This runs into a bit of a meta problem in that it depends what you mean by love. The best definition I know is that you love someone (or perhaps something) if their happiness is essential to your own, but I’m not sure if that helps here.
I like that definition but it is restricted to people or animals. Whereas I do think you can "love" a landscape, for example. Or a song. What you can't love is an abstract thing such as a country. Not even in the Enoch Powell sense of the physical place since the physical place is too big and varied for you to even know it let alone form an opinion on it as a whole. Who loves both Harrogate and Hartlepool? Very few.
Isn’t patriotism like obscenity?
I'm itching to say "only if you're doing it right", but I'm not sure if that's what I actually mean...
But the way this tax is set up is to make larger cars way more expensive - with the end result that will be a load more 2009 cars still on the roads in 2029 than would otherwise be the case as these don't get replaced.
If you want to incentivise electric and ultra-efficient cars then put tax breaks on them as happened previously - don't increase the price of the vast majority of other new cars in order to do it.
Unlikely, 20 year old cars tend to get scrapped before then for a variety of reasons.
Larger cars don't get way more expensive, inefficient cars do. Its possible to get large and efficient electric or hybrid vehicles which will attract a subsidy under this model not a high tax. Many companies are in large part due to this tax and other incentives looking to eliminate pure petrol/diesel vehicles and to only sell hybrid or electric, they will be untaxed once they've done that.
Given there are low emitting vehicles available today I don't see why subsidies to them should come from general taxation and why they can't come from taxing those who choose to add a new high emitting vehicle onto the roads.
Fuel duty is directly tied to said emissions. I am amazed anyone is arguing that there is a fairer solution.
Fuel duty is fair. Emissions up front taxes are also fair. Its not either/or.
This new model balances up front costs with emissions before rather than after the car is on the road. The car people drive is largely a sunk cost apart from when cars get purchased so linking the cost with purchase as well as afterwards is entirely reasonable.
Given that if a car manufacturer is fined, it will entirely up to them how they recoup their costs, fairness is in no way guaranteed.
Logic dicatates that like the sugar tax the cost (and in this case the offset) is passed on to the consumer. The manufacturers will want more electric vehicle sales to offset the costs of emission sales so there is no reason not to pass that on to the consumer.
Ms. Morales, I suspect not as the General Election concern is who governs the country. What's the SNP policy beyond splitting it up? How do they want to change education in England, for example?
They just steal the policies of their nearest competitors, a la Brexit party.
Why would the SNP be concerned about education policy in England. They are there to run Scotland and get independence not interfere in other countries business, hence why they have never voted on English only matters.
I feel we’ll be hearing a lot more from her somewhere down the line.
This could be what finally stops him winning the Tory leadership and becoming PM!
Exactly. If there was anything of substance to her story, she would have taken one of the many offers on the table from Fleet St during the leadership contest or the election campaign. The press would have wanted to see an actual story though.
That she took five figures for an 'interview' on GMB and then said nothing of substance, probably suggests she's just out to publicise herself.
I feel we’ll be hearing a lot more from her somewhere down the line.
This could be what finally stops him winning the Tory leadership and becoming PM!
Exactly. If there was anything of substance to her story, she would have taken one of the many offers on the table from Fleet St during the leadership contest or the election campaign. The press would have wanted to see an actual story though.
That she took five figures for an 'interview' on GMB and then said nothing of substance, probably suggests she's just out to publicise herself.
I suspect she is going to be popping up regularly with fresh “dramatic revelations” that aren’t particularly revealing or dramatic, for as long as Boris is PM.
But what they are going is levelling up the price of petrol cars to match the hybrids, rather than levelling down the price of hybrids to match petrol cars. All this does is makes new cars in general more expensive and therefore reduces the demand for them.
The guy who currently drives a Range Rover isn't going to suddenly buy a Prius, if the price of a new Range Rover goes up he's just going to wait a few years more before he buys the new one - a few years more where the old, dirty one is out there polluting.
The cost of transport is the biggest single break on the economy, if the UK government want to encourage a reduction in emissions then they should incentivise efficient cars and run a scrappage scheme as they did a decade ago, to get old and inefficient cars off the road.
You're wrong, you've misunderstood the proposal it seems.
If it was simply a tax per gram above 95g then that would be levelling up prices. However that is not the proposal.
