and "progress" is the problem.
So let's have an overarching world government comprising naturalists and scientists, run strictly on non democratic lines making decisions for the benefit of the planet, non-human animals and the rest of life.
That won't happen so perhaps a better virus given there is no God to smite us...
I think my wife has just hacked in to your account!
Well done Rishi on pushing back those measures, they were always unattainable and performative and it was clear as day that this was the case.
As interestingly, where does Lab go with it. Vote for us to pay thousands more for boilers, house insulation, and cars.
This is at the intersection of saving the planet and saving for a new Playstation and I'm pretty sure I know which will win.
None of these policies will ever see the light of day. The car manufacturers have already told Sunak that they aren't reversing course - indeed expect a harsh reaction from BMW whose investment announcement last week was predicated on Sunak not doing what he now appears to be doing.
And the rest? Cost comes down as volumes go up. The idea that home insulation is a cost demonstrates just how stupid the right are. It is an investment - spend money then save more money.
We don't have enough power generating capacity. Have become reliant on import of electricity and gas and refined fuels. And have suffered the economic consequences of this.
What we should do is invest in green tech (is cavity wall insulation "tech"?) - create a load of jobs, drive new investment, make and export more. And thus wean ourselves off imports.
Instead, the suggestion is that we sit cold in our uninsulated houses burning gas we can't afford which goes straight into the atmosphere as we rock gently chanting "we can't afford the green crap"
Rishi is actually quite impressive. He has managed to get environmentalists, the motor industry and oil producers to agree. Pinched from Politics Live.
I had a weird dream last night about Fiona Bruce off Antiques Roadshow sitting on my lap and giving me a long lingering kiss, shocking everyone around me, then she gave me a tiny objet d’art which I didn’t understand but everyone around me went Oooh - like it was impressive
I have decided this means I have some hidden treasure in my possession, whose value is great but I don’t yet realise it. That’s the only possible interpretation (don’t really fancy Fiona Bruce)
But what the F is it?
I think it means that your inner psyche is accepting that you are a classier more mature Russell Brand. The older woman not dolly bird, she gives you a Fabergé egg instead of herpes as a gift, and people say “oooh” instead of, “he’s such a lad”.
The thing is, that such system will count people going out as well as in.
I predicted exactly this on Pb a year ago - when people were moaning about Brexit passport queues. Soon ALL passport queues will disappear
You will be facially scanned as you walk out of your plane and any miscreants will be apprehended at customs - everyone else will just waltz straight through
It’s the end of the passport, ultimately
Cue brown eyed Brexiteers queuing up to get them replaced by blue eyes.
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households” -“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035” -“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes” -“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500” -“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
If you're in your early 30s, like myself, or younger - what do we really have to hope for? Why do I do my 9-5? Why should I care about saving a pension?
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
Global problems need global solutions. Democracy and "progress" is the problem.
So let's have an overarching world government comprising naturalists and scientists, run strictly on non democratic lines making decisions for the benefit of the planet, non-human animals and the rest of life.
That won't happen so perhaps a better virus given there is no God to smite us...
I think my wife has just hacked in to your account!
overarching world government comprising naturalists and scientists, run strictly on non democratic lines making decisions for the benefit of the planet, non-human animals and the rest of life.
People have tried for that multiple times. The result are always a stupid tyranny that smashes the place up while treating ordinary people as ants. And generally ends up with mass graves.
The massive environmental destruction is notable, though.
Food inflation might not be quite so bad as it seems. Per BBC:
"The official inflation measure uses shelf prices, not the price you pay on the till. So, it misses loyalty card discounts offered by supermarkets.
This becomes more important when the number of people using loyalty cards increases or when the discounts get steeper, which is exactly what’s happened this year."
But I can't find a source which quantifies this effect.
Really? Prices are set to a "realised" price. When there is a loyalty card discount in Tesco / Morrisons etc the redemption rate of the card discount is great. So you assume (as an example) 20% at the inflated full price, and 80% of sales at the "discounted" price.
None of this is real. Prices get put up higher so that they can "discount" them back to the price they should be. That allows them to get your data which they can then sell back to the industry.
Also if you buy a second hand EV - ie out of warranty - are you not at risk of something failing and it being uneconomic to repair? Usually you can repair ICE vehicles and keep them running, not sure it is quite the same with needing to replace a battery in an EV.
