It’s a risky gamble . Labour might become so toxic that it reduces any tactical voting . They still need to give people a reason to have them as their second option .
The 12% of Lib Dem supporters who would vote Reform over Labour is a warning. That percentage could grow.
I think both the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives may face some tough decisions if the next election takes place in circumstances close to where we are now.
The question becomes whether the LD-Con battleground becomes a proxy for the wider struggle or an irrelevant sideshow. IF it is publicly perceived the LDs are opposed to Reform and the Conservatives are supportive then it becomes start of the wider Reform vs Not Reform struggle. If both parties are seen to be opposed to Reform, it’s more likely to be a sideshow which may boost Reform numbers in those constituencies but that’s all.
As for the 12% being “a warning”, no one assumes the LD vote to be monolithic, it never has been. There are LD supporters who are not supportive of Labour and never have been. The party’s experience of getting close to both Labour and the Conservatives in Government is analogous to the swimmer getting too close to the shark. The only difference now is the Conservatives are enjoying the same dilemma with Reform and for some of us it’s fun to watch them squirm.
So research proves that X has become a right wing cesspit since Musk took over . The algorithm is designed to amplify right wing views . None of this will come as a surprise .
Don’t worry, BlueSky is still a left-wing cesspit if that’s your preference.
I run both, and OTOH BlueSky is not the instrument of a neo-fascist conspiraloon trying to drive his poisonous values into our country.
OTOH BlueSky went through 40 million users a few days ago. I've no idea what that means long term, but half a year ago I said we would not know for sure until mid-late 2026.
If it's under 100 million in 12 months time, then I'd say it will stay as a (large) niche product.
"Users" is irrevelant. Threads have massive amount of "users". It is activity of those users. Same as some YouTube channels have many millions of subs but now only a tiny number of those actually watch new videos. And the activity stats on BlueSky are far below peak. The downward trend in all those metrics have stabilised in recent months, but it definitely isn't growing.
It is also noticable how little the media now talk about BlueSky. There was a huge push on look look new twitter, better twitter, its grown by a million users this week. Now never gets a mention, its back to what some dickhead has said on twitter this week.
So research proves that X has become a right wing cesspit since Musk took over . The algorithm is designed to amplify right wing views . None of this will come as a surprise .
Don’t worry, BlueSky is still a left-wing cesspit if that’s your preference.
Right wing cesspit = relentless racism, antisemitism, homophobia, sexism peppered by ads and bots, and all set to the rhythm of Elon’s thought processes.
Left wing cesspit = tedious carnival of consensus based centrism.
Neither are good but I know which resembles most a place or situation characterised by corruption, filth or immoral activities.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
I never like talking on the phone. But a cold call at 8am is especially irritating.
But probably unusually effective in getting you to pick up as "Who is calling me at this time. Is there some family problem I need to be aware of?" gets you answering. Cynical, but effective.
Effective in getting me to answer. But I wasn't exactly well-disposed to the caller. I wasn't rude, but I was fairly... straightforward.
And that's why we love you. But it would surprise me if it worked well at a statistical level.
(Most of the terrible things about modern life happen because they work on enough people for them to be worth doing.)
Aye. Like being obnoxious/ill-informed on social media so there's a lot of interaction then the algorithm promotes the ignorance and idiocy.
It's one of the reasons I occasionally (like yesterday) post history channels I rather like, especially smaller ones. They'll never get huge engagement because they're posting bullshit about Septimius Severus being a black Roman emperor and driving rage clicks.
I find the trick is to follow as wide a group of people as possible, and the vast majority are work and interest related accounts (computers, cars, aviation, space, technology, comedy etc), not politics.
If you set up a social media account that only follows politics, or even worse only one political affiliation, you’ll end up with nothing but politics in your feed, all day every day. That’s what drives people crazy.
My take from Caerphilly and Runcorn is that voters on the Right will vote overwhelmingly for Reform, if they are best placed to win; and voters on the Left will vote overwhelmingly for the left wing party that is best placed to stop them.
At least in by-election conditions.
Yes, so it polarises.
My guess is Reform don't have quite enough in the tank to get to an overall majority under GE conditions.
Do we think the Tories will probably support a Reform minority government?
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Tesla is not having a good year, from a traditional 'selling cars' perspective.
They've been hit by a trifecta of reduced subsidies in the US, greater competition, and Elon trashing the brand with the kind of people who buy Teslas.
I might try and do some analysis later to determine whether the Tesla share price has a stronger correlation to "making money from selling cars" or "bitcoin".
I strongly suspect the latter. It's just the world's biggest memestock that we all own in passive equity trackers.
My take from Caerphilly and Runcorn is that voters on the Right will vote overwhelmingly for Reform, if they are best placed to win; and voters on the Left will vote overwhelmingly for the left wing party that is best placed to stop them.
At least in by-election conditions.
Yes, so it polarises.
My guess is Reform don't have quite enough in the tank to get to an overall majority under GE conditions.
Do we think the Tories will probably support a Reform minority government?
What do YOU think? Would you like to see a Reform-Conservative coalition Government?
I never like talking on the phone. But a cold call at 8am is especially irritating.
But probably unusually effective in getting you to pick up as "Who is calling me at this time. Is there some family problem I need to be aware of?" gets you answering. Cynical, but effective.
Effective in getting me to answer. But I wasn't exactly well-disposed to the caller. I wasn't rude, but I was fairly... straightforward.
And that's why we love you. But it would surprise me if it worked well at a statistical level.
(Most of the terrible things about modern life happen because they work on enough people for them to be worth doing.)
Aye. Like being obnoxious/ill-informed on social media so there's a lot of interaction then the algorithm promotes the ignorance and idiocy.
It's one of the reasons I occasionally (like yesterday) post history channels I rather like, especially smaller ones. They'll never get huge engagement because they're posting bullshit about Septimius Severus being a black Roman emperor and driving rage clicks.
I find the trick is to follow as wide a group of people as possible, and the vast majority are work and interest related accounts (computers, cars, aviation, space, technology, comedy etc), not politics.
If you set up a social media account that only follows politics, or even worse only one political affiliation, you’ll end up with nothing but politics in your feed, all day every day. That’s what drives people crazy.
I just stick to my following list and rarely see anything rage baity. My "For You" tab is definitely more so, but includes right and left wing tweeting dodgy takes, so I just don't go on it.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Tesla is not having a good year, from a traditional 'selling cars' perspective.
They've been hit by a trifecta of reduced subsidies in the US, greater competition, and Elon trashing the brand with the kind of people who buy Teslas.
I might try and do some analysis later to determine whether the Tesla share price has a stronger correlation to "making money from selling cars" or "bitcoin".
I strongly suspect the latter. It's just the world's biggest memestock that we all own in passive equity trackers.
Tesla are in a really good position - they make good money from building cars. Most manufacturers lose a fortune making and selling EVs - Ford lost $50k per vehicle last year.
So as a car manufacturer Tesla are in a great position. But the bulls keep insisting they aren't a car company, they're an autonomy company.
Fine. But Full Self Driving takeup is 12%. Lets assume as the software continues to improve that doubles. So three quarters of Tesla drivers don't have it.
The future revenues from the business are in selling cars at a profit. They have to do that part to bring in the revenue to fund autonomy...
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Tesla is not having a good year, from a traditional 'selling cars' perspective.
They've been hit by a trifecta of reduced subsidies in the US, greater competition, and Elon trashing the brand with the kind of people who buy Teslas.
I might try and do some analysis later to determine whether the Tesla share price has a stronger correlation to "making money from selling cars" or "bitcoin".
I strongly suspect the latter. It's just the world's biggest memestock that we all own in passive equity trackers.
They’re horrendously overvalued as a car manufacturer, but their value is in the other stuff such as the charging infrastructure, self-driving tech, robotics etc, all of which have massive potential as future revenue streams.
I’m sure the major shareholders didn’t think much of the slightly crazy CEO getting involved in politics in the way he did though, as Robert suggests it put off a lot of people who like EVs in general but didn’t go for a Tesla specifically.
I never like talking on the phone. But a cold call at 8am is especially irritating.
But probably unusually effective in getting you to pick up as "Who is calling me at this time. Is there some family problem I need to be aware of?" gets you answering. Cynical, but effective.
Effective in getting me to answer. But I wasn't exactly well-disposed to the caller. I wasn't rude, but I was fairly... straightforward.
And that's why we love you. But it would surprise me if it worked well at a statistical level.
(Most of the terrible things about modern life happen because they work on enough people for them to be worth doing.)
Aye. Like being obnoxious/ill-informed on social media so there's a lot of interaction then the algorithm promotes the ignorance and idiocy.
It's one of the reasons I occasionally (like yesterday) post history channels I rather like, especially smaller ones. They'll never get huge engagement because they're posting bullshit about Septimius Severus being a black Roman emperor and driving rage clicks.
I find the trick is to follow as wide a group of people as possible, and the vast majority are work and interest related accounts (computers, cars, aviation, space, technology, comedy etc), not politics.
If you set up a social media account that only follows politics, or even worse only one political affiliation, you’ll end up with nothing but politics in your feed, all day every day. That’s what drives people crazy.
I've set up some lists on Twitter and it's pretty interesting. The History one tends to be nice and relaxing, and the F1 stuff can sometimes be useful. The Politics list is often fraught.
What happens when you can’t park outside your house because someone else’s car is there
Cones, but I do remember reading that some councils are offering you exclusive parking bays outside your property if you have these installed.
You cannot use cones to try and steal a public parking space for yourself. And I don't see Councils having the resource to faff about with individual parking spaces until they have recovered from being gutted for 15-20 years.
The bigger problem with these is endangerment of pedestrians. From my pov, the footway is a pedestrian space and no obstructions whatsoever are acceptable.
Motor vehicles already dangerously infringe on pedestrian space willy-nilly, regularly destroying pavements, and questioning the assumed entitlement often results in insults or sometimes threats, as anyone who has tried knows. Movement needs to be in the other direction.
Chargers in lamp posts may be acceptable. When chargers block pedestrian space - no.
My take from Caerphilly and Runcorn is that voters on the Right will vote overwhelmingly for Reform, if they are best placed to win; and voters on the Left will vote overwhelmingly for the left wing party that is best placed to stop them.
At least in by-election conditions.
Yes, so it polarises.
My guess is Reform don't have quite enough in the tank to get to an overall majority under GE conditions.
Do we think the Tories will probably support a Reform minority government?
Promise them a few ministerial posts, and of course they will. (A few would object, but it wouldn't even be a close call.)
"One in four British adults are watching The Celebrity Traitors as it enters its penultimate week. An astonishing 14million of the 55million over-18s in the UK have tuned in to each episode, figures reveal."
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Tesla is not having a good year, from a traditional 'selling cars' perspective.
They've been hit by a trifecta of reduced subsidies in the US, greater competition, and Elon trashing the brand with the kind of people who buy Teslas.
I might try and do some analysis later to determine whether the Tesla share price has a stronger correlation to "making money from selling cars" or "bitcoin".
I strongly suspect the latter. It's just the world's biggest memestock that we all own in passive equity trackers.
They’re horrendously overvalued as a car manufacturer, but their value is in the other stuff such as the charging infrastructure, self-driving tech, robotics etc, all of which have massive potential as future revenue streams.
I’m sure the major shareholders didn’t think much of the slightly crazy CEO getting involved in politics in the way he did though, as Robert suggests it put off a lot of people who like EVs in general but didn’t go for a Tesla specifically.
Tesla make money selling cars. Most manufacturers lose a fortune selling EVs. The share price is absolutely a bubble, but when it deflates their core business is very sound. Huge (for the industry) margins per vehicle. An ocean of cash in the bank. Not collapsing under crushing debt.
What happens when you can’t park outside your house because someone else’s car is there
Cones, but I do remember reading that some councils are offering you exclusive parking bays outside your property if you have these installed.
