From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Another casualty of Net Zero:
Vauxhall is planning to shut its Luton van-making factory in a move that puts 1,100 jobs at risk, as net zero rules force it to curtail sales of petrol vehicles.
Stellantis, the car giant behind Vauxhall, Peugeot, Fiat and Citroën, said it would focus investments on its Ellesmere Port factory in Cheshire.
It said it was taking the decision “in the context of the ZEV mandate”, referring to electric car sales targets that carmakers have criticised as overly tough.
Carlos Tavares, chief executive of Stellantis, launched a “strategic review” of its UK operations this year, saying the ZEV mandate was making Britain a “very difficult market”.
Maria Grazia Davino, the company’s former UK managing director, had warned that the company could close plants if the Government does not relax electric vehicle targets.
Car companies face heavy fines if they do not hit targets that require 22pc of their sales to come from EVs this year, rising to 80pc in 2030. Labour has also vowed to reinstate the 2030 ban on petrol cars, which had been pushed back to 2035 by Rishi Sunak.
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Stellantis have been warning for months that this would happen, saying that they were not prepared to sell petrol/diesel vehicles at a loss, because of ZEV fines.
UK is truly a hive of climate botherers.
Morons have taken over the universities and government. And voter have voted for the politicians supporting all the morons.
I am backing Nigel Farage to be in power inside 4 years.
I really hope that you are right. Reform UK are the only political party in the UK that has a sensible energy policy and will get rid of Nut Zero.
What Reform UK needs to do is convince the Tories to adopt their position. With the Tories being rejected in the last election, this is an ideal time to form a new coalition.
The Tory party is deeply split between greens and an increasingly strident anti net zero faction. They were also responsible under Sunak for close to 1m net immigration in year. Their credibility is in pieces. The time for coalition will be when the party splits properly. Defections are best meanwhile, like Andrea Jenkins today.
I wish they did have a properly fleshed out policy. But they don’t, other than to cancel net zero, and the climate change act, and nationalise the retailer utilities – which will do SFA, but add to government borrowing.
They need to work out how to keep the lights on.
If he were to ally himself with chastened Tories that is a distinct possibility. But not if he remains a lone wolf. It requires a coalition of voters to win elections. The Tories are down and out at the moment, so this is a good time for him to do some outreach. A parliamentary system requires that coalition members work together.
Badenoch imagines she can crush Reform by ignoring them. That’s not the way to create a coalition.
Ah well you’ve got to break a few car factories to be able to run your heat pump or aircon when you’re changing the weather-
‘Don’t run your dishwasher’: NSW Premier urges residents to conserve power
I’ll use whatever I feel like using.
I urge the Premier to get off his butt and start building some extra RELIABLE electricity supply.
The UK and German industries have got to to immediately disavow Nut Zero, EV madness and the CO2 phobia or become another example of once powerful players or Nation States like Carthage or the Inca Empire which failed to proactively battle their enemies when they were powerful and instead relied on appeasement which led to there eternal destruction.
(see Punic War/Rome or Atahualpa’s extensive bribes to Spain’s Pizarro)
“story tip”
https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2024-11-23/germany-is-kaput-why-the-economic-model-no-longer-works-in-the-proud-country-of-automobiles.
Right for all the wrong reasons…EVs are the reason for this destruction, not their ultimate economic savior as this article alludes.
Just heard the Ford UK CEO on the radio. What she said boils down to “We’ve invested LOTS of money in EVs. Customers don’t want to buy them. So the Government must find ways of forcing customers to buy our EVs. And Ford UK is OK with that.”
What you heard was Ford sucking noisily at the last pocket of air. The ship already sank. The fatal decisions have already been made.
Mr. geek: Yes, and by the customers! We also happen to be “constituents” of gov’t employees who seem all too willing to impose the “fatal” part, good and hard, because we decided not to follow their decisions.
This is the government to show how utterly ludicrous the idea of net zero is. And it will take a few demonstrations before the penny finally drops.