The tax is based on the average across the entire manufacturer. Thus a low emission sale offsets high emission sales, thus its price goes down just as much if not more than high emission vehicles go up. A single electric vehicle sale can offset over 5 grand of taxes from high emission vehicles.
I understand that it's across the whole range of a manufacturer. The point remains that this uses sticks instead of carrots, and the several billion Euros that the EU are expecting in 'fines' will have to be made up by the manufacturers in higher prices and therefore reduced demand.
There isn't close to the capacity to build EVs and hybrids, in the numbers required for all the manufacturers to avoid massive fines in the next few years.
At a time when Germany is already in recession, the correct policy should be to give tax breaks for R&D and investment in clean technology, not simply extracting billions in taxes from an industry that's already on its knees.
It's a classic EU policy, results in everybody except the EU being worse off in the short term, and doesn't do anything towards what should be the key aim of getting old and polluting cars off the road.
But what they are going is levelling up the price of petrol cars to match the hybrids, rather than levelling down the price of hybrids to match petrol cars. All this does is makes new cars in general more expensive and therefore reduces the demand for them.
The guy who currently drives a Range Rover isn't going to suddenly buy a Prius, if the price of a new Range Rover goes up he's just going to wait a few years more before he buys the new one - a few years more where the old, dirty one is out there polluting.
The cost of transport is the biggest single break on the economy, if the UK government want to encourage a reduction in emissions then they should incentivise efficient cars and run a scrappage scheme as they did a decade ago, to get old and inefficient cars off the road.
You're wrong, you've misunderstood the proposal it seems.
If it was simply a tax per gram above 95g then that would be levelling up prices. However that is not the proposal.
The tax is based on the average across the entire manufacturer. Thus a low emission sale offsets high emission sales, thus its price goes down just as much if not more than high emission vehicles go up. A single electric vehicle sale can offset over 5 grand of taxes from high emission vehicles.
I understand that it's across the whole range of a manufacturer. The point remains that this uses sticks instead of carrots, and the several billion Euros that the EU are expecting in 'fines' will have to be made up by the manufacturers in higher prices and therefore reduced demand.
There isn't close to the capacity to build EVs and hybrids, in the numbers required for all the manufacturers to avoid massive fines in the next few years.
At a time when Germany is already in recession, the correct policy should be to give tax breaks for R&D and investment in clean technology, not simply extracting billions in taxes from an industry that's already on its knees.
It's a classic EU policy, results in everybody except the EU being worse off in the short term, and doesn't do anything towards what should be the key aim of getting old and polluting cars off the road.
Its a combination of carrot and stick. If there wasn't the offset ability it would be stick only, but by permitting the offset they've got both.
Capacity isn't going to magically come out of thin air. This is a carrot to ensure that capacity is increased - and rapidly - which is being done.
Not everybody is worse off. Those purchasing, designing and selling clean vehicles will be better off.
I feel we’ll be hearing a lot more from her somewhere down the line.
This could be what finally stops him winning the Tory leadership and becoming PM!
Exactly. If there was anything of substance to her story, she would have taken one of the many offers on the table from Fleet St during the leadership contest or the election campaign. The press would have wanted to see an actual story though.
That she took five figures for an 'interview' on GMB and then said nothing of substance, probably suggests she's just out to publicise herself.
I suspect she is going to be popping up regularly with fresh “dramatic revelations” that aren’t particularly revealing or dramatic, for as long as Boris is PM.
My guess is that there may possibly have been a brief affair, or more likely a couple of dates - but well after the time when the Mayor (as he was then) was involved in decisions about her business. So there's plenty that could be teased, but nothing that would be a major issue of confidence for Johnson.
But what they are going is levelling up the price of petrol cars to match the hybrids, rather than levelling down the price of hybrids to match petrol cars. All this does is makes new cars in general more expensive and therefore reduces the demand for them.
The guy who currently drives a Range Rover isn't going to suddenly buy a Prius, if the price of a new Range Rover goes up he's just going to wait a few years more before he buys the new one - a few years more where the old, dirty one is out there polluting.
The cost of transport is the biggest single break on the economy, if the UK government want to encourage a reduction in emissions then they should incentivise efficient cars and run a scrappage scheme as they did a decade ago, to get old and inefficient cars off the road.