You cannot use cones to try and steal a public parking space for yourself. And I don't see Councils having the resource to faff about with individual parking spaces until they have recovered from being gutted for 15-20 years.
The bigger problem with these is endangerment of pedestrians. From my pov, the footway is a pedestrian space and no obstructions whatsoever are acceptable.
Motor vehicles already dangerously infringe on pedestrian space willy-nilly, regularly destroying pavements, and questioning the assumed entitlement often results in insults or sometimes threats, as anyone who has tried knows. Movement needs to be in the other direction.
Chargers in lamp posts may be acceptable. When chargers block pedestrian space - no.
Don't see why not. Plenty of councils already have systems for applying for residential parking permits. And location records of anyone who pays council tax.
I never like talking on the phone. But a cold call at 8am is especially irritating.
But probably unusually effective in getting you to pick up as "Who is calling me at this time. Is there some family problem I need to be aware of?" gets you answering. Cynical, but effective.
Effective in getting me to answer. But I wasn't exactly well-disposed to the caller. I wasn't rude, but I was fairly... straightforward.
And that's why we love you. But it would surprise me if it worked well at a statistical level.
(Most of the terrible things about modern life happen because they work on enough people for them to be worth doing.)
Aye. Like being obnoxious/ill-informed on social media so there's a lot of interaction then the algorithm promotes the ignorance and idiocy.
It's one of the reasons I occasionally (like yesterday) post history channels I rather like, especially smaller ones. They'll never get huge engagement because they're posting bullshit about Septimius Severus being a black Roman emperor and driving rage clicks.
I find the trick is to follow as wide a group of people as possible, and the vast majority are work and interest related accounts (computers, cars, aviation, space, technology, comedy etc), not politics.
If you set up a social media account that only follows politics, or even worse only one political affiliation, you’ll end up with nothing but politics in your feed, all day every day. That’s what drives people crazy.
I've set up some lists on Twitter and it's pretty interesting. The History one tends to be nice and relaxing, and the F1 stuff can sometimes be useful. The Politics list is often fraught.
I find F1 Twitter really annoying most of the time, especially the lap-by-lap commentaries being repeated randomly on Mondays and Tuesdays. There are the occasional breaking stories on these though, which are useful especially outside the race weekends when attention is usually elsewhere.
I think the strategy for Reform must be KBO. We saw the villification of Liz Truss - the subject matter of the villification is really irrelevant - if you try to change the system, you're going to face massive opposition, and some people will listen to that opposition.
Caerphilly was one of the most left wing constituencies in the country. If the left can't cobble together a byelection-winning coalition there, it's all up for them.
What is KBO, please?
I think one problem Ref UK have is that criticism of Farage is usually documentation not villification. He depends on saying one thing and doing another eg distancing himself from Yaxley-Lennon whilst opening up his candidate lists to Yaxley-Lennon supporters, and needing them to shore up one leg of his voting coalition. Farage needs that skewed media perception of reality, which is a stronger position to take in the UK than in other places, but to my eye is not sustainable.
On Caerphilly, I through they did just cobble together a byelection-winning coalition there, in the form of tactical votes for Plaid.
So research proves that X has become a right wing cesspit since Musk took over . The algorithm is designed to amplify right wing views . None of this will come as a surprise .
Don’t worry, BlueSky is still a left-wing cesspit if that’s your preference.
I run both, and OTOH BlueSky is not the instrument of a neo-fascist conspiraloon trying to drive his poisonous values into our country.
OTOH BlueSky went through 40 million users a few days ago. I've no idea what that means long term, but half a year ago I said we would not know for sure until mid-late 2026.
If it's under 100 million in 12 months time, then I'd say it will stay as a (large) niche product.
It's daily unique poster rate continues to trend very slowly down. Yesterday's good day was the same as an average weekday in the middle of July.
"One in four British adults are watching The Celebrity Traitors as it enters its penultimate week. An astonishing 14million of the 55million over-18s in the UK have tuned in to each episode, figures reveal."
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Tesla is not having a good year, from a traditional 'selling cars' perspective.
They've been hit by a trifecta of reduced subsidies in the US, greater competition, and Elon trashing the brand with the kind of people who buy Teslas.
I might try and do some analysis later to determine whether the Tesla share price has a stronger correlation to "making money from selling cars" or "bitcoin".
I strongly suspect the latter. It's just the world's biggest memestock that we all own in passive equity trackers.
Tesla are in a really good position - they make good money from building cars. Most manufacturers lose a fortune making and selling EVs - Ford lost $50k per vehicle last year.
So as a car manufacturer Tesla are in a great position. But the bulls keep insisting they aren't a car company, they're an autonomy company.
Fine. But Full Self Driving takeup is 12%. Lets assume as the software continues to improve that doubles. So three quarters of Tesla drivers don't have it.
The future revenues from the business are in selling cars at a profit. They have to do that part to bring in the revenue to fund autonomy...
This video goes through the numbers. Deliveries were a bit better than expected, but after Trump changes to tax credits and price cuts due to increased cheaper competition, they are down to average profit per car of $2300, which will go down to $1500 when the EV regulatory credits they sell goes away next year. That's razer thin margins, particularly as they continue to lose market share in China and more competition globally.
"One in four British adults are watching The Celebrity Traitors as it enters its penultimate week. An astonishing 14million of the 55million over-18s in the UK have tuned in to each episode, figures reveal."
I think the strategy for Reform must be KBO. We saw the villification of Liz Truss - the subject matter of the villification is really irrelevant - if you try to change the system, you're going to face massive opposition, and some people will listen to that opposition.
Caerphilly was one of the most left wing constituencies in the country. If the left can't cobble together a byelection-winning coalition there, it's all up for them.
What is KBO, please?
I think one problem Ref UK have is that criticism of Farage is usually documentation not villification. He depends on saying one thing and doing another eg distancing himself from Yaxley-Lennon whilst opening up his candidate lists to Yaxley-Lennon supporters, and needing them to shore up one leg of his voting coalition. Farage needs that skewed media perception of reality, which is a stronger position to take in the UK than in other places, but to my eye is not sustainable.
On Caerphilly, I through they did just cobble together a byelection-winning coalition there, in the form of tactical votes for Plaid.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
Its laughable. Think how this would work. They'd be bringing endless people into self-assessment who aren't already there at huge cost. A "guess how many miles you do" form. With cash paid up front. Then correct it the following year. With I assume a load of tax inspectors to validate that the guesstimate mileage figures are correct. Perhaps using DVLA checkpoints to pull over all EVs and check their numbers.
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile" YES AND HO "No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
"One in four British adults are watching The Celebrity Traitors as it enters its penultimate week. An astonishing 14million of the 55million over-18s in the UK have tuned in to each episode, figures reveal."
It’s a risky gamble . Labour might become so toxic that it reduces any tactical voting . They still need to give people a reason to have them as their second option .
The 12% of Lib Dem supporters who would vote Reform over Labour is a warning. That percentage could grow.
There were some places, like Rochdale, Oldham, Luton, where the Lib Dem’s got right wing voters to back them, as the only alternative to Labour. I expect those are the 12%.
Most of the current Lib Dem vote is quite different, affluent, and living along the M3/M4 corridors.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Tesla is not having a good year, from a traditional 'selling cars' perspective.
They've been hit by a trifecta of reduced subsidies in the US, greater competition, and Elon trashing the brand with the kind of people who buy Teslas.
I might try and do some analysis later to determine whether the Tesla share price has a stronger correlation to "making money from selling cars" or "bitcoin".
I strongly suspect the latter. It's just the world's biggest memestock that we all own in passive equity trackers.
They’re horrendously overvalued as a car manufacturer, but their value is in the other stuff such as the charging infrastructure, self-driving tech, robotics etc, all of which have massive potential as future revenue streams.
I’m sure the major shareholders didn’t think much of the slightly crazy CEO getting involved in politics in the way he did though, as Robert suggests it put off a lot of people who like EVs in general but didn’t go for a Tesla specifically.
Tesla make money selling cars. Most manufacturers lose a fortune selling EVs. The share price is absolutely a bubble, but when it deflates their core business is very sound. Huge (for the industry) margins per vehicle. An ocean of cash in the bank. Not collapsing under crushing debt.
Yes I did see your previous post on that. They have the advantage of having started from a clean sheet as a company, and built a profitable business selling EVs which few others have managed.
The likes of Ford in the US went about it very half-heartedly, and are already abandoning their Lightning truck (at a cost of tens of milions of dollars) because no-one bought them and those that did had loads of problems. It was great if you’re a tradesman in LA, but that’s not a huge market for trucks.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Tesla is not having a good year, from a traditional 'selling cars' perspective.
They've been hit by a trifecta of reduced subsidies in the US, greater competition, and Elon trashing the brand with the kind of people who buy Teslas.
I might try and do some analysis later to determine whether the Tesla share price has a stronger correlation to "making money from selling cars" or "bitcoin".
I strongly suspect the latter. It's just the world's biggest memestock that we all own in passive equity trackers.
They’re horrendously overvalued as a car manufacturer, but their value is in the other stuff such as the charging infrastructure, self-driving tech, robotics etc, all of which have massive potential as future revenue streams.
I’m sure the major shareholders didn’t think much of the slightly crazy CEO getting involved in politics in the way he did though, as Robert suggests it put off a lot of people who like EVs in general but didn’t go for a Tesla specifically.
But that other stuff would need to make up most of their $1.5tn valuation for it to make sense. And, other than charging infrastructure which won't be the main valuation driver, these don't exist yet.
I agree underneath all the valuation bubble there is a perfectly profitable car company that has advantages over legacy manufacturers.
My take from Caerphilly and Runcorn is that voters on the Right will vote overwhelmingly for Reform, if they are best placed to win; and voters on the Left will vote overwhelmingly for the left wing party that is best placed to stop them.
At least in by-election conditions.
Yes, so it polarises.
My guess is Reform don't have quite enough in the tank to get to an overall majority under GE conditions.
Sure. If there were an election tomorrow, my view is that Labour would remain the largest party, and Reform become the official Opposition, with c.200 seats.
"One in four British adults are watching The Celebrity Traitors as it enters its penultimate week. An astonishing 14million of the 55million over-18s in the UK have tuned in to each episode, figures reveal."
To be fair to him, at least he’s drawing attention to a situation that’s mostly been ignored by the international community, with more than 7,000 Christians killed in the country so far this year.
The latest sanctions on Russia appear to be doing a good job as well, just need to send the Tomahawks to Ukraine now so they can take out the Shahed drone factory.
“Adding the number of death referenced in these reports cited by InterSociety does not result in the stated total of 7,000.
“The BBC added up the number of deaths from the 70 reports and found that the total was around 3,000 deaths. Some of the attacks also appear to be reported more than once.”
Why is MAGA bothered who is being killed or how many. America First 'init?
MAGA love being victims. They are desperate for a genocide of their own. Elon Musk's white genocide in South Africa didn't persuade enough people, so they're pushing the idea of a Christian genocide in Nigeria. We're been talking about Boko Haram in Nigeria for years (even decades), but they've re-badged events with the "genocide" word.
I never like talking on the phone. But a cold call at 8am is especially irritating.
But probably unusually effective in getting you to pick up as "Who is calling me at this time. Is there some family problem I need to be aware of?" gets you answering. Cynical, but effective.
Effective in getting me to answer. But I wasn't exactly well-disposed to the caller. I wasn't rude, but I was fairly... straightforward.
And that's why we love you. But it would surprise me if it worked well at a statistical level.
(Most of the terrible things about modern life happen because they work on enough people for them to be worth doing.)
Aye. Like being obnoxious/ill-informed on social media so there's a lot of interaction then the algorithm promotes the ignorance and idiocy.