The latest count is… 2,761,484, sorry, 2,761,538…
“”“I’m not surprised that many of them want a rerun. That isn’t how our system works. There will be plenty of people who didn’t want us in, in the first place.””
https://news.sky.com/story/starmer-rules-out-another-general-election-after-petition-reaches-two-million-signatures-13260436
9 million people voted for the government back in July. Not for ever, not for 6 months, but for 5 years.
UK Parliament election results: Results for a UK general election on 4 July 2024 – by party
Of course, more people voted for alternative parties. But they couldn’t agree on any policies so those parties couldn’t form an alliance before the election. And thus they lost.
This is not the best system. But it is called democracy and it’s better than any other.
Certainly better than online campaigns to stir up more riots by foreign government members.
Labour received ~20% of the popular vote, or 33% of the vote if you exclude the 40% of voters who abstained.
3 million more voted for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour – and he lost big to Boris Johnson. Really big.
It is a Parliamentary dictatorship, it always has been and barring a revolution it always will be.
“”This is not the best system.””
It’s a mediaeval joke. It isn’t democratic at all. It’s feudal.
What would you replace it with?
The Australian preferential system is a lot better than Britain’s first past the post system. It guarantees that in each electorate the winning candidate is preferred by a majority of voters to the candidate who finishes second. There were clearly electorates in the last British election where either Tory or Reform would have beaten Labour in a 2-horse race, ie, they would have won under a preferential system.
I’ve always admired the Swiss system of a federal state with direct democracy.
Not perfect but at least you get to have your say on big issues rather than having to suffer the dreadful incompetent ideas of General Secretary Starmer.
An essential part of the democratic bargain is that new governments keep their manifesto promises. Starmer took a lot less than six months to break important promises.
Which ones?
We all note you can give no examples.
And people who know about UK politics will also remember that the LibDems once made their core pledge – even above the manifesto – to abolish tuition fees.
But they didn’t abolish tuition fees to support the Tories.
Surely that was a case for another General Election?
They did lie.
And there was no decisive result to overturn.
But the bad losers, the anti-democrats and ‘stop the boats’ rioters, the Tory Party slogan believers… never once questioned the opportunity to introduce austerity and break public services.
Ye Hypocrites!
They promised not to raise taxes on “working people”, but then raised national insurance. It’s a fiction that raising the employer contribution isn’t a tax on the employee. They also, out of nowhere, implemented a raft of new taxes or tax rises on everything that “working people” pay for, including a huge tax hike on energy costs. They’re raising taxes on workers left and right, but because they didn’t touch the employee NI contribution, they get to lie and pretend they aren’t breaking their promises.
The other side of it is all of the policies that they explicitely argued against prior to the election, but which they are now implementing themselves; cutting benefits to young people who can’t find work, cutting the winter fuel payment, the assisted death bill that Starmer personally supports, and many more. Add on top Starmer’s personal crusade to lock up everyone who disagrees with him (because he’s evidently correct in all things, so anyone who disagrees with him must be a mad criminal, and mad criminals have to be locked away unless they’re paedophiles) and you have all the makings of a truly corrupt, oppressive, authoritarian government that is intent on rooting up the very foundations of the country.
The tories were bad, but that’s because they were incompetent and lazy, and did whatever they thought would make the press and the great and good fawn over them. Labour is worse, because they’re definitely not lazy and are acting from the sense of moral clarity that only hidebound legal prosecutor could display.
The British people did not vote Keir Starmer in, they voted Rishi Sunak out. Keir Starmer is the price they had to pay. Keir Starmer is not there for 5 years, he is there for at most 5 years before he has to call an election, but he may wish or be forced to call an earlier election. He will ignore this petition, but for the best part of 3 million people to sign this petition so soon after an election shows that his government is already in deep trouble. The challenge for the people now is to find more ways of getting pressure for his removal. The petition is just the start. A general strike could be what comes next, but we will have to wait and see. I hope we don’t have to wait long. Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage should already be talking to each other.