You're wrong, you've misunderstood the proposal it seems.
If it was simply a tax per gram above 95g then that would be levelling up prices. However that is not the proposal.
The tax is based on the average across the entire manufacturer. Thus a low emission sale offsets high emission sales, thus its price goes down just as much if not more than high emission vehicles go up. A single electric vehicle sale can offset over 5 grand of taxes from high emission vehicles.
I understand that it's across the whole range of a manufacturer. The point remains that this uses sticks instead of carrots, and the several billion Euros that the EU are expecting in 'fines' will have to be made up by the manufacturers in higher prices and therefore reduced demand.
There isn't close to the capacity to build EVs and hybrids, in the numbers required for all the manufacturers to avoid massive fines in the next few years...
Not that massive - it appears to have been negotiated with the manufacturers so they will still make pretty good profits on their old tech hydrocarbon burners.
And the point is that this will force them to get precisely that missing capacity up and running quickly, which is what the climate requires. If Tesla can get a factory up and running within twelve months (Gigafactory 3), then for an organisation with the resources of (say) VW, it ought to be fairly easy to do it too.
It’s easy to come up with arguments against it, but they’re mostly spurious.
But what they are going is levelling up the price of petrol cars to match the hybrids, rather than levelling down the price of hybrids to match petrol cars. All this does is makes new cars in general more expensive and therefore reduces the demand for them.
The guy who currently drives a Range Rover isn't going to suddenly buy a Prius, if the price of a new Range Rover goes up he's just going to wait a few years more before he buys the new one - a few years more where the old, dirty one is out there polluting.
The cost of transport is the biggest single break on the economy, if the UK government want to encourage a reduction in emissions then they should incentivise efficient cars and run a scrappage scheme as they did a decade ago, to get old and inefficient cars off the road.
You're wrong, you've misunderstood the proposal it seems.
If it was simply a tax per gram above 95g then that would be levelling up prices. However that is not the proposal.
The tax is based on the average across the entire manufacturer. Thus a low emission sale offsets high emission sales, thus its price goes down just as much if not more than high emission vehicles go up. A single electric vehicle sale can offset over 5 grand of taxes from high emission vehicles.
I understand that it's across the whole range of a manufacturer. The point remains that this uses sticks instead of carrots, and the several billion Euros that the EU are expecting in 'fines' will have to be made up by the manufacturers in higher prices and therefore reduced demand.
There isn't close to the capacity to build EVs and hybrids, in the numbers required for all the manufacturers to avoid massive fines in the next few years.
At a time when Germany is already in recession, the correct policy should be to give tax breaks for R&D and investment in clean technology, not simply extracting billions in taxes from an industry that's already on its knees.
It's a classic EU policy, results in everybody except the EU being worse off in the short term, and doesn't do anything towards what should be the key aim of getting old and polluting cars off the road.
This scheme is primarily about marketing. The carrots you refer to are already in place but have had limited effect because manufacturers like selling high margin (and high CO2) SUVs and don't like selling EVs, which are expensive to manufacture due to their batteries. The scheme allows manufacturers to continue to sell relatively gas guzzling cars if they reckon the margins justify the fines but nudges them to include more EVs in the mix. Obviously manufacturers don't like penalties but the scheme does give them choices.
You're wrong, you've misunderstood the proposal it seems.
If it was simply a tax per gram above 95g then that would be levelling up prices. However that is not the proposal.
The tax is based on the average across the entire manufacturer. Thus a low emission sale offsets high emission sales, thus its price goes down just as much if not more than high emission vehicles go up. A single electric vehicle sale can offset over 5 grand of taxes from high emission vehicles.
I understand that it's across the whole range of a manufacturer. The point remains that this uses sticks instead of carrots, and the several billion Euros that the EU are expecting in 'fines' will have to be made up by the manufacturers in higher prices and therefore reduced demand.
There isn't close to the capacity to build EVs and hybrids, in the numbers required for all the manufacturers to avoid massive fines in the next few years.
At a time when Germany is already in recession, the correct policy should be to give tax breaks for R&D and investment in clean technology, not simply extracting billions in taxes from an industry that's already on its knees.
It's a classic EU policy, results in everybody except the EU being worse off in the short term, and doesn't do anything towards what should be the key aim of getting old and polluting cars off the road.