It's one of the reasons I occasionally (like yesterday) post history channels I rather like, especially smaller ones. They'll never get huge engagement because they're posting bullshit about Septimius Severus being a black Roman emperor and driving rage clicks.
I find the trick is to follow as wide a group of people as possible, and the vast majority are work and interest related accounts (computers, cars, aviation, space, technology, comedy etc), not politics.
If you set up a social media account that only follows politics, or even worse only one political affiliation, you’ll end up with nothing but politics in your feed, all day every day. That’s what drives people crazy.
I've set up some lists on Twitter and it's pretty interesting. The History one tends to be nice and relaxing, and the F1 stuff can sometimes be useful. The Politics list is often fraught.
I find F1 Twitter really annoying most of the time, especially the lap-by-lap commentaries being repeated randomly on Mondays and Tuesdays. There are the occasional breaking stories on these though, which are useful especially outside the race weekends when attention is usually elsewhere.
Breaking news can lead to lovely bets. See Spain 2012 and 2016, or the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix.
To be fair to him, at least he’s drawing attention to a situation that’s mostly been ignored by the international community, with more than 7,000 Christians killed in the country so far this year.
The latest sanctions on Russia appear to be doing a good job as well, just need to send the Tomahawks to Ukraine now so they can take out the Shahed drone factory.
“Adding the number of death referenced in these reports cited by InterSociety does not result in the stated total of 7,000.
“The BBC added up the number of deaths from the 70 reports and found that the total was around 3,000 deaths. Some of the attacks also appear to be reported more than once.”
Why is MAGA bothered who is being killed or how many. America First 'init?
MAGA love being victims. They are desperate for a genocide of their own. Elon Musk's white genocide in South Africa didn't persuade enough people, so they're pushing the idea of a Christian genocide in Nigeria. We're been talking about Boko Haram in Nigeria for years (even decades), but they've re-badged events with the "genocide" word.
“Genocide” is one of those terms that is getting overused, to the point of being meaningless,
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
Its laughable. Think how this would work. They'd be bringing endless people into self-assessment who aren't already there at huge cost. A "guess how many miles you do" form. With cash paid up front. Then correct it the following year. With I assume a load of tax inspectors to validate that the guesstimate mileage figures are correct. Perhaps using DVLA checkpoints to pull over all EVs and check their numbers.
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile" YES AND HO "No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
Why not just charge on mileage at MOT (or, for the first three years at a new, otherwise free, non-inspection MOT)?
The biggest issue Reform has is they won't have the competence, work ethic, guile or teamwork to put their programme into effect.
My guess is they'd be like the ERG on acid - they would spend all their time pissing, with minor scandals, and be spectacularly ineffective.
Jenrick, on the other hand, with Katie Lam would probably get quite a bit done.
Katie Lam is busy working on a new version of the grandfather paradox where she travels back in time to stop her grandfather being allowed into the UK as a child refugee, thus preventing herself ever being born.
Yawn.
Have you just woken up, Casino? Some of us hard-working types have been awake for hours!
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Tesla is not having a good year, from a traditional 'selling cars' perspective.
They've been hit by a trifecta of reduced subsidies in the US, greater competition, and Elon trashing the brand with the kind of people who buy Teslas.
I might try and do some analysis later to determine whether the Tesla share price has a stronger correlation to "making money from selling cars" or "bitcoin".
I strongly suspect the latter. It's just the world's biggest memestock that we all own in passive equity trackers.
They’re horrendously overvalued as a car manufacturer, but their value is in the other stuff such as the charging infrastructure, self-driving tech, robotics etc, all of which have massive potential as future revenue streams.
I’m sure the major shareholders didn’t think much of the slightly crazy CEO getting involved in politics in the way he did though, as Robert suggests it put off a lot of people who like EVs in general but didn’t go for a Tesla specifically.
Tesla make money selling cars. Most manufacturers lose a fortune selling EVs. The share price is absolutely a bubble, but when it deflates their core business is very sound. Huge (for the industry) margins per vehicle. An ocean of cash in the bank. Not collapsing under crushing debt.
Is the Tesla Berlin factory profitable, yet? That's genuine interest.
It's been open 3 years, and it has still not reached the initial production goal of 250k cars per annum.
My take from Caerphilly and Runcorn is that voters on the Right will vote overwhelmingly for Reform, if they are best placed to win; and voters on the Left will vote overwhelmingly for the left wing party that is best placed to stop them.
At least in by-election conditions.
I don't believe that to be true. Forever Labour voters voted Johnson in 2019 to kick out the European foreigners. Now they will vote Farage to kick out "other" foreigners.
My late father always voted Labour but he was as socially right wing as they came. With Reform one can vote to kick out foreigners without vomiting as one votes Tory.
To be fair to him, at least he’s drawing attention to a situation that’s mostly been ignored by the international community, with more than 7,000 Christians killed in the country so far this year.
The latest sanctions on Russia appear to be doing a good job as well, just need to send the Tomahawks to Ukraine now so they can take out the Shahed drone factory.
“Adding the number of death referenced in these reports cited by InterSociety does not result in the stated total of 7,000.
“The BBC added up the number of deaths from the 70 reports and found that the total was around 3,000 deaths. Some of the attacks also appear to be reported more than once.”
"One in four British adults are watching The Celebrity Traitors as it enters its penultimate week. An astonishing 14million of the 55million over-18s in the UK have tuned in to each episode, figures reveal."
Looks like we will have to cancel a cruise booked for Feb as I have broken my leg and my orthopaedic consultant is not confident it will be fixed well enough in time for me to travel safely. Due to pay the balance on Monday so now is the time to cancel.
Cunard won't give me back the deposit (c. £2k) but I could claim it off my travel insurance.
Question: do any PBers have experience of what impact claiming on travel insurance might have on future premiums? Just wondering if it's like pet insurance - claim once and the insurers bump up future premiums massively. The thing is with travel insurance, I feel it's non-negotiable as the costs if uninsured could be huge.
Any views?
You could switch to the travel insurance bundled with the premium (whetever its called) Nationwide current account, which also provides breakdown insurance and mobile phone insurance. They don't ask about previous claims, and the cover is guaranteed although if you have existing medical conditions or want to make particularly long trips, you have to make a declaration - I typically pay £50-90 extra each year, mostly due to long trips - and I think there's a premium for the very old, as well.
You'd be surprised at some of the medical conditions people manage to travel with on the cruise ships - you can do as little or as much on the ship as you wish, and once you're there its probably at least as good an environment to recuperate as at home, with no stairs you have to take, food and drink on tap, and nothing at all you really have to be doing, except sitting on deck (or inside looking out of the window, it being February)
"One in four British adults are watching The Celebrity Traitors as it enters its penultimate week. An astonishing 14million of the 55million over-18s in the UK have tuned in to each episode, figures reveal."
My wife’s been watching this. They did manage to get a group of actually famous people to participate, whereas most of these “celebrity” game shows are full of c-listers.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Tesla is not having a good year, from a traditional 'selling cars' perspective.
They've been hit by a trifecta of reduced subsidies in the US, greater competition, and Elon trashing the brand with the kind of people who buy Teslas.
I might try and do some analysis later to determine whether the Tesla share price has a stronger correlation to "making money from selling cars" or "bitcoin".
I strongly suspect the latter. It's just the world's biggest memestock that we all own in passive equity trackers.
They’re horrendously overvalued as a car manufacturer, but their value is in the other stuff such as the charging infrastructure, self-driving tech, robotics etc, all of which have massive potential as future revenue streams.
I’m sure the major shareholders didn’t think much of the slightly crazy CEO getting involved in politics in the way he did though, as Robert suggests it put off a lot of people who like EVs in general but didn’t go for a Tesla specifically.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
Its laughable. Think how this would work. They'd be bringing endless people into self-assessment who aren't already there at huge cost. A "guess how many miles you do" form. With cash paid up front. Then correct it the following year. With I assume a load of tax inspectors to validate that the guesstimate mileage figures are correct. Perhaps using DVLA checkpoints to pull over all EVs and check their numbers.
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile" YES AND HO "No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
The again, the previous government gave care home companies the right (in effect) to issue work visas to the UK. With essentially no checks.
Then they were surprised to discover that care home companies were selling work visas for non-existent jobs for about double the price of a seat on a cross channel RIB.
This was only stopped when the care home industry, stupidly, demanded a further increase in immigration….
My take from Caerphilly and Runcorn is that voters on the Right will vote overwhelmingly for Reform, if they are best placed to win; and voters on the Left will vote overwhelmingly for the left wing party that is best placed to stop them.
At least in by-election conditions.
Yes, so it polarises.
My guess is Reform don't have quite enough in the tank to get to an overall majority under GE conditions.
Do we think the Tories will probably support a Reform minority government?
Promise them a few ministerial posts, and of course they will. (A few would object, but it wouldn't even be a close call.)
Thank you for the response.
The follow up isn’t so much WILL they back a minority Reform Government but SHOULD they? The Conservatives have recent experience of what happens to a junior coalition partner - what could they do to prevent it happening to them?
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
Its laughable. Think how this would work. They'd be bringing endless people into self-assessment who aren't already there at huge cost. A "guess how many miles you do" form. With cash paid up front. Then correct it the following year. With I assume a load of tax inspectors to validate that the guesstimate mileage figures are correct. Perhaps using DVLA checkpoints to pull over all EVs and check their numbers.
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile" YES AND HO "No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
What happens when you can’t park outside your house because someone else’s car is there
Cones, but I do remember reading that some councils are offering you exclusive parking bays outside your property if you have these installed.
You cannot use cones to try and steal a public parking space for yourself. And I don't see Councils having the resource to faff about with individual parking spaces until they have recovered from being gutted for 15-20 years.
The bigger problem with these is endangerment of pedestrians. From my pov, the footway is a pedestrian space and no obstructions whatsoever are acceptable.
Motor vehicles already dangerously infringe on pedestrian space willy-nilly, regularly destroying pavements, and questioning the assumed entitlement often results in insults or sometimes threats, as anyone who has tried knows. Movement needs to be in the other direction.
Chargers in lamp posts may be acceptable. When chargers block pedestrian space - no.
Don't see why not. Plenty of councils already have systems for applying for residential parking permits. And location records of anyone who pays council tax.
Would it really be that hard ?
Councils are not in my experience able generally to even enforce against dangerous parking (ditto Police), and the residents' parking permit schemes do not iirc generally even pay for their own running costs themselves *. And whenever there is an attempt to make them realistic, all that is heard is an enormous squealing noise.
I'm not sure how enforcement or management would ever work.
This area is of interest to me because it seems to me to not be legal to limit such a scheme to parking of motor vehicles. Equality Law requires the same service to be delivered to 'people with a protected characteristic' using mobility aids, whether eg mobility scooters or adapted cycles.
* I think there was a Centre for Cities report several years ago.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
Its laughable. Think how this would work. They'd be bringing endless people into self-assessment who aren't already there at huge cost. A "guess how many miles you do" form. With cash paid up front. Then correct it the following year. With I assume a load of tax inspectors to validate that the guesstimate mileage figures are correct. Perhaps using DVLA checkpoints to pull over all EVs and check their numbers.
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile" YES AND HO "No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
Why not just charge on mileage at MOT (or, for the first three years at a new, otherwise free, non-inspection MOT)?
See my previous comments about fucking mental.
They cannot charge pence per mile without actually knowing how many miles. That means either a mandatory black box (paid for by the insurance industry via premiums?) or ANPR as we already have at Dartford and Tyne crossings.
The problem with either is the huge cost of setting them up. The latter works if you are doing road tolling - charge everyone 3p per mile to drive on a congested motorway as an example. For EVs only? Will drive people back into other cars.
Which leaves the existing taxes and the only obvious one is VED. We all pay it. Its easy to assign to a type of vehicle. People complain but pay up.