More people than that voted against Labour 4 months ago.
I agree with your implied argument that Sir Kier is doing great and he should have persuaded everyone that they were wrong to not vote Labour. But that’s a big ask.
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Less than 3 million obstinate hold outs is still a big endorsement,.
You are right that a lot of the election was a vote ‘against’, not ‘for’. But it was against the failed economic policies of the Tory Party, not that week’s incumbent of Tory Leader.
UK system of democracy is primitive and result in mad outcomes like the present one. Single seat constituencies and first past the post decision favour the big 2 parties. In other parts of the world like for us in Ireland the British helped introduce the much better multi seat constituency system with single transferrable vote. We vote on Friday.
Not perfect, but at least it result in representative outcomes.
Have you seen Ireland lately?!!!
You cannot seriously expect us to find the outcome of the Irish system remotely appealing.
But you still ended up with a Uniparty with nothing to choose between them and no alternative.
This happened in the US. Trump had to steal the Rep party from the uniparty.
Of course the losers want a re-run. That’s perfectly understandable. Imagine a petition in the USA in June 2025 asking for a new presidential election and being signed by 74 million Democrat voters. What would be Donald Trump’s response? Probably not printable.
Don’t forget that it was Starmer who wanted to re-run the 2016 Brexit referendum. Sauce for the goose…
But he didn’t.
Indeed, now he has the chance to do it, he isn’t.
The idea that Starmer is undemocratic is very silly.
Because nothing says democracy like severe restrictions on speech.
Imagine a petition in the USA in June 2025
That’s not allowed for by the Constitution or US law. I have no idea if what’s being asked (a new General election) is allowed by UK law – but as I understand it, a vote of No Confidence can be held at any time (I know that’s different from a general election), so it suggests that maybe at least that should be considered?
Well done Miliband, way to go. Your intelligence is awesome.
Labour should be called our for channelling public money to their dodgy donors over energy policy in exactly the same way that the last lot are vilified over selling off infrastructure to asset stripping Tory donors.
Wind farms and sewerage farms are both being used as cash cows rather than to meet our needs.
Truly Labour are the party of the Champagne-socialist Upper-middle classes.
The “working man”? “deplorable”
List of automobile companies owned by Stellantis per WIkipedia: Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Citroën, Dodge, DS, Fiat, Jeep, Lancia, Maserati, Opel, Peugeot, Ram Trucks and Vauxhall.
Are you an elected official? If your electorate includes auto workers, be warned that you will be blamed for Stellantis factory closures.
There’s more on the way.
Politicians have escaped “my tax dollars won’t pay for…” with rampant deficit spending. If taxes only pay interest then auto workers are shaking down the electorate’s grandkids with those threats.
Anybody here remember the debates about “forcings” and “feedbacks” in the atmosphere? Ahhh, good times!
So my question to our AGW experts (i.e., house trolls) is this- when gov’t policy promoting EVs results in shutting down ICE production (with a domino effect of lost jobs), is that a “forcing” or a “feedback”?
Yeah, I’m yanking their chain, but I’m also curious about whether they understand these terms. I doubt that I understand them as they have been used, so truly curious if these terms can be applied elsewhere.
In politics, a forcing is when the government does it directly, a feedback is when the government does it indirectly. So an EV mandate is a forcing, and its effect of closing car manufacturers is a feedback. Feedbacks are often referred to as the law of unintended consequences, but as this example shows, they would be better named as the law of predictable consequences.
…and learnings are when you believe in more Gummint to help-
New Jag revealed! MGUY EV News 27 November 2024 | MGUY Australia
Whatever happened to “lessons”?
Mr. Jonas: Thank you, that’s sorta what I thought, but we may need another “f” word to describe what they are doing to “u”. And me.
No word from our experts?
“Stellantis have been warning for months that this would happen, saying that they were not prepared to sell petrol/diesel vehicles at a loss, because of ZEV fines.”