Of course you can. Ageing Wheels on YouTube recently did a battery pack repair on a Coda which was a short lived and vanishingly rare EV brand.
It's hard if not impossible to do an individual cell replacement in a Tesla as all of the individual cells are epoxied together.
The thing is, that such system will count people going out as well as in.
I predicted exactly this on Pb a year ago - when people were moaning about Brexit passport queues. Soon ALL passport queues will disappear
You will be facially scanned as you walk out of your plane and any miscreants will be apprehended at customs - everyone else will just waltz straight through
It’s the end of the passport, ultimately
If so, and I’m not disagreeing, what will be the proof of ID document that people will use for opening bank accounts, renting a house, engaging with a law firm, voting etc? Will they still give everyone a passport which they don’t need to travel or will there be ID cards?
Probably QR codes tattooed on everyone’s forehead
AND YOU THINK I’M JOKING
Slacker. A real despotism will implant explosive charges on your carotid artery, so they can remote terminate you when required.
Sunak has made a huge political intervention and gamble, and if it is any consolation looks as if he has managed to demote Brand from the headlines, and is likely to see a very fierce debate going forward
With the cost of electricity - is owning an EV actually saving you any money over driving a petrol hybrid, IE a toyota Yaris that does 70 mpg, if you do 10000 miles a year?
Also if you buy a second hand EV - ie out of warranty - are you not at risk of something failing and it being uneconomic to repair? Usually you can repair ICE vehicles and keep them running, not sure it is quite the same with needing to replace a battery in an EV.
I'm just interested in what people think about this - I've been interested in EV's for a while but never seen them as feasible other than if you are happy to pay £300+ a month to lease one, which is way out of the reach of most people.
My sense is that in the real world people opt for old ICE cars and there is no viable EV option.
If the concern is about the environment, it seems to me that perhaps we could subsidise electric bikes and scooters and tax heavily large EV's and their ICE equivalents.
Battery replacements have existed for various EVs for a while.
The evidence from real world studies is that a well designed EV loses about 1% of range per year. so a 10 year old car will have 90% of the original range. a 20 year old car about 80%.
The electric motors don't seem to lose power the way that horsepower leaks out of old ICE.
A replacement battery for a Tesla is in the £10-15k range, including fitting, IIRC. It's much like replacing the engine in an old car - most people will probably never do it.
There’s a market somewhere for private extended warranties aimed specifically at EVs.
AIUI these are not generally available at the moment, because of both a lack of data regarding battery replacement issues over time, and a concern that the manufacturers will make repair of battery packs impossible because these cars have data connections.
Once these two things are better understood and/or legislated for (Right To Repair!), a considerable amount of the uncertainty around used EVs should disappear.
Food inflation might not be quite so bad as it seems. Per BBC:
"The official inflation measure uses shelf prices, not the price you pay on the till. So, it misses loyalty card discounts offered by supermarkets.
This becomes more important when the number of people using loyalty cards increases or when the discounts get steeper, which is exactly what’s happened this year."
But I can't find a source which quantifies this effect.
The tesco clubcard reduction on my weekly shop is normally around 15-20%
Incorrect. The non-clubcard prices have been raised 20%. Your discount is a chimera, they know that almost everyone will get a card to get this "discount". The discount price is the actual price, and they just happily pocket the extra profit for the few without the card.
Actually I think that spectator writer nailed it in this article...
"French food is the worst in the world: The country’s restaurants have become museums", by Sean Thomas, 15 September 2023, from the Spectator website, see Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/yYrVq
For some unaccountable reason my partner bought the Spectator at the airport before our trip to Berlin. What a rag, designed solely to batter/massage the reactionary clitoris. The recurrence of Rod Liddle wasn't even the worst thing about it.
Quite brilliant . The phrase “ reactionary clitoris “ should go down in the annals of PB history .
Well done Rishi on pushing back those measures, they were always unattainable and performative and it was clear as day that this was the case.
As interestingly, where does Lab go with it. Vote for us to pay thousands more for boilers, house insulation, and cars.
This is at the intersection of saving the planet and saving for a new Playstation and I'm pretty sure I know which will win.