The political challenge is simple. Average annual mileage is 8k miles ish. At 3p thats £240 a year. So slap an EV premium onto VED of £240. That means that most EVs will pay £195 + £425 + £240 = £howmuch???
Making an EV the most expensive car to run is Reform's policy, not Labour's.
As I recommended earlier in the week, anyone invested in the US should take profits; indeed a cautious stance right now is the right one for anyone invested anywhere
To be fair to him, at least he’s drawing attention to a situation that’s mostly been ignored by the international community, with more than 7,000 Christians killed in the country so far this year.
The latest sanctions on Russia appear to be doing a good job as well, just need to send the Tomahawks to Ukraine now so they can take out the Shahed drone factory.
“Adding the number of death referenced in these reports cited by InterSociety does not result in the stated total of 7,000.
“The BBC added up the number of deaths from the 70 reports and found that the total was around 3,000 deaths. Some of the attacks also appear to be reported more than once.”
Why is MAGA bothered who is being killed or how many. America First 'init?
MAGA love being victims. They are desperate for a genocide of their own. Elon Musk's white genocide in South Africa didn't persuade enough people, so they're pushing the idea of a Christian genocide in Nigeria. We're been talking about Boko Haram in Nigeria for years (even decades), but they've re-badged events with the "genocide" word.
“Genocide” is one of those terms that is getting overused, to the point of being meaningless,
You might enjoy "The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression" by A. Dirk Moses. He discusses how the term was created and how it has become problematic.
So research proves that X has become a right wing cesspit since Musk took over . The algorithm is designed to amplify right wing views . None of this will come as a surprise .
Don’t worry, BlueSky is still a left-wing cesspit if that’s your preference.
I run both, and OTOH BlueSky is not the instrument of a neo-fascist conspiraloon trying to drive his poisonous values into our country.
OTOH BlueSky went through 40 million users a few days ago. I've no idea what that means long term, but half a year ago I said we would not know for sure until mid-late 2026.
If it's under 100 million in 12 months time, then I'd say it will stay as a (large) niche product.
"Users" is irrevelant. Threads have massive amount of "users". It is activity of those users. Same as some YouTube channels have many millions of subs but now only a tiny number of those actually watch new videos. And the activity stats on BlueSky are far below peak. The downward trend in all those metrics have stabilised in recent months, but it definitely isn't growing.
It is also noticable how little the media now talk about BlueSky. There was a huge push on look look new twitter, better twitter, its grown by a million users this week. Now never gets a mention, its back to what some dickhead has said on twitter this week.
I think all the stats are relevant, depending on what the question is that is being asked.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
Its laughable. Think how this would work. They'd be bringing endless people into self-assessment who aren't already there at huge cost. A "guess how many miles you do" form. With cash paid up front. Then correct it the following year. With I assume a load of tax inspectors to validate that the guesstimate mileage figures are correct. Perhaps using DVLA checkpoints to pull over all EVs and check their numbers.
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile" YES AND HO "No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
Why not just charge on mileage at MOT (or, for the first three years at a new, otherwise free, non-inspection MOT)?
See my previous comments about fucking mental.
They cannot charge pence per mile without actually knowing how many miles. That means either a mandatory black box (paid for by the insurance industry via premiums?) or ANPR as we already have at Dartford and Tyne crossings.
The problem with either is the huge cost of setting them up. The latter works if you are doing road tolling - charge everyone 3p per mile to drive on a congested motorway as an example. For EVs only? Will drive people back into other cars.
Which leaves the existing taxes and the only obvious one is VED. We all pay it. Its easy to assign to a type of vehicle. People complain but pay up.
The political challenge is simple. Average annual mileage is 8k miles ish. At 3p thats £240 a year. So slap an EV premium onto VED of £240. That means that most EVs will pay £195 + £425 + £240 = £howmuch???
Making an EV the most expensive car to run is Reform's policy, not Labour's.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
Its laughable. Think how this would work. They'd be bringing endless people into self-assessment who aren't already there at huge cost. A "guess how many miles you do" form. With cash paid up front. Then correct it the following year. With I assume a load of tax inspectors to validate that the guesstimate mileage figures are correct. Perhaps using DVLA checkpoints to pull over all EVs and check their numbers.
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile" YES AND HO "No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
In Ireland the local property tax is based on self-assessed house value. There don't seem to be any checks on it. HMG will be relying on most people being law-abiding and just paying up.
If there's a sustained campaign of non-payment - as with the poll tax - then they would be in some trouble and would have to choose a different approach.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
Its laughable. Think how this would work. They'd be bringing endless people into self-assessment who aren't already there at huge cost. A "guess how many miles you do" form. With cash paid up front. Then correct it the following year. With I assume a load of tax inspectors to validate that the guesstimate mileage figures are correct. Perhaps using DVLA checkpoints to pull over all EVs and check their numbers.
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile" YES AND HO "No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
Why not just charge on mileage at MOT (or, for the first three years at a new, otherwise free, non-inspection MOT)?
See my previous comments about fucking mental.
They cannot charge pence per mile without actually knowing how many miles. That means either a mandatory black box (paid for by the insurance industry via premiums?) or ANPR as we already have at Dartford and Tyne crossings.
The problem with either is the huge cost of setting them up. The latter works if you are doing road tolling - charge everyone 3p per mile to drive on a congested motorway as an example. For EVs only? Will drive people back into other cars.
Which leaves the existing taxes and the only obvious one is VED. We all pay it. Its easy to assign to a type of vehicle. People complain but pay up.
The political challenge is simple. Average annual mileage is 8k miles ish. At 3p thats £240 a year. So slap an EV premium onto VED of £240. That means that most EVs will pay £195 + £425 + £240 = £howmuch???
Making an EV the most expensive car to run is Reform's policy, not Labour's.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
Its laughable. Think how this would work. They'd be bringing endless people into self-assessment who aren't already there at huge cost. A "guess how many miles you do" form. With cash paid up front. Then correct it the following year. With I assume a load of tax inspectors to validate that the guesstimate mileage figures are correct. Perhaps using DVLA checkpoints to pull over all EVs and check their numbers.
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile" YES AND HO "No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
Why not just charge on mileage at MOT (or, for the first three years at a new, otherwise free, non-inspection MOT)?
See my previous comments about fucking mental.
They cannot charge pence per mile without actually knowing how many miles. That means either a mandatory black box (paid for by the insurance industry via premiums?) or ANPR as we already have at Dartford and Tyne crossings.
The problem with either is the huge cost of setting them up. The latter works if you are doing road tolling - charge everyone 3p per mile to drive on a congested motorway as an example. For EVs only? Will drive people back into other cars.
Which leaves the existing taxes and the only obvious one is VED. We all pay it. Its easy to assign to a type of vehicle. People complain but pay up.
The political challenge is simple. Average annual mileage is 8k miles ish. At 3p thats £240 a year. So slap an EV premium onto VED of £240. That means that most EVs will pay £195 + £425 + £240 = £howmuch???
Making an EV the most expensive car to run is Reform's policy, not Labour's.
Well, for people who can't charge at home, the EV is already expensive to fuel.
It is worth considering that making transport, power etc expensive to discourage use has become so culturally embedded that the idea it should be cheap can induce shock.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
Its laughable. Think how this would work. They'd be bringing endless people into self-assessment who aren't already there at huge cost. A "guess how many miles you do" form. With cash paid up front. Then correct it the following year. With I assume a load of tax inspectors to validate that the guesstimate mileage figures are correct. Perhaps using DVLA checkpoints to pull over all EVs and check their numbers.
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile" YES AND HO "No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
Why not just charge on mileage at MOT (or, for the first three years at a new, otherwise free, non-inspection MOT)?
Doing a free Mot would cost more than the tax raised.
As well as a repeat visit to the Volgograd oil refinery (6th largest in Russia), there was also a fire at a refinery in Belarus and an ammunition storage depot hit at Donetsk airport. The word is that this was a large UAV warehouse that the Ukrainians have been trying to find for a long time.
Yes definitely a good night for Ukraine, lots of damage done. The smoking ammo dump near Pokrovsk should help ease the pressure that’s been building up there over the last couple of weeks.
Ukraine also hit a large (3.7GW) thermal power plant that supplies Moscow.
Ukraine's attacks on electricity substations appear to be focused on cutting off Moscow from electricity supply. This winter Ukraine is able to respond to attacks on its electricity infrastructure with attacks on the electricity supply to Moscow. It will be interesting to see whether this is successful enough to create a deterrent effect and how Muscovites will respond to experiencing the war more directly.
The video of the strike on the UAV warehouse at Donetsk Airport shows a very marked shockwave after the detonation - a very large explosion. Three oil depots were also hit in Crimea - one of which caused a blast that was heard over a distance spanning Simferopol and the south coast - a distance of more than 20 miles.
A very successful night for Ukraine in the strategic bombing war. This is the way to win the war.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
Its laughable. Think how this would work. They'd be bringing endless people into self-assessment who aren't already there at huge cost. A "guess how many miles you do" form. With cash paid up front. Then correct it the following year. With I assume a load of tax inspectors to validate that the guesstimate mileage figures are correct. Perhaps using DVLA checkpoints to pull over all EVs and check their numbers.
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile" YES AND HO "No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
Why not just charge on mileage at MOT (or, for the first three years at a new, otherwise free, non-inspection MOT)?
See my previous comments about fucking mental.
They cannot charge pence per mile without actually knowing how many miles. That means either a mandatory black box (paid for by the insurance industry via premiums?) or ANPR as we already have at Dartford and Tyne crossings.
The problem with either is the huge cost of setting them up. The latter works if you are doing road tolling - charge everyone 3p per mile to drive on a congested motorway as an example. For EVs only? Will drive people back into other cars.
Which leaves the existing taxes and the only obvious one is VED. We all pay it. Its easy to assign to a type of vehicle. People complain but pay up.
The political challenge is simple. Average annual mileage is 8k miles ish. At 3p thats £240 a year. So slap an EV premium onto VED of £240. That means that most EVs will pay £195 + £425 + £240 = £howmuch???
Making an EV the most expensive car to run is Reform's policy, not Labour's.
This plus the rejection of regional/nodal energy pricing is going to completely alienate me from Labour.
FPT: Per mile taxation is silly - does nothing to dis-incentivise short journeys while hurting rural communities. At least fuel duty penalises fuel-inefficient urban driving.
Far preferable is a per journey (or per day?) charge, or an urban driving charge. That could mean the tax on a journey between Aberdeen and Inverness would be the same as between your home and the local primary school. If per mile taxation is feasible then surely this is too.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
Its laughable. Think how this would work. They'd be bringing endless people into self-assessment who aren't already there at huge cost. A "guess how many miles you do" form. With cash paid up front. Then correct it the following year. With I assume a load of tax inspectors to validate that the guesstimate mileage figures are correct. Perhaps using DVLA checkpoints to pull over all EVs and check their numbers.
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile" YES AND HO "No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
Why not just charge on mileage at MOT (or, for the first three years at a new, otherwise free, non-inspection MOT)?
See my previous comments about fucking mental.
They cannot charge pence per mile without actually knowing how many miles. That means either a mandatory black box (paid for by the insurance industry via premiums?) or ANPR as we already have at Dartford and Tyne crossings.
The problem with either is the huge cost of setting them up. The latter works if you are doing road tolling - charge everyone 3p per mile to drive on a congested motorway as an example. For EVs only? Will drive people back into other cars.
Which leaves the existing taxes and the only obvious one is VED. We all pay it. Its easy to assign to a type of vehicle. People complain but pay up.
The political challenge is simple. Average annual mileage is 8k miles ish. At 3p thats £240 a year. So slap an EV premium onto VED of £240. That means that most EVs will pay £195 + £425 + £240 = £howmuch???