Its a combination of carrot and stick. If there wasn't the offset ability it would be stick only, but by permitting the offset they've got both.
Capacity isn't going to magically come out of thin air. This is a carrot to ensure that capacity is increased - and rapidly - which is being done.
Not everybody is worse off. Those purchasing, designing and selling clean vehicles will be better off.
Those trying to design and sell clean cars are being walloped with taxes, exactly at the time they need to be investing in new technology.
If these cars were 15% of sales and we were trying to get them to 25% then this policy might work, but all this scheme will do is load costs onto the vast majority of new car purchases and keep older, more polluting - cars on the road for longer.
Anyway, I think we will agree to disagree - and talking of transport and emissions, I've got a plane to catch!
If these cars were 15% of sales and we were trying to get them to 25% then this policy might work, but all this scheme will do is load costs onto the vast majority of new car purchases and keep older, more polluting - cars on the road for longer.
Anyway, I think we will agree to disagree - and talking of transport and emissions, I've got a plane to catch!
That's precisely the point. The cars are 1% and we're trying to get them to 25% - so this policy is part of precisely what's necessary. Massive changes are happening with this in mind.
Ms. Morales, I suspect not as the General Election concern is who governs the country. What's the SNP policy beyond splitting it up? How do they want to change education in England, for example?
They just steal the policies of their nearest competitors, a la Brexit party.
Why would the SNP be concerned about education policy in England. They are there to run Scotland and get independence not interfere in other countries business, hence why they have never voted on English only matters.
Same reason Brexit Party send people to Brussels.
I don't think you quite get it, how anybody could compare that rabble to a serious political party is bizarre.
I feel we’ll be hearing a lot more from her somewhere down the line.
This could be what finally stops him winning the Tory leadership and becoming PM!
Exactly. If there was anything of substance to her story, she would have taken one of the many offers on the table from Fleet St during the leadership contest or the election campaign. The press would have wanted to see an actual story though.
That she took five figures for an 'interview' on GMB and then said nothing of substance, probably suggests she's just out to publicise herself.
I suspect she is going to be popping up regularly with fresh “dramatic revelations” that aren’t particularly revealing or dramatic, for as long as Boris is PM.
My guess is that there may possibly have been a brief affair, or more likely a couple of dates - but well after the time when the Mayor (as he was then) was involved in decisions about her business. So there's plenty that could be teased, but nothing that would be a major issue of confidence for Johnson.
Comments
That she took five figures for an 'interview' on GMB and then said nothing of substance, probably suggests she's just out to publicise herself.
Although he did look at me funny before he threw me out...
There isn't close to the capacity to build EVs and hybrids, in the numbers required for all the manufacturers to avoid massive fines in the next few years.
At a time when Germany is already in recession, the correct policy should be to give tax breaks for R&D and investment in clean technology, not simply extracting billions in taxes from an industry that's already on its knees.
It's a classic EU policy, results in everybody except the EU being worse off in the short term, and doesn't do anything towards what should be the key aim of getting old and polluting cars off the road.
Capacity isn't going to magically come out of thin air. This is a carrot to ensure that capacity is increased - and rapidly - which is being done.
Not everybody is worse off. Those purchasing, designing and selling clean vehicles will be better off.
And the point is that this will force them to get precisely that missing capacity up and running quickly, which is what the climate requires. If Tesla can get a factory up and running within twelve months (Gigafactory 3), then for an organisation with the resources of (say) VW, it ought to be fairly easy to do it too.
It’s easy to come up with arguments against it, but they’re mostly spurious.
The Rutles songs are just genius. Part pastiche of the Beatles, but also part homage to their achievement.
Brilliant.
EV and Plugin Hybrid sales are only 1% of current total sales in the EU, accounting for 44,000 of 4.1m registrations in Q1, as an example.
http://carsalesbase.com/european-sales-2019-q1-ev-phev-segments/
https://www.best-selling-cars.com/europe/2019-q1-europe-car-sales-per-european-union-and-efta-country/
If these cars were 15% of sales and we were trying to get them to 25% then this policy might work, but all this scheme will do is load costs onto the vast majority of new car purchases and keep older, more polluting - cars on the road for longer.
Anyway, I think we will agree to disagree - and talking of transport and emissions, I've got a plane to catch!
Fingers crossed for a positive start to 2020.