Whilst I don't really think Sunak has a chance his best bet is to offer common sense in contrast to the ideology/moral crusade of the left. It's a very old Tory playbook. Net zero, woke, immigration, politicised unions etc. He had some success - e.g trans women in prisons - pointing out that the facts have changed/net zero by 2030 is not going to save the planet
With the cost of electricity - is owning an EV actually saving you any money over driving a petrol hybrid, IE a toyota Yaris that does 70 mpg, if you do 10000 miles a year?
Also if you buy a second hand EV - ie out of warranty - are you not at risk of something failing and it being uneconomic to repair? Usually you can repair ICE vehicles and keep them running, not sure it is quite the same with needing to replace a battery in an EV.
I'm just interested in what people think about this - I've been interested in EV's for a while but never seen them as feasible other than if you are happy to pay £300+ a month to lease one, which is way out of the reach of most people.
My sense is that in the real world people opt for old ICE cars and there is no viable EV option...
That's because the mass manufacturing of EVs has barely started. Decisions like Sunak's will help delay that a bit. The early adopters are those with more cash to hand than you or I have.
Food inflation might not be quite so bad as it seems. Per BBC:
"The official inflation measure uses shelf prices, not the price you pay on the till. So, it misses loyalty card discounts offered by supermarkets.
This becomes more important when the number of people using loyalty cards increases or when the discounts get steeper, which is exactly what’s happened this year."
But I can't find a source which quantifies this effect.
The tesco clubcard reduction on my weekly shop is normally around 15-20%
That’s the price to them, of collecting your data.
With the cost of electricity - is owning an EV actually saving you any money over driving a petrol hybrid, IE a toyota Yaris that does 70 mpg, if you do 10000 miles a year?
Also if you buy a second hand EV - ie out of warranty - are you not at risk of something failing and it being uneconomic to repair? Usually you can repair ICE vehicles and keep them running, not sure it is quite the same with needing to replace a battery in an EV.
I'm just interested in what people think about this - I've been interested in EV's for a while but never seen them as feasible other than if you are happy to pay £300+ a month to lease one, which is way out of the reach of most people.
My sense is that in the real world people opt for old ICE cars and there is no viable EV option...
That's because the mass manufacturing uf EVs has barely started. Decisions like Sunak's will help delay that a bit.
I'm fine with people making the economic case for EVs over petrol so long as they take into account the tax!
The thing is, that such system will count people going out as well as in.
I predicted exactly this on Pb a year ago - when people were moaning about Brexit passport queues. Soon ALL passport queues will disappear
You will be facially scanned as you walk out of your plane and any miscreants will be apprehended at customs - everyone else will just waltz straight through
It’s the end of the passport, ultimately
If so, and I’m not disagreeing, what will be the proof of ID document that people will use for opening bank accounts, renting a house, engaging with a law firm, voting etc? Will they still give everyone a passport which they don’t need to travel or will there be ID cards?
You’ll still have a passport, it’s just that you’ll not be asked to show it several times as you walk through an airport. Perhaps you’ll show it once if you’re in country A, citizen of country B, resident of country C, and travelling to country D.
Food inflation might not be quite so bad as it seems. Per BBC:
"The official inflation measure uses shelf prices, not the price you pay on the till. So, it misses loyalty card discounts offered by supermarkets.
This becomes more important when the number of people using loyalty cards increases or when the discounts get steeper, which is exactly what’s happened this year."
But I can't find a source which quantifies this effect.
The tesco clubcard reduction on my weekly shop is normally around 15-20%
Incorrect. The non-clubcard prices have been raised 20%. Your discount is a chimera, they know that almost everyone will get a card to get this "discount". The discount price is the actual price, and they just happily pocket the extra profit for the few without the card.
The point being that the ONS calculate the inflation rate by looking at the shelf ticket prices and not what you call the "actual" post-clubcard discount prices.
Food inflation might not be quite so bad as it seems. Per BBC:
"The official inflation measure uses shelf prices, not the price you pay on the till. So, it misses loyalty card discounts offered by supermarkets.
This becomes more important when the number of people using loyalty cards increases or when the discounts get steeper, which is exactly what’s happened this year."
But I can't find a source which quantifies this effect.
The tesco clubcard reduction on my weekly shop is normally around 15-20%
Incorrect. The non-clubcard prices have been raised 20%. Your discount is a chimera, they know that almost everyone will get a card to get this "discount". The discount price is the actual price, and they just happily pocket the extra profit for the few without the card.
Yes, most people realise that. The point is that, if the "discount" has been growing over the last year, as the BBC says it has, there is a distorting effect on inflation, which is based on un"discount"ed shelf ticket prices only.