Making an EV the most expensive car to run is Reform's policy, not Labour's.
Outlet A gets an exclusive All other outlets report on outlet A's story, adding their own angles so that its not just the copy paste it started as.
That Grauniad story? Read paragraph 1:
"Rachel Reeves is drawing up plans for a new pay-per-mile tax for electric vehicles to announce in this month’s budget worth an extra £250 a year on average, according to reports."
They don't have the story. They read it in the Telegraph and are ringing their own sources asking "is this true?"
They go on, quoting a government spokesperson who spoke to the BBC: “Fuel duty covers petrol and diesel, but there’s no equivalent for electric vehicles. We want a fairer system for all drivers.”
I have no doubt that is true, and it has been for years. That is a long long way from 3p a mile, done via your tax return.
Looks like we will have to cancel a cruise booked for Feb as I have broken my leg and my orthopaedic consultant is not confident it will be fixed well enough in time for me to travel safely. Due to pay the balance on Monday so now is the time to cancel.
Cunard won't give me back the deposit (c. £2k) but I could claim it off my travel insurance.
Question: do any PBers have experience of what impact claiming on travel insurance might have on future premiums? Just wondering if it's like pet insurance - claim once and the insurers bump up future premiums massively. The thing is with travel insurance, I feel it's non-negotiable as the costs if uninsured could be huge.
Any views?
5 years back Mrs Foxy was in an RTA about 10 days before we were due to fly to Vietnam for a tour. Lots of bruising and some broken ribs, so not able to fly or tour.
The travel insurance paid out in full, and as no long term issue didn't load future premiums. Indeed both insurance companies (Esure for the car, Columbus Direct for the travel) gave such good service and uncomplicated payout of costs that we have stuck with them since.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
Its laughable. Think how this would work. They'd be bringing endless people into self-assessment who aren't already there at huge cost. A "guess how many miles you do" form. With cash paid up front. Then correct it the following year. With I assume a load of tax inspectors to validate that the guesstimate mileage figures are correct. Perhaps using DVLA checkpoints to pull over all EVs and check their numbers.
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile" YES AND HO "No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
In Ireland the local property tax is based on self-assessed house value. There don't seem to be any checks on it. HMG will be relying on most people being law-abiding and just paying up.
If there's a sustained campaign of non-payment - as with the poll tax - then they would be in some trouble and would have to choose a different approach.
It’s pretty difficult to scam the mileage on new cars, it’s not just stored in the dashboard clock any more. Under-declaring would catch up eventually, either at the first MoT or point of sale.
It’s still a silly proposal though, and will reduce demand for EVs that government are otherwise trying to encourage.
As others have said, there needs to be a way of shifting motoring costs to be mostly variable rather than fixed, and VED is a great example of a fixed cost. I suspect the only realistic option is going to be something like a congestion charge in every urban area, but run nationally. They’ll need to fix the fake number plate problem first though, and possibly move to a tag system as used on some toll gates.
My take from Caerphilly and Runcorn is that voters on the Right will vote overwhelmingly for Reform, if they are best placed to win; and voters on the Left will vote overwhelmingly for the left wing party that is best placed to stop them.
At least in by-election conditions.
I don't believe that to be true. Forever Labour voters voted Johnson in 2019 to kick out the European foreigners. Now they will vote Farage to kick out "other" foreigners.
My late father always voted Labour but he was as socially right wing as they came. With Reform one can vote to kick out foreigners without vomiting as one votes Tory.
If he were still around, do you think he would be a Lab/Reform floater? That would be interesting - because popular wisdom - which I do not necessarily buy - says there aren't many of those.
Looks like we will have to cancel a cruise booked for Feb as I have broken my leg and my orthopaedic consultant is not confident it will be fixed well enough in time for me to travel safely. Due to pay the balance on Monday so now is the time to cancel.
Cunard won't give me back the deposit (c. £2k) but I could claim it off my travel insurance.
Question: do any PBers have experience of what impact claiming on travel insurance might have on future premiums? Just wondering if it's like pet insurance - claim once and the insurers bump up future premiums massively. The thing is with travel insurance, I feel it's non-negotiable as the costs if uninsured could be huge.
Any views?
Can't tell you about the insurance, but can tell you the holiday companies love cancellations. And they can claim the VAT back too.
Yeah, I bet. It's an accessible cabin too and there's always a wait list for those as cruises approach so they will haave no issue reselling it. I'll ask them is they'll give me a future cruise credit for the deposit but I know the answer :-(
It’s always worth asking about credit for the deposit if they resell the cabin, especially if there’s likely to be demand for it. Say that you’ll rebook straight away.
I follow this lady who blogs about cruises, there’s a load of useful information on her website. https://emmacruises.com/
Good luck and get well soon!
Ok, just to close the loop on this one - I called Cunard and indeed they are willing to transfer my booking to a future cruise of the same or greater value, which seems fair enough to me. So thank-you to @Sandpit for that suggestion, I'm not sure if they'd have offered it if I hadn't asked - it's not enshrined in their booking conditions.
@Big_G_NorthWales: I absolutely agree, I would never travel abroad these days without travel insurance. Im sorry that it has become too expensive for you now, I'm glad for you that you did a lot of travelling when you could.
Don't delay - seize the day! is a great mantra.
Finally, thank you to those who wished me well - I am fine, but my leg break (femur) is unfortunately going to be a slow healing process. I am reminded that despite our political differences and often heated debates PB is a great collection of virtual friends.
"One in four British adults are watching The Celebrity Traitors as it enters its penultimate week. An astonishing 14million of the 55million over-18s in the UK have tuned in to each episode, figures reveal."
My wife’s been watching this. They did manage to get a group of actually famous people to participate, whereas most of these “celebrity” game shows are full of c-listers.
A blessing and a curse. It has made it very watchable, but I think it has made it much harder for players. Instead of looking at things that have happened, they have made all their decisions based on well known personalities.
To be fair to him, at least he’s drawing attention to a situation that’s mostly been ignored by the international community, with more than 7,000 Christians killed in the country so far this year.
The latest sanctions on Russia appear to be doing a good job as well, just need to send the Tomahawks to Ukraine now so they can take out the Shahed drone factory.
I think we might have noticed 7,000 deaths. Once again you are spiralling down the alt-right fact free rabbit hole.
Looks like we will have to cancel a cruise booked for Feb as I have broken my leg and my orthopaedic consultant is not confident it will be fixed well enough in time for me to travel safely. Due to pay the balance on Monday so now is the time to cancel.
Cunard won't give me back the deposit (c. £2k) but I could claim it off my travel insurance.
Question: do any PBers have experience of what impact claiming on travel insurance might have on future premiums? Just wondering if it's like pet insurance - claim once and the insurers bump up future premiums massively. The thing is with travel insurance, I feel it's non-negotiable as the costs if uninsured could be huge.
Any views?
Can't tell you about the insurance, but can tell you the holiday companies love cancellations. And they can claim the VAT back too.
Yeah, I bet. It's an accessible cabin too and there's always a wait list for those as cruises approach so they will haave no issue reselling it. I'll ask them is they'll give me a future cruise credit for the deposit but I know the answer :-(
It’s always worth asking about credit for the deposit if they resell the cabin, especially if there’s likely to be demand for it. Say that you’ll rebook straight away.
I follow this lady who blogs about cruises, there’s a load of useful information on her website. https://emmacruises.com/
Good luck and get well soon!
Ok, just to close the loop on this one - I called Cunard and indeed they are willing to transfer my booking to a future cruise of the same or greater value, which seems fair enough to me. So thank-you to @Sandpit for that suggestion, I'm not sure if they'd have offered it if I hadn't asked - it's not enshrined in their booking conditions.
@Big_G_NorthWales: I absolutely agree, I would never travel abroad these days without travel insurance. Im sorry that it has become too expensive for you now, I'm glad for you that you did a lot of travelling when you could.
Don't delay - seize the day! is a great mantra.
Finally, thank you to those who wished me well - I am fine, but my leg break (femur) is unfortunately going to be a slow healing process. I am reminded that despite our political differences and often heated debates PB is a great collection of virtual friends.
Thanks all!
Femur? Count yourself lucky it's not much worse. Good luck with the recovery.
We were talking yesterday about the big increase in prisoner numbers. But it's not just the UK.
"Sweden's prison population was 10,175 as of January 1, 2024, with an occupancy rate of 110.7%. The population has nearly doubled in the last decade, with an increase of 91% since 2015, driven by a tougher stance on serious crimes. This has led to overcrowding, with the occupancy rate hitting 131% in 2024."
On pay per mile - the issue is that fuel duty is the perfect tax, so anything else is worse.
We then have the usual British logic that everything has to be invented afresh. HMRC does not look round the world and go hmm XYZ seem to do it this way let’s copy their solution
To step back from the Reformgraph story into reality for a minute, the government has a big problem. It taxes this Bad Thing to stop people using it. Tax revenues drop. Shit, better tax people doing the thing we just encouraged you to do.
Road pricing is inevitable - always has been - as fuel duty rolls back. The furore will be how they replace it. Pence per mile on busy roads is the obvious solution - though the people whose suburban roads become rat runs to avoid motorways will be outraged. Or they go all vehicles all trips, and rural voters go mad pointing out there is little to no public transport and school is 9 miles away.
With the polling as it is, who knows whether Labour "have a chance" in your constituency. Of course if enough people believe they do and tactically vote for them it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy even if they didn't on the pure VI.... I guess this is Labour's hope. They need out anyways.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
Its laughable. Think how this would work. They'd be bringing endless people into self-assessment who aren't already there at huge cost. A "guess how many miles you do" form. With cash paid up front. Then correct it the following year. With I assume a load of tax inspectors to validate that the guesstimate mileage figures are correct. Perhaps using DVLA checkpoints to pull over all EVs and check their numbers.
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile" YES AND HO "No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
Why not just charge on mileage at MOT (or, for the first three years at a new, otherwise free, non-inspection MOT)?
See my previous comments about fucking mental.
They cannot charge pence per mile without actually knowing how many miles. That means either a mandatory black box (paid for by the insurance industry via premiums?) or ANPR as we already have at Dartford and Tyne crossings.
The problem with either is the huge cost of setting them up. The latter works if you are doing road tolling - charge everyone 3p per mile to drive on a congested motorway as an example. For EVs only? Will drive people back into other cars.
Which leaves the existing taxes and the only obvious one is VED. We all pay it. Its easy to assign to a type of vehicle. People complain but pay up.
The political challenge is simple. Average annual mileage is 8k miles ish. At 3p thats £240 a year. So slap an EV premium onto VED of £240. That means that most EVs will pay £195 + £425 + £240 = £howmuch???
Making an EV the most expensive car to run is Reform's policy, not Labour's.
It’s attack on people like me, hard working, salt of the earth types.
It’s another of those things where problem has been obvious for 10 years but rather than highlighting it on the past, previous Chancellors have ignored it until the problem became too big to ignore.
And Reeves has inherited a whole office block / warehouse of things that can’t be ignored any longer
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
Its laughable. Think how this would work. They'd be bringing endless people into self-assessment who aren't already there at huge cost. A "guess how many miles you do" form. With cash paid up front. Then correct it the following year. With I assume a load of tax inspectors to validate that the guesstimate mileage figures are correct. Perhaps using DVLA checkpoints to pull over all EVs and check their numbers.
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile" YES AND HO "No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
Why not just charge on mileage at MOT (or, for the first three years at a new, otherwise free, non-inspection MOT)?
See my previous comments about fucking mental.
They cannot charge pence per mile without actually knowing how many miles. That means either a mandatory black box (paid for by the insurance industry via premiums?) or ANPR as we already have at Dartford and Tyne crossings.