Compared to how much they’ll lose selling EVs?
They can negotiate for subsidies to cover that loss and sell “credits” to other companies that have to continue producing ICE vehicles.
The Green Blob opposes motor vehicles, anyway. Their preferred method of transport seems to be sedan chairs for themselves, and sturdy sandals for the hoi polloi.
15 minute cities.
Mr. Halla: If our elites are not careful, they will eliminate gasoline for everybody (themselves included, not intentionally, but they really don’t understand the consequences of their program to end ice vehicles). Then they will need get around climate conferences in rickshaws! And they will!!
You assume they will keep the roads paved for rickshaws. Sedan chairs are better on potholes and ruts.
In 20-30 years from now you can tell your grandchildren (if people still make children by then) that once upon a time we had this magnificent thing called a car. A reliable vehicle, you drove it 20 years, took 5 minutes to fill up, didn’t burst in flames alongside your house. Probably the grandchildren will see your car driving around, we will be a second Cuba. Keep them rolling.
Captain Obvious: Well, shutting down those factories is the plan. Until something changes the plan.
Me: And we all know the UK had its spine removed a long time ago.
It seems that the powers that be in the UK seem to have no idea as to what the eventual results of these laws will be. Of course, neither do those who push the same nonsense here in the US. First, the old saying about not being able to get blood out of a stone holds true – if someone cannot afford an EV, they have no ability to buy one and won’t buy one. Then there are those who might have the money but wouldn’t be caught dead in one. Those buyers will simply line up for whatever gas powered vehicles are available. And, with such restrictions (and automakers closing up shop) the car market in the UK will probably become a bit like that of East Germany. People put their names on lists, deposited money and waited, and waited…until they could finally get their hands on a brand new Trabant. But at least the East Germans could eventually get brand new gas powered cars, such as they were. That won’t be the case in the UK at some point (unless the insanity is reversed). Then, there may be waiting lists to purchase whatever used gas powered cars are on the market. Imagine a library that never gets any new books, and it can only keep in circulation existing books, that is, until they wear out and fall apart. At some point that library will shut down because there is so little left.
Black markets could also crop up with cars being illegally imported.
Sad to say, if this sort of thing doesn’t stop, the UK’s future is that it will no longer be a first world country. It will be the Cuba of Europe, an island isolated and driven into economic despair by corrupt rule. Unlike Cuba, the UK will still be able to trade with the rest of the world, but the only question is what exactly will they have to trade as industry shuts down?
My 16-year-old Vauxhall has 60,000 miles on the clock. I do around 5,000 miles per year. I will shortly be 75. The car should be good for over 100,000 miles if I maintain it properly. You do the maths. Why should I ever want to buy another one?
Seems like a way for a company doing badly to blame regulations.
I often wonder what would have happened if all the vehicle manufacturers had refused to conform with this stupidity and refused to build EVs. In reality, what could governments have done?
ie how much of the equipment was less than 20 years old, how many of the skilled laborers were under age 40, both being metrics that indicate maintenance and investment and both also difficult to fake on a walk through.
“…overly tough.” That’s like, if there was a broccoli mandate requiring supermarkets to sell a certain amount of broccoli, that the broccoli mandate was “overly tough”.
Despite improvements in computing and supply chain management tools, the best metric for how much broccoli consumers want next March is how much broccoli they bought last March.
(and by “broccoli” I mean evs)
(I remember there were evs30 years ago. Tech has changed for evs, but tech has changed for gas fueled cars too)
Then: “Let them eat cake”.
Today: “Let them drive Teslas”.
If Europe is forcing it’s it auto makers to only produce and be able to sell EV-types, sounds like a few years or more after Trump takes office (and, maybe, Vance succeeds him?), most cars in Europe will be made in America.
(And they won’t be EVs.)
There was a report yesterday on KNX (CBS outlet in the LA area) that Stellantis is also slowing production in Italy, owing to the low demand for EVs there, and for luxury cars in the US.