Comments
"NEW: I’ve seen the agenda for today’s Cabinet
RECOMMENDATIONS INCLUDE
-“Delay the off-gas-grid fossil fuel ban until 2035 and relax the requirement from 100% to 80% of households”
-“Relax the gas boiler phase-out target in 2035”
-“no new energy efficiency regulations on homes”
-“Increase the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant by 50% to £7500”
-“Announce the the requirement for all vehicles to have significant zero emission capability in the period 2030-35 is to be removed”
Bonfire of green measures…"
https://x.com/lewis_goodall/status/1704446221820018822?s=20
I big loss to the Highlands was the postbus. I wonder if a publicly funded integrated banking, postal and transport system might work in super remote parts of the country.
And the fact there is a thriving second hand market for these cars also shows that demand is not a problem. We need more supply, which if course is much more likely to happen if OEMs have predictable targets for going 100% EV.
The Tories won't be anywhere near power to do any of this, and I expect that with so much momentum already existing that at best they will trying and failing to resist the car industry and others. Expect more "I'm in government not in power, why won't Keir Starmer Do Something!!!" letters.
The other place they seem to like is the carparks in business parks.
I can't save to buy a house, I can't afford a family, I don't believe I will see my pension because either the pension age will be so high or the economy will collapse in such a way my pension will be pointless, and the country and world will see environmental ravages annually that used to be once in a lifetime.
Why should my generation and those younger then us participate in a society that seems so gung ho in destroying any future for us?
"And from our own research, lots of the public will assume the reason the target has been watered down is because the government is too incompetent to meet it"
https://x.com/racheljanetwolf/status/1704412108094362009?s=20
A 6 hour train journey in Australia is like a commute here
We travelled on the Ghan from Adelaide to Alice Springs and it took 21 hours
Perth to Sydney on the Ghan takes 4 days
How lovely.
Welcome to the future of immigration control.
The thing is, that such system will count people going out as well as in.
https://x.com/emilygosden/status/1704445957574721794?s=20
There's a utopian vision where you have very good public transport for urban areas, where efficiency, convenience and freedom are maximised, but it simply isn't possible for rural areas.
I can't think of much that would be more soul-destroying than being a rural bus driver hoping that on this time round the route you'll actually pick up a passenger, instead of completely wasting your time. How is that utopian?
Surely there has to be some comeback for the auditor for making, basically, untruthful statements to the high court or will it just be a case of "lessons will be learned" and kick it into the long grass again.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/auditor-made-inaccurate-court-statement-leading-to-bankruptcy-of-subpostmaster/ar-AA1gXcGS?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=7b7e06da97e7467693784fda8ee01427&ei=16
So let's have an overarching world government comprising naturalists and scientists, run strictly on non democratic lines making decisions for the benefit of the planet, non-human animals and the rest of life.
That won't happen so perhaps a better virus given there is no God to smite us...
Also if you buy a second hand EV - ie out of warranty - are you not at risk of something failing and it being uneconomic to repair? Usually you can repair ICE vehicles and keep them running, not sure it is quite the same with needing to replace a battery in an EV.
I'm just interested in what people think about this - I've been interested in EV's for a while but never seen them as feasible other than if you are happy to pay £300+ a month to lease one, which is way out of the reach of most people.
My sense is that in the real world people opt for old ICE cars and there is no viable EV option.
If the concern is about the environment, it seems to me that perhaps we could subsidise electric bikes and scooters and tax heavily large EV's and their ICE equivalents.
The pragmatic view is that each has it's uses.
Many of us older GenX rather want to leave a better world for our posterity.
Go for it.
We have been on the earth for a miniscule amount of time. Nearly 100% of life has/had been here longer than we have and nearly 100% of it has become extinct. Why do you think we are any different?
I've known quite a few people who still lived in rural areas after they were incapable of walking to the nearest bus stop, let alone driving.
He said that it would be invidious to hold the legally responsible trustees legally responsible for their legal responsibilities. Because the trustees were such Busy (and Proper) People that they couldn't be expected to carry out their legal responsibilities.
I sat in a judges chambers where the judge literally said that she would not enforce her judgements on one party in the case, but would enforce them on the other side.
Is it possible to be in contempt of your own court?