The problem with either is the huge cost of setting them up. The latter works if you are doing road tolling - charge everyone 3p per mile to drive on a congested motorway as an example. For EVs only? Will drive people back into other cars.
Which leaves the existing taxes and the only obvious one is VED. We all pay it. Its easy to assign to a type of vehicle. People complain but pay up.
The political challenge is simple. Average annual mileage is 8k miles ish. At 3p thats £240 a year. So slap an EV premium onto VED of £240. That means that most EVs will pay £195 + £425 + £240 = £howmuch???
Making an EV the most expensive car to run is Reform's policy, not Labour's.
Outlet A gets an exclusive All other outlets report on outlet A's story, adding their own angles so that its not just the copy paste it started as.
That Grauniad story? Read paragraph 1:
"Rachel Reeves is drawing up plans for a new pay-per-mile tax for electric vehicles to announce in this month’s budget worth an extra £250 a year on average, according to reports."
They don't have the story. They read it in the Telegraph and are ringing their own sources asking "is this true?"
They go on, quoting a government spokesperson who spoke to the BBC: “Fuel duty covers petrol and diesel, but there’s no equivalent for electric vehicles. We want a fairer system for all drivers.”
I have no doubt that is true, and it has been for years. That is a long long way from 3p a mile, done via your tax return.
The fact that the Treasury would like to do this is real & has not been hallucinated by Telegraph journalists.
Whether it’s actually going to happen is an entirely different question! The government is going to have to fill the hole left by the loss of fuel duty as the transition to EVs continues - as previous discussions on here have pointed out, fuel duty pays for more than just the cost of running the road network. Taxes are going to have to rise significantly somewhere to fill that gap & road pricing of some sort is an obvious thing that the Treasury will be pushing for.
As well as a repeat visit to the Volgograd oil refinery (6th largest in Russia), there was also a fire at a refinery in Belarus and an ammunition storage depot hit at Donetsk airport. The word is that this was a large UAV warehouse that the Ukrainians have been trying to find for a long time.
Yes definitely a good night for Ukraine, lots of damage done. The smoking ammo dump near Pokrovsk should help ease the pressure that’s been building up there over the last couple of weeks.
Ukraine also hit a large (3.7GW) thermal power plant that supplies Moscow.
Ukraine's attacks on electricity substations appear to be focused on cutting off Moscow from electricity supply. This winter Ukraine is able to respond to attacks on its electricity infrastructure with attacks on the electricity supply to Moscow. It will be interesting to see whether this is successful enough to create a deterrent effect and how Muscovites will respond to experiencing the war more directly.
The video of the strike on the UAV warehouse at Donetsk Airport shows a very marked shockwave after the detonation - a very large explosion. Three oil depots were also hit in Crimea - one of which caused a blast that was heard over a distance spanning Simferopol and the south coast - a distance of more than 20 miles.
A very successful night for Ukraine in the strategic bombing war. This is the way to win the war.
20 miles ain't so much - we can hear the fireworks in Plymouth which is 25 miles. And they are tiny amount of exlossive in comparison.
But trashing the Russian power and hydrocarbans is the way to beat Russia. I wonder if there are back channel discussions to take them off limits for both sides? That said, Ukraine is hardly going to agree if Russia doesn't attack power plants - but instead hits more hospitals, residential blocks, kindergartens, markets... It does look all in for Ukraine until a meaningful ceasefire - or if they can take the pain, until the lights going out in Moscow brings the SMO to a close.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
Its laughable. Think how this would work. They'd be bringing endless people into self-assessment who aren't already there at huge cost. A "guess how many miles you do" form. With cash paid up front. Then correct it the following year. With I assume a load of tax inspectors to validate that the guesstimate mileage figures are correct. Perhaps using DVLA checkpoints to pull over all EVs and check their numbers.
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile" YES AND HO "No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
Why not just charge on mileage at MOT (or, for the first three years at a new, otherwise free, non-inspection MOT)?
See my previous comments about fucking mental.
They cannot charge pence per mile without actually knowing how many miles. That means either a mandatory black box (paid for by the insurance industry via premiums?) or ANPR as we already have at Dartford and Tyne crossings.
The problem with either is the huge cost of setting them up. The latter works if you are doing road tolling - charge everyone 3p per mile to drive on a congested motorway as an example. For EVs only? Will drive people back into other cars.
Which leaves the existing taxes and the only obvious one is VED. We all pay it. Its easy to assign to a type of vehicle. People complain but pay up.
The political challenge is simple. Average annual mileage is 8k miles ish. At 3p thats £240 a year. So slap an EV premium onto VED of £240. That means that most EVs will pay £195 + £425 + £240 = £howmuch???
Making an EV the most expensive car to run is Reform's policy, not Labour's.
This plus the rejection of regional/nodal energy pricing is going to completely alienate me from Labour.
FPT: Per mile taxation is silly - does nothing to dis-incentivise short journeys while hurting rural communities. At least fuel duty penalises fuel-inefficient urban driving.
Far preferable is a per journey (or per day?) charge, or an urban driving charge. That could mean the tax on a journey between Aberdeen and Inverness would be the same as between your home and the local primary school. If per mile taxation is feasible then surely this is too.
How will the taxman know how many miles have been driven? Will all EV owners have to do a tax return with a report on mileage? Will the rest of us have to do a nil return?
Looks like we will have to cancel a cruise booked for Feb as I have broken my leg and my orthopaedic consultant is not confident it will be fixed well enough in time for me to travel safely. Due to pay the balance on Monday so now is the time to cancel.
Cunard won't give me back the deposit (c. £2k) but I could claim it off my travel insurance.
Question: do any PBers have experience of what impact claiming on travel insurance might have on future premiums? Just wondering if it's like pet insurance - claim once and the insurers bump up future premiums massively. The thing is with travel insurance, I feel it's non-negotiable as the costs if uninsured could be huge.
Any views?
5 years back Mrs Foxy was in an RTA about 10 days before we were due to fly to Vietnam for a tour. Lots of bruising and some broken ribs, so not able to fly or tour.
The travel insurance paid out in full, and as no long term issue didn't load future premiums. Indeed both insurance companies (Esure for the car, Columbus Direct for the travel) gave such good service and uncomplicated payout of costs that we have stuck with them since.
We WERE with esure for the car. No claims for many years BUT the premium went up massively this year. Result; we're no longer with esure. Pity, because when I wanted add another driver for a travel 'emergency' (long, irrelevant, story) they were very reasonable. But an increase from around £700 (in itself a lot) to well over £900 for a car driven about 5000 miles per year was, I thought, unreasonable.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
Its laughable. Think how this would work. They'd be bringing endless people into self-assessment who aren't already there at huge cost. A "guess how many miles you do" form. With cash paid up front. Then correct it the following year. With I assume a load of tax inspectors to validate that the guesstimate mileage figures are correct. Perhaps using DVLA checkpoints to pull over all EVs and check their numbers.
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile" YES AND HO "No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
Why not just charge on mileage at MOT (or, for the first three years at a new, otherwise free, non-inspection MOT)?
See my previous comments about fucking mental.
They cannot charge pence per mile without actually knowing how many miles. That means either a mandatory black box (paid for by the insurance industry via premiums?) or ANPR as we already have at Dartford and Tyne crossings.
The problem with either is the huge cost of setting them up. The latter works if you are doing road tolling - charge everyone 3p per mile to drive on a congested motorway as an example. For EVs only? Will drive people back into other cars.
Which leaves the existing taxes and the only obvious one is VED. We all pay it. Its easy to assign to a type of vehicle. People complain but pay up.
The political challenge is simple. Average annual mileage is 8k miles ish. At 3p thats £240 a year. So slap an EV premium onto VED of £240. That means that most EVs will pay £195 + £425 + £240 = £howmuch???
Making an EV the most expensive car to run is Reform's policy, not Labour's.
Outlet A gets an exclusive All other outlets report on outlet A's story, adding their own angles so that its not just the copy paste it started as.
That Grauniad story? Read paragraph 1:
"Rachel Reeves is drawing up plans for a new pay-per-mile tax for electric vehicles to announce in this month’s budget worth an extra £250 a year on average, according to reports."
They don't have the story. They read it in the Telegraph and are ringing their own sources asking "is this true?"
They go on, quoting a government spokesperson who spoke to the BBC: “Fuel duty covers petrol and diesel, but there’s no equivalent for electric vehicles. We want a fairer system for all drivers.”
I have no doubt that is true, and it has been for years. That is a long long way from 3p a mile, done via your tax return.
The fact that the Treasury would like to do this is real & has not been hallucinated by Telegraph journalists.
Whether it’s actually going to happen is an entirely different question! The government is going to have to fill the hole left by the loss of fuel duty as the transition to EVs continues - as previous discussions on here have pointed out, fuel duty pays for more than just the cost of running the road network. Taxes are going to have to rise significantly somewhere to fill that gap & road pricing of some sort is an obvious thing that the Treasury will be pushing for.
Fuel duty is £24bn - that’s 2.5pon income tax.
Literally the only saving grace of fuel duty not being increased by inflation is that it’s only £24bn raised that needs to be found and not £40bn+
As well as a repeat visit to the Volgograd oil refinery (6th largest in Russia), there was also a fire at a refinery in Belarus and an ammunition storage depot hit at Donetsk airport. The word is that this was a large UAV warehouse that the Ukrainians have been trying to find for a long time.
Yes definitely a good night for Ukraine, lots of damage done. The smoking ammo dump near Pokrovsk should help ease the pressure that’s been building up there over the last couple of weeks.
Ukraine also hit a large (3.7GW) thermal power plant that supplies Moscow.
Ukraine's attacks on electricity substations appear to be focused on cutting off Moscow from electricity supply. This winter Ukraine is able to respond to attacks on its electricity infrastructure with attacks on the electricity supply to Moscow. It will be interesting to see whether this is successful enough to create a deterrent effect and how Muscovites will respond to experiencing the war more directly.
The video of the strike on the UAV warehouse at Donetsk Airport shows a very marked shockwave after the detonation - a very large explosion. Three oil depots were also hit in Crimea - one of which caused a blast that was heard over a distance spanning Simferopol and the south coast - a distance of more than 20 miles.
A very successful night for Ukraine in the strategic bombing war. This is the way to win the war.
Looks like we will have to cancel a cruise booked for Feb as I have broken my leg and my orthopaedic consultant is not confident it will be fixed well enough in time for me to travel safely. Due to pay the balance on Monday so now is the time to cancel.
Cunard won't give me back the deposit (c. £2k) but I could claim it off my travel insurance.
Question: do any PBers have experience of what impact claiming on travel insurance might have on future premiums? Just wondering if it's like pet insurance - claim once and the insurers bump up future premiums massively. The thing is with travel insurance, I feel it's non-negotiable as the costs if uninsured could be huge.
Any views?
Can't tell you about the insurance, but can tell you the holiday companies love cancellations. And they can claim the VAT back too.
Yeah, I bet. It's an accessible cabin too and there's always a wait list for those as cruises approach so they will haave no issue reselling it. I'll ask them is they'll give me a future cruise credit for the deposit but I know the answer :-(
It’s always worth asking about credit for the deposit if they resell the cabin, especially if there’s likely to be demand for it. Say that you’ll rebook straight away.
I follow this lady who blogs about cruises, there’s a load of useful information on her website. https://emmacruises.com/
Good luck and get well soon!
Ok, just to close the loop on this one - I called Cunard and indeed they are willing to transfer my booking to a future cruise of the same or greater value, which seems fair enough to me. So thank-you to @Sandpit for that suggestion, I'm not sure if they'd have offered it if I hadn't asked - it's not enshrined in their booking conditions.
@Big_G_NorthWales: I absolutely agree, I would never travel abroad these days without travel insurance. Im sorry that it has become too expensive for you now, I'm glad for you that you did a lot of travelling when you could.
Don't delay - seize the day! is a great mantra.
