By Matt Johnson
The UK is still beholden to EU emissions standards, which, like most things under the purview of the European Union, have become bureaucratic and are applied in ways that are detrimental to both efficiency and productivity, without doing a proper cost – benefit analysis. Vehicles in high-traffic residential areas should rightly be given greater weight when it comes to pollution reduction, but should a tractor working on a farm or in the middle of a field, miles from the nearest village, be subject to the same conditions?
EU emissions regulations for non-road mobile machinery have become more and more stringent over the last decade, to the point where the demands on the technology have led to runaway costs and new machinery has essentially become emissions-regulation equipment with an engine attached. The cost of emissions-regulation technology can account for 20–30% of the total list price for a new vehicle such as a tractor, excavator, bulldozer, or any other type of non-road mobile machinery. The technology required to bring emissions into compliance with the Stage IV and Stage V standards places huge burdens on manufacturers and end users. Failures of the emission-monitoring components result in large warranty bills for manufacturers, which are pushed onto end users through eye-watering extended warranty programmes. Those who cannot afford these, or whose machine has reached an age where the manufacturer’s warranty has expired, can be left with a ticking time bomb. A single component failure can result in bills of several thousand pounds which, for a small family farm often with only a single tractor, can cause significant financial hardship.
Consequently, a black market has emerged where end users are paying up to £1,000 for ‘jailbroken’ software that overrides all the legal manufacturer emissions controls. This carries the risk of fines of up to £50,000 if discovered by the DVSA and successfully prosecuted. The reason many are increasingly willing to take this risk, however, is that, lurking under the bonnet of the emissions technology, lies the engine derate. When an issue is detected on the SCR system that indicates emissions are not being sufficiently reduced, a succession of derates is triggered. The first is a low-level inducement of no less than 25% of engine torque across the speed range. This then progresses to a severe derate of up to 50% engine torque. This essentially turns the most critical asset on a farm into an expensive paperweight – not by unforeseen mechanical failure, but by engineered design, to ensure compliance with the edicts from Brussels.
The Americans are already grappling with a similar predicament caused by their own emissions standards through the Environmental Protection Agency. As of August 2025, the Trump administration announced new guidance that allows farmers and truckers to revise software to prevent sudden speed and power losses caused by SCR system faults. This situation, born from Net Zero climate fanaticism, is undoubtedly contributing to the increase in food prices, which is being keenly felt by the public at the till. New tractor registrations in the UK fell 17% in the first half of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024 – the lowest number of recorded registrations since 1998. There are those who have rightly positioned themselves as opponents of the Net Zero dogma. Delivering on this opposition would mean an agricultural policy that restores sense and practicality to the industry, slashing the cost of new machinery and delivering a boost to manufacturing.
An unrealised benefit of the 2016 Brexit vote should be a new British emissions standard for non-road mobile machinery that sees a return to something closer to the Stage IIIb (2013) regulations, which are primarily sensible, practical and affordable.
The honest simple truth of the matter is every Parliament from 2016 (Theresa May ->) has done everything possible to avoid true Brexit and cling on.
And now the Labour government has not only retained EU laws that should have been repealed, it has embarked on a stealth programme of reintegrating the UK; joining an agreement here, an agreement there, it’s a drip drip of sovereignty ebbing away. I call them traitor Parliaments and this one is certainly no different. If anything, it’s more blatant and devious than its predecessors.
Giving away our fishing rights instead of taking them back:
A new deal will keep the current status quo giving EU boats continued access to UK waters until 2038 – BBC
Have you ever heard of – the Trusted News Initiative (TNI)? It’s an organisation dedicated to getting editorials, articles and stories in line with each other and crucially, in line with the narrative.
Who’s in it?
AP, AFP, BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Financial Times, Information Futures Lab, Google/YouTube, The Hindu, The Nation Media Group, Meta, Microsoft, Thomson Reuters, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Twitter, The Washington Post, Kompas – Indonesia, Dawn – Pakistan, Indian Express, NDTV – India, ABC – Australia, SBS – Australia, NHK – Japan.
A warning from TNI:
TNI members work together to build audience trust and to find solutions to tackle challenges of disinformation. By including media organisations and social media platforms, it is the only forum in the world of its kind designed to take on disinformation in real time.
The people really are such a dreadful inconvenience.
I found out about that during Covid. Hence the slavishly coordinated narrative during Covid. That’s what the whole TNI is about. Programming minds and rank propaganda. Then they quote each other to make it all seem “trusted”.
This is why Ofcom wants to be able to regulate independent news on Youtube. They have free speech and that really is anathema to the powers that be.
Ofcom also wants the [social media platforms’] algorithms to place trusted news at the top of any feed. You can see where they’re going with this.