As interestingly, where does Lab go with it. Vote for us to pay thousands more for boilers, house insulation, and cars.
This is at the intersection of saving the planet and saving for a new Playstation and I'm pretty sure I know which will win.
Arbitrary dates in the future for phasing out things etc that might happen and of which the public are only mildly aware? Doubtful. The public are going to be more concerned about (1) who pays for the changes (2) that they won’t leave them worse off and (3) how they will be managed by government. The changes themselves, in principle, I can’t see many people getting upset about other than the climate denialist fringe.
It is clear that the Tory Party, having so utterly mismanaged and broken pretty much every area of government, are gearing up for a last-ditch, desperate roll of the dice on an exceptionally cynical, nasty, hypocritical GE campaign.
Expect all the hits to be brought out. Labour are on the side of loony green policies, Labour want more immigrants, Labour don’t know what a woman is, Labour want woke police forces and border agencies, Labour will reverse Brexit, everything is the fault of a far left agenda, mainstream media don’t speak for the people, rinse, repeat.
Gear up, it’s going to be bumpy.
You will be facially scanned as you walk out of your plane and any miscreants will be apprehended at customs - everyone else will just waltz straight through
It’s the end of the passport, ultimately
The evidence from real world studies is that a well designed EV loses about 1% of range per year. so a 10 year old car will have 90% of the original range. a 20 year old car about 80%.
The electric motors don't seem to lose power the way that horsepower leaks out of old ICE.
A replacement battery for a Tesla is in the £10-15k range, including fitting, IIRC. It's much like replacing the engine in an old car - most people will probably never do it.
I have become that person you wince at, as you enter a town. Je Suis Le Wino
As for maintenance, there was a myth deliberately planted by legacy manufacturers that batteries will need to be replaced. It just isn't true. Even the earliest EVs on ancient battery chemistry can have damaged / degraded cells replaced within their existing pack.
Compared to an ICE car there are far fewer parts to go wrong. I both have an expensive EV and recently bought an old ICE car. The latter is backup, dumped at the end of the drive awaiting use when the EV is busy, or to be driven to the airport and left there for a few days. I went ICE not EV for this simply because I wanted an old snotter I don't need to worry about getting damaged.
"The official inflation measure uses shelf prices, not the price you pay on the till. So, it misses loyalty card discounts offered by supermarkets.
This becomes more important when the number of people using loyalty cards increases or when the discounts get steeper, which is exactly what’s happened this year."
But I can't find a source which quantifies this effect.
NB the criticism of loyalty cards, not always all they are cracked up to be.
I have decided this means I have some hidden treasure in my possession, whose value is great but I don’t yet realise it. That’s the only possible interpretation (don’t really fancy Fiona Bruce)
But what the F is it?
AND YOU THINK I’M JOKING
(As others have posted, I'm not sure Sunak follows through on this - this kite may not fly)
And the rest? Cost comes down as volumes go up. The idea that home insulation is a cost demonstrates just how stupid the right are. It is an investment - spend money then save more money.
We don't have enough power generating capacity. Have become reliant on import of electricity and gas and refined fuels. And have suffered the economic consequences of this.
What we should do is invest in green tech (is cavity wall insulation "tech"?) - create a load of jobs, drive new investment, make and export more. And thus wean ourselves off imports.
Instead, the suggestion is that we sit cold in our uninsulated houses burning gas we can't afford which goes straight into the atmosphere as we rock gently chanting "we can't afford the green crap"
overarching world government comprising naturalists and scientists, run strictly on non democratic lines making decisions for the benefit of the planet, non-human animals and the rest of life.
People have tried for that multiple times. The result are always a stupid tyranny that smashes the place up while treating ordinary people as ants. And generally ends up with mass graves.
The massive environmental destruction is notable, though.
None of this is real. Prices get put up higher so that they can "discount" them back to the price they should be. That allows them to get your data which they can then sell back to the industry.
It's hard if not impossible to do an individual cell replacement in a Tesla as all of the individual cells are epoxied together.
AIUI these are not generally available at the moment, because of both a lack of data regarding battery replacement issues over time, and a concern that the manufacturers will make repair of battery packs impossible because these cars have data connections.
Once these two things are better understood and/or legislated for (Right To Repair!), a considerable amount of the uncertainty around used EVs should disappear.
Decisions like Sunak's will help delay that a bit. The early adopters are those with more cash to hand than you or I have.