Finally, thank you to those who wished me well - I am fine, but my leg break (femur) is unfortunately going to be a slow healing process. I am reminded that despite our political differences and often heated debates PB is a great collection of virtual friends.
Thanks all!
Best wishes for recovery; agree with you and Big G about travel insurance. We once went on a group trip and someone didn't have travel insurance. Their partner had to be hospitalised. Not sure how it all ended up. Sri Lanka, so wouldn't have been extortionate.
I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two.
As you are around - have you seen Tesla's (lack of sales) in October
So the SMMT have published sales figures for October
Battery EV sales rose 24% compared to October 2024
TESLA however sold only 511 cars compared to 971 cars in October 2024 - that’s a 47% drop
So the new models were a very temporary boost and the reality is that a Tesla car is not something people seem to want.
Tesla sales in the first month of any given quarter are always shit. They deliver very few vehicles - never have. Which is why you need to look at the quarter
IIRC Tesla charters ships to deliver their cars from US to UK, so they arrive in batches of 5,000 rather than steadily as with most other manufacturers who rent space on existing shipping routes.
A slight "yes, but". About 2/3 of Tesla European sales are made in Berlin (Model Ys). YTD (Aug/Sept) approx sales figures:
Year-to-date (Jan-Sep) sales for the Model Y are 109,793, while the Model 3 has sold 49,524 units from Jan-Aug 2025.
That's enough for roughly one Model 3 transport from the USA every month at 5000 per.
(As an aside, that's not a lot to my eye for a place the size of their Berlin factory.)
As an aside, I take the flappage from the Telegraph yesterday as an attempt to create frightening narratives to wind up their Captain Mainwaring in his shed in Tunbridge Wells (it may be a posh shed).
Ah, I hadn't realised it was the Telegraph.
At this point, I need to scuttle away and make sure it *was* the Telegraph, to make sure I do not get hoist by my own petard.
(Checks: yes, according to Rochdale, it was:
@RochdalePioneers said: I do have to giggle about the EV per mile exclusive. In the Telegraph - which is the first sign that it isn’t true because so little they print as “news” is.
Comedy - it’s pay per mile. But no monitoring. Honest motorists will fill in EV bureaucrat paperwork each year and self declare how many miles they have driven.
What do Telegraph owners hate? Government bureaucrats and EVs. So of course they have magically conflated the two. )
I thought government sources have admitted they're talking about this ? (Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong. Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
Its laughable. Think how this would work. They'd be bringing endless people into self-assessment who aren't already there at huge cost. A "guess how many miles you do" form. With cash paid up front. Then correct it the following year. With I assume a load of tax inspectors to validate that the guesstimate mileage figures are correct. Perhaps using DVLA checkpoints to pull over all EVs and check their numbers.
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile" YES AND HO "No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
Why not just charge on mileage at MOT (or, for the first three years at a new, otherwise free, non-inspection MOT)?
See my previous comments about fucking mental.
They cannot charge pence per mile without actually knowing how many miles. That means either a mandatory black box (paid for by the insurance industry via premiums?) or ANPR as we already have at Dartford and Tyne crossings.
The problem with either is the huge cost of setting them up. The latter works if you are doing road tolling - charge everyone 3p per mile to drive on a congested motorway as an example. For EVs only? Will drive people back into other cars.
Which leaves the existing taxes and the only obvious one is VED. We all pay it. Its easy to assign to a type of vehicle. People complain but pay up.
The political challenge is simple. Average annual mileage is 8k miles ish. At 3p thats £240 a year. So slap an EV premium onto VED of £240. That means that most EVs will pay £195 + £425 + £240 = £howmuch???
Making an EV the most expensive car to run is Reform's policy, not Labour's.
They're going to have to bring it in at some point. The only questions are how soon, and what the detail will be.
The other side of the equation is the imperative to do something about charging costs. The marginal cost of electricity varies massively. Those in a position to do so can already charge off peak at very cheap rates. Good government would work out how to make that near universal, without spending to many billions on setting that up.
To be fair to him, at least he’s drawing attention to a situation that’s mostly been ignored by the international community, with more than 7,000 Christians killed in the country so far this year.
The latest sanctions on Russia appear to be doing a good job as well, just need to send the Tomahawks to Ukraine now so they can take out the Shahed drone factory.
I think we might have noticed 7,000 deaths. Once again you are spiralling down the alt-right fact free rabbit hole.
On pay per mile - the issue is that fuel duty is the perfect tax, so anything else is worse.
We then have the usual British logic that everything has to be invented afresh. HMRC does not look round the world and go hmm XYZ seem to do it this way let’s copy their solution
Fuel duty isn’t quite prefect - road damage scales with the fourth power of axle weight IIRC, so a fully laden 6 axle 44 tonne artic does about 3000 times the damage to the road as a 2 tonne 2 axle ICE car, whilst only paying approx 20x as much in fuel taxes since rolling resistance is proportional to weight.
To step back from the Reformgraph story into reality for a minute, the government has a big problem. It taxes this Bad Thing to stop people using it. Tax revenues drop. Shit, better tax people doing the thing we just encouraged you to do.
Road pricing is inevitable - always has been - as fuel duty rolls back. The furore will be how they replace it. Pence per mile on busy roads is the obvious solution - though the people whose suburban roads become rat runs to avoid motorways will be outraged. Or they go all vehicles all trips, and rural voters go mad pointing out there is little to no public transport and school is 9 miles away.
Like replacing Council Tax, its easier not to.
The real problem is that, due to the policy of expensive 'leecy, there isn't a huge saving in running an EV, if you can't charge at home.
So "equalising tax" will make EVs noticeably more expensive to run than ICE, for quite a few people.
The government can then carry on to demand the end of ICE. But it then presents Reform with a perfect story for the next election.
To step back from the Reformgraph story into reality for a minute, the government has a big problem. It taxes this Bad Thing to stop people using it. Tax revenues drop. Shit, better tax people doing the thing we just encouraged you to do.
Road pricing is inevitable - always has been - as fuel duty rolls back. The furore will be how they replace it. Pence per mile on busy roads is the obvious solution - though the people whose suburban roads become rat runs to avoid motorways will be outraged. Or they go all vehicles all trips, and rural voters go mad pointing out there is little to no public transport and school is 9 miles away.
Like replacing Council Tax, its easier not to.
You probably wouldn't tax motorways. That's where you want the traffic to be. You'd tax city centres and minor suburban roads the highest, busy urban arterial roads in the middle, and motorways and quiet rural roads not at all. Tax by externality. I was all in favour of this approach before covid. (Now, its information I wouldn't trust the state with.)
Looks like we will have to cancel a cruise booked for Feb as I have broken my leg and my orthopaedic consultant is not confident it will be fixed well enough in time for me to travel safely. Due to pay the balance on Monday so now is the time to cancel.
Cunard won't give me back the deposit (c. £2k) but I could claim it off my travel insurance.
Question: do any PBers have experience of what impact claiming on travel insurance might have on future premiums? Just wondering if it's like pet insurance - claim once and the insurers bump up future premiums massively. The thing is with travel insurance, I feel it's non-negotiable as the costs if uninsured could be huge.
Any views?
Can't tell you about the insurance, but can tell you the holiday companies love cancellations. And they can claim the VAT back too.
Yeah, I bet. It's an accessible cabin too and there's always a wait list for those as cruises approach so they will haave no issue reselling it. I'll ask them is they'll give me a future cruise credit for the deposit but I know the answer :-(
It’s always worth asking about credit for the deposit if they resell the cabin, especially if there’s likely to be demand for it. Say that you’ll rebook straight away.
I follow this lady who blogs about cruises, there’s a load of useful information on her website. https://emmacruises.com/
Good luck and get well soon!
Ok, just to close the loop on this one - I called Cunard and indeed they are willing to transfer my booking to a future cruise of the same or greater value, which seems fair enough to me. So thank-you to @Sandpit for that suggestion, I'm not sure if they'd have offered it if I hadn't asked - it's not enshrined in their booking conditions.
@Big_G_NorthWales: I absolutely agree, I would never travel abroad these days without travel insurance. Im sorry that it has become too expensive for you now, I'm glad for you that you did a lot of travelling when you could.
Don't delay - seize the day! is a great mantra.
Finally, thank you to those who wished me well - I am fine, but my leg break (femur) is unfortunately going to be a slow healing process. I am reminded that despite our political differences and often heated debates PB is a great collection of virtual friends.
Thanks all!
Awesome, glad it worked out for you. Good luck with the leg getting better.
To be fair to him, at least he’s drawing attention to a situation that’s mostly been ignored by the international community, with more than 7,000 Christians killed in the country so far this year.
The latest sanctions on Russia appear to be doing a good job as well, just need to send the Tomahawks to Ukraine now so they can take out the Shahed drone factory.
I think we might have noticed 7,000 deaths. Once again you are spiralling down the alt-right fact free rabbit hole.
Looks like we will have to cancel a cruise booked for Feb as I have broken my leg and my orthopaedic consultant is not confident it will be fixed well enough in time for me to travel safely. Due to pay the balance on Monday so now is the time to cancel.
Cunard won't give me back the deposit (c. £2k) but I could claim it off my travel insurance.
Question: do any PBers have experience of what impact claiming on travel insurance might have on future premiums? Just wondering if it's like pet insurance - claim once and the insurers bump up future premiums massively. The thing is with travel insurance, I feel it's non-negotiable as the costs if uninsured could be huge.
Any views?
5 years back Mrs Foxy was in an RTA about 10 days before we were due to fly to Vietnam for a tour. Lots of bruising and some broken ribs, so not able to fly or tour.
The travel insurance paid out in full, and as no long term issue didn't load future premiums. Indeed both insurance companies (Esure for the car, Columbus Direct for the travel) gave such good service and uncomplicated payout of costs that we have stuck with them since.
We WERE with esure for the car. No claims for many years BUT the premium went up massively this year. Result; we're no longer with esure. Pity, because when I wanted add another driver for a travel 'emergency' (long, irrelevant, story) they were very reasonable. But an increase from around £700 (in itself a lot) to well over £900 for a car driven about 5000 miles per year was, I thought, unreasonable.
In my experience, the short term insurers (DayInsure, Veygo etc) have been the cheapest way to insure an extra driver on an already insured vehicle in a pinch.
Also used them for learner insurance for my boys. Worked out a lot cheaper than putting them on the main annual insurance.
On pay per mile - the issue is that fuel duty is the perfect tax, so anything else is worse.
We then have the usual British logic that everything has to be invented afresh. HMRC does not look round the world and go hmm XYZ seem to do it this way let’s copy their solution
Fuel duty isn’t quite prefect - road damage scales with the fourth power of axle weight IIRC, so a fully laden 6 axle 44 tonne artic does about 3000 times the damage to the road as a 2 tonne 2 axle ICE car, whilst only paying approx 20x as much in fuel taxes since rolling resistance is proportional to weight.
It does at least incentivise more fuel-efficient vehicles and disincentivise urban driving (where you are likely to get worse mileage). HGVs pay much more road tax, although not I presume 3000x.
Comments
The question becomes whether the LD-Con battleground becomes a proxy for the wider struggle or an irrelevant sideshow. IF it is publicly perceived the LDs are opposed to Reform and the Conservatives are supportive then it becomes start of the wider Reform vs Not Reform struggle. If both parties are seen to be opposed to Reform, it’s more likely to be a sideshow which may boost Reform numbers in those constituencies but that’s all.
As for the 12% being “a warning”, no one assumes the LD vote to be monolithic, it never has been. There are LD supporters who are not supportive of Labour and never have been. The party’s experience of getting close to both Labour and the Conservatives in Government is analogous to the swimmer getting too close to the shark. The only difference now is the Conservatives are enjoying the same dilemma with Reform and for some of us it’s fun to watch them squirm.