Goat herders are OK though. The more the merrier.
Sounds like Covering Climate Now
O/T. Story tip? Wildfire alert
Yesterday in deepest urban Tooting I received a government wildfire alert on my portable telescreen (phone).
Labour blasted over ‘dangerous’ emergency alert decision as sirens send repeated messages
Labour have been blasted over a “dangerous” emergency alert decision made yesterday as the siren message was sent multiple times.
The notification, intended to reach all residents at 7pm with guidance against lighting fires in open spaces such as parks, moorland and woodland, continued sounding on numerous devices as late as 11pm GBN
I got it around 7pm. This is yet another step, a firm nudge, towards infantilising the public.
It was a psyop not a warning.
Emergency wildfire phone alerts descend into chaos
In my area of Washington State, when alerts were first started about 5 years ago, we got warnings that were incomplete — like for several roads or streets — so we had to investigate where they were. After alerts for places 80 miles away, people complained. That program was canceled. Maybe they are working on new algorithms.
The regulators in the UK were opposed Brexit
The regulators in the UK are Quangos – Quasi Autonomous Non Governmental Organisations. In effect a part of the Civil Service blob/swamp created by Tony Blair.
The crucial point is a quango is financed by a government but it acts independently of it.
Why can ministers never get anything done? There are over 400 quangos on every conceivable economic or social activity.
Of course they are opposed to Brexit, but they are still a minority.
Ministers get things done – instantly, if necessary for the Agenda,
if not – they create the illusion of incompetence of bureaucracy.
It follows the strategy of the border – paradoxon.
Where country X simply can not defend its own borders
but can and will do so instantly with billions of dollars quite effectively in a country thousands of miles away.
Now if we look a bit closer at the border – paradoxon we realise that dozens of countries act the same way, no matter how controversial the war is.
Then bureaucracy works with a speed of light and the leaders (all who are not called dictators/Hitlers) act as one.
Incompetence and slow bureaucracy are just a Fabian approach.
Ministers cannot get things done without the acceptance of… the blob.
Where country X simply can not defend its own borders
Where country X’s civil service and the media simply tries to smear and besmirch the only UK politician who wants – and has plans – to deal with illegal migration.
The uniparty is managed decline and eventual transition into an islamic territory.
They may be a minority, but sadly, they still have the power
… and the man or woman driving said piece of agriculture machinery is adding unknown amounts of CO2 to his or her farm by simply breathing … day and night … whether or not the machine is running. Let us not forget that soybeans and corn need CO2 to grow and prosper but that’s never included in the calculations.
So, by running their CO2 producing farm equipment they are fertilizing their crops?
Feeding.
And they’re producing the CO2 precisely where it’s needed.
More from The Trusted News Initiative
But first, consider the sheer volume of climate crisis [dis/mis]information the media etc has beamed at you over the last, say, 20 years, 24/7…
Nevertheless, climate journalism is not optional. Journalists have an ethical responsibility, even a mandate to inform the public of threats and help them to make better decisions for themselves, their children, and their communities.
Media has the duty to hold power to account and investigate wrongdoing. And a lot has gone wrong. Far too often publishers and broadcasters have kept global warming in the silo of science journalism, rather than at the heart of wider business and news coverage. TNI(BBC)
No, it isn’t L’Osservatore Romano, neither is it The Church Times. It is TNI – and TNI thinks we haven’t been bombarded with climate propaganda anywhere near enough.
The fraud shall continue until citizens are truly broke.
We ain’t far off it, now.
That’s true and the remaining boomer wealth is too tempting.
Small point, if you are slavishly obeying EU then you never left the EU.
It’s the Hotel California…
US has nothing to do with the EU and also has the same BS.
It’s just like I’ve been saying for year, western manufacturers spend time and money on tailpipe emissions. China used it time and money in innovation, productivity, better and cheaper cars. At one point all that’s left is regulation.
“EU Net Zero Regulations Are Killing Off The British!” There, fix it for you!
It seems that the whole point of the Marxist Meteorological Mania is to rid the world of the last vestiges of any cultures that are, or were, opposed to slavery and promote meritocracy!
Europe, the US, and Britain are the flys in the ointment against the imposition of crony corporate socialism; the new and improved version of Marxism where the ruling elites and transnational businesses lord their power over a universally ignorant, miseducated, and impoverished populace. Dark Ages 2.0; with an aristocracy and feudalism for all!
If we put a stop to farming then people could all produce their own food.
Worked for Zimbabwe.
Banning the wheel would eliminate the farm tractor problem.
What Brexit taught the British is that their leaders are fully committed to the globalists and the citizens can’t vote them out. They can; however, revolt.