It is also noticable how little the media now talk about BlueSky. There was a huge push on look look new twitter, better twitter, its grown by a million users this week. Now never gets a mention, its back to what some dickhead has said on twitter this week.
Left wing cesspit = tedious carnival of consensus based centrism.
Neither are good but I know which resembles most a place or situation characterised by corruption, filth or immoral activities.
(Reported on Today as "we'd be lying if we said we weren't discussing this.")
The mileage thing would require you to predict your mileage for the next year, and would be corrected each following year for actual mileage driven - ie you pay upfront.
The Telegraph isn't infallibly wrong.
Just highly untrustworthy as a source.
If you set up a social media account that only follows politics, or even worse only one political affiliation, you’ll end up with nothing but politics in your feed, all day every day. That’s what drives people crazy.
I strongly suspect the latter. It's just the world's biggest memestock that we all own in passive equity trackers.
https://andrewspreviews.substack.com/p/previewing-the-eight-council-by-elections-212
So as a car manufacturer Tesla are in a great position. But the bulls keep insisting they aren't a car company, they're an autonomy company.
Fine. But Full Self Driving takeup is 12%. Lets assume as the software continues to improve that doubles. So three quarters of Tesla drivers don't have it.
The future revenues from the business are in selling cars at a profit. They have to do that part to bring in the revenue to fund autonomy...
I’m sure the major shareholders didn’t think much of the slightly crazy CEO getting involved in politics in the way he did though, as Robert suggests it put off a lot of people who like EVs in general but didn’t go for a Tesla specifically.
The bigger problem with these is endangerment of pedestrians. From my pov, the footway is a pedestrian space and no obstructions whatsoever are acceptable.
Motor vehicles already dangerously infringe on pedestrian space willy-nilly, regularly destroying pavements, and questioning the assumed entitlement often results in insults or sometimes threats, as anyone who has tried knows. Movement needs to be in the other direction.
Chargers in lamp posts may be acceptable. When chargers block pedestrian space - no.
https://x.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1986139235523404141
Some serious karma there.
(A few would object, but it wouldn't even be a close call.)
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tv/37152354/celebrity-traitors-smashes-records
Plenty of councils already have systems for applying for residential parking permits.
And location records of anyone who pays council tax.
Would it really be that hard ?
I think one problem Ref UK have is that criticism of Farage is usually documentation not villification. He depends on saying one thing and doing another eg distancing himself from Yaxley-Lennon whilst opening up his candidate lists to Yaxley-Lennon supporters, and needing them to shore up one leg of his voting coalition. Farage needs that skewed media perception of reality, which is a stronger position to take in the UK than in other places, but to my eye is not sustainable.
On Caerphilly, I through they did just cobble together a byelection-winning coalition there, in the form of tactical votes for Plaid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkU2VrWnC-M
This video goes through the numbers. Deliveries were a bit better than expected, but after Trump changes to tax credits and price cuts due to increased cheaper competition, they are down to average profit per car of $2300, which will go down to $1500 when the EV regulatory credits they sell goes away next year. That's razer thin margins, particularly as they continue to lose market share in China and more competition globally.
There's this ridiculous story going around, with an obvious AI vid, of Lammy answering a question at PMQs with the lyrics to a Michael Jackson song
I expect this nonsense hasn't polluted BlueSky
"We'd be lying if we weren't discussing this" = we do not comment on budget speculation. And I bet they discussed it!
"Lets ask EV owners to guess how many miles they do and fill in a tax form to charge them per mile"
YES AND HO
"No you idiot that's Fucking Mental"
If they want to tax EVs it will be on VED. If they want to charge motorists per mile it will be all cars via ANPR.
Most of the current Lib Dem vote is quite different, affluent, and living along the M3/M4 corridors.
The likes of Ford in the US went about it very half-heartedly, and are already abandoning their Lightning truck (at a cost of tens of milions of dollars) because no-one bought them and those that did had loads of problems. It was great if you’re a tradesman in LA, but that’s not a huge market for trucks.
I agree underneath all the valuation bubble there is a perfectly profitable car company that has advantages over legacy manufacturers.
It's been open 3 years, and it has still not reached the initial production goal of 250k cars per annum.
My late father always voted Labour but he was as socially right wing as they came. With Reform one can vote to kick out foreigners without vomiting as one votes Tory.
You'd be surprised at some of the medical conditions people manage to travel with on the cruise ships - you can do as little or as much on the ship as you wish, and once you're there its probably at least as good an environment to recuperate as at home, with no stairs you have to take, food and drink on tap, and nothing at all you really have to be doing, except sitting on deck (or inside looking out of the window, it being February)
Then they were surprised to discover that care home companies were selling work visas for non-existent jobs for about double the price of a seat on a cross channel RIB.
This was only stopped when the care home industry, stupidly, demanded a further increase in immigration….
The follow up isn’t so much WILL they back a minority Reform Government but SHOULD they? The Conservatives have recent experience of what happens to a junior coalition partner - what could they do to prevent it happening to them?
BBC News - EV drivers could face new tax in Budget - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0mxgzpj1dvo
I'm not sure how enforcement or management would ever work.
This area is of interest to me because it seems to me to not be legal to limit such a scheme to parking of motor vehicles. Equality Law requires the same service to be delivered to 'people with a protected characteristic' using mobility aids, whether eg mobility scooters or adapted cycles.
* I think there was a Centre for Cities report several years ago.
They cannot charge pence per mile without actually knowing how many miles. That means either a mandatory black box (paid for by the insurance industry via premiums?) or ANPR as we already have at Dartford and Tyne crossings.
The problem with either is the huge cost of setting them up. The latter works if you are doing road tolling - charge everyone 3p per mile to drive on a congested motorway as an example. For EVs only? Will drive people back into other cars.
Which leaves the existing taxes and the only obvious one is VED. We all pay it. Its easy to assign to a type of vehicle. People complain but pay up.
The political challenge is simple. Average annual mileage is 8k miles ish. At 3p thats £240 a year. So slap an EV premium onto VED of £240. That means that most EVs will pay £195 + £425 + £240 = £howmuch???
Making an EV the most expensive car to run is Reform's policy, not Labour's.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0mxgzpj1dvo
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/nov/06/electric-vehicles-pay-per-mile-tax-rachel-reeves-budget
So I think we can conclude it’s real.
If there's a sustained campaign of non-payment - as with the poll tax - then they would be in some trouble and would have to choose a different approach.
It is worth considering that making transport, power etc expensive to discourage use has become so culturally embedded that the idea it should be cheap can induce shock.
And even charging admission.
A very successful night for Ukraine in the strategic bombing war. This is the way to win the war.
FPT: Per mile taxation is silly - does nothing to dis-incentivise short journeys while hurting rural communities. At least fuel duty penalises fuel-inefficient urban driving.
Far preferable is a per journey (or per day?) charge, or an urban driving charge. That could mean the tax on a journey between Aberdeen and Inverness would be the same as between your home and the local primary school. If per mile taxation is feasible then surely this is too.
Do you know how the news industry works?
Outlet A gets an exclusive
All other outlets report on outlet A's story, adding their own angles so that its not just the copy paste it started as.
That Grauniad story? Read paragraph 1:
"Rachel Reeves is drawing up plans for a new pay-per-mile tax for electric vehicles to announce in this month’s budget worth an extra £250 a year on average, according to reports."
They don't have the story. They read it in the Telegraph and are ringing their own sources asking "is this true?"
They go on, quoting a government spokesperson who spoke to the BBC: “Fuel duty covers petrol and diesel, but there’s no equivalent for electric vehicles. We want a fairer system for all drivers.”
I have no doubt that is true, and it has been for years. That is a long long way from 3p a mile, done via your tax return.
The travel insurance paid out in full, and as no long term issue didn't load future premiums. Indeed both insurance companies (Esure for the car, Columbus Direct for the travel) gave such good service and uncomplicated payout of costs that we have stuck with them since.
It’s still a silly proposal though, and will reduce demand for EVs that government are otherwise trying to encourage.
As others have said, there needs to be a way of shifting motoring costs to be mostly variable rather than fixed, and VED is a great example of a fixed cost. I suspect the only realistic option is going to be something like a congestion charge in every urban area, but run nationally. They’ll need to fix the fake number plate problem first though, and possibly move to a tag system as used on some toll gates.
@Big_G_NorthWales: I absolutely agree, I would never travel abroad these days without travel insurance. Im sorry that it has become too expensive for you now, I'm glad for you that you did a lot of travelling when you could.
Don't delay - seize the day! is a great mantra.
Finally, thank you to those who wished me well - I am fine, but my leg break (femur) is unfortunately going to be a slow healing process. I am reminded that despite our political differences and often heated debates PB is a great collection of virtual friends.
Thanks all!
"The traitors must be really clever"
"Yes"
"Personality X is really clever"
"Yes!"
"Must be a traitor then..."
Oops
"Sweden's prison population was 10,175 as of January 1, 2024, with an occupancy rate of 110.7%. The population has nearly doubled in the last decade, with an increase of 91% since 2015, driven by a tougher stance on serious crimes. This has led to overcrowding, with the occupancy rate hitting 131% in 2024."
We then have the usual British logic that everything has to be invented afresh. HMRC does not look round the world and go hmm XYZ seem to do it this way let’s copy their solution
Road pricing is inevitable - always has been - as fuel duty rolls back. The furore will be how they replace it. Pence per mile on busy roads is the obvious solution - though the people whose suburban roads become rat runs to avoid motorways will be outraged. Or they go all vehicles all trips, and rural voters go mad pointing out there is little to no public transport and school is 9 miles away.
Like replacing Council Tax, its easier not to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Prison_Wandsworth
And Reeves has inherited a whole office block / warehouse of things that can’t be ignored any longer
Whether it’s actually going to happen is an entirely different question! The government is going to have to fill the hole left by the loss of fuel duty as the transition to EVs continues - as previous discussions on here have pointed out, fuel duty pays for more than just the cost of running the road network. Taxes are going to have to rise significantly somewhere to fill that gap & road pricing of some sort is an obvious thing that the Treasury will be pushing for.
But trashing the Russian power and hydrocarbans is the way to beat Russia. I wonder if there are back channel discussions to take them off limits for both sides? That said, Ukraine is hardly going to agree if Russia doesn't attack power plants - but instead hits more hospitals, residential blocks, kindergartens, markets... It does look all in for Ukraine until a meaningful ceasefire - or if they can take the pain, until the lights going out in Moscow brings the SMO to a close.
Pity, because when I wanted add another driver for a travel 'emergency' (long, irrelevant, story) they were very reasonable. But an increase from around £700 (in itself a lot) to well over £900 for a car driven about 5000 miles per year was, I thought, unreasonable.
Literally the only saving grace of fuel duty not being increased by inflation is that it’s only £24bn raised that needs to be found and not £40bn+
Here’s a video from about 3km away. I know it’s just under 3km because there’s eight seconds between the light and the sound.
https://x.com/bohuslavskakate/status/1986157924310266288
The only questions are how soon, and what the detail will be.
The other side of the equation is the imperative to do something about charging costs.
The marginal cost of electricity varies massively. Those in a position to do so can already charge off peak at very cheap rates. Good government would work out how to make that near universal, without spending to many billions on setting that up.
The BBC reckons it might only be 3,000, so just over one 9/11.
Trump derangement syndrome in full effect again.
So "equalising tax" will make EVs noticeably more expensive to run than ICE, for quite a few people.
The government can then carry on to demand the end of ICE. But it then presents Reform with a perfect story for the next election.
https://x.com/peterjhasson/status/1986083307012977017
I was all in favour of this approach before covid. (Now, its information I wouldn't trust the state with.)
Also used them for learner insurance for my boys. Worked out a lot cheaper than putting them on the main annual insurance.