The Tory party are basically UKIP to all intents & purposes – no more than a bunch of swivel eyed loons. I see the right hon mp for Victorian Britain has called Johnson a net zero zealot…how far to the right do you have to go to hold that opinion??

The Tory’s are doing nothing more than playing populist politics with the Environment . They saw how ULEZ played out with the Uxbridge by-election, and realised they have their new Brexit;  divisive, populist, party politics. That’s all this is, ( and they don’t give a flying @@£$ about the environment ) and please don’t forget that. The world is literally burning, and flooding it’s way to oblivion and only the most narrow minded individuals refuse to see that, but luckily for the Tory’s, that’s their target audience.

but if working people see those richer than them driving around unaffected while they have to give up their cars then Sunak and the tories will have their support.

Driving around unaffected?

We have a prime minister who travels everywhere by helicopter and private jet. His predecessor, when she was foreign secretary was renowned for chartering 300 seat jets to swan around the globe. So their disdain for the environment and contempt for the plebs is hardly news.

This is how out present and former PM view personal transportation

^^^ yeah but come on. A scheduled flight is public transport ffs!

[just to kick this one to death seeing posts that follow – govt ministers can and do work perfectly well on trains let alone scheduled flights and this was meant to be a joke – nicked from some celeb having their 1st class double luxury seat dismissed as ‘public transport’.]

I posted this before but I think Sunak is the worst of this recent shower.

He just goes from bad to worse.

He’s further right than all of his predecessors, maybe not financially right of the lettuce, but he is on every other measure.

He is a completely corrupt puppet, clinging to power and doing whatever the nutters in his party tell him to do.

An odious little ****.

How should someone with the security requirements of their role travel?

Even as a pleb with an almost non-existent level of clearance, I can’t discuss work whilst on a train or a plane. The PM can’t exactly sit in economy class on a scheduled flight talking matters of government business.

Don’t dispute this is a dick move by Sunak, but there are plenty of jobs that require specialist travel that isn’t always eco-friendly.

I posted this before but I think Sunak is the worst of this recent shower.

Mrs Binners, who works for a conservation charity, watched his press conference with growing anger and incredulity and her comment was “**** me! I didn’t think it was possible but he’s even worse than the previous two!”

She’s absolutely bang on! There then followed a lot of swearing

Mrs Binners, who works for a conservation charity, watched his press conference with growing anger and incredulity and her comment was “**** me! I didn’t think it was possible but he’s even worse than the previous two!

When he finished and was inviting questions, his 3rd choice was **** GB News!

Says it all.

It is amusing that in an interview this morning he tried to defend everything as not being a part of both culture wars and short term politics.

He literally stood behind a sign saying ‘Long term decisions for a brighter future’ and spouted a load of short term electoral eye-grabbers. It’s classic Doublethink.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

His isn’t doublethink though. It is just political bs, he is saying things he think will help him sort term and **** the future

Whilst we’re all laughing and agreeing with each other about how mad the tories are, don’t underestimate their ability to turn this issue into a decisive one. This could all still go very wrong.

This is exactly what will happen. They’ve hit on Brexit 2.0. Instead of “Europe is banning straight bananas”, it’ll be “greenies, Labour and (((Soros))) want to force you to use 7 bins and make it illegal to drive your daughter to the hospital!!!”.

Never underestimate just how stupid some people are (see Brexit). They did some of the usual vox pops on the news last night (I think its compulsory that it has to be from Stoke) and some simpleton was saying that ‘they’ (whoever ‘they’ are?) want to tax us to stop us eating meat.

So that completely made-up bullshit that he was spouting has stuck in some morons heads, which is exactly why he said it

This is exactly what will happen. They’ve hit on Brexit 2.0. Instead of “Europe is banning straight bananas”, it’ll be “greenies, Labour and (((Soros))) want to force you to use 7 bins and make it illegal to drive your daughter to the hospital!!!”.

I don’t think it will work this time.

This latest move has split the Tory party even more than it was.

They will be like Rats in a Sack 2.0.

We have a prime minister who travels everywhere by helicopter and private jet.

I’m obviously not talking about billionaires and high millionaires. I’m talking about working people who can’t afford an EV watching the ranger rover brigade driving around in their Teslas. As I have said many times, if net zero is going to be achieved, the majority need to support it. Start at the top, get rid of sports cars, limos, SUVs and high powered saloons. Then when all that is done you can ask joe public to get rid of their second hand petrol/diesel runabout. Working people are not going tolerate their lives being disrupted if they see richer people buying their way out of the same inconvenience.

Just because commercial vehicles use it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to get hold of it for a private vehicle. A lot of operators, large and small, are preparing for having their own tanks in their own yards (lots already do) so as to have a guaranteed supply for their fleet. It also opens up bulk buying discounts greater than fuel cards can manage and even now waiting times at service stations for pumps to become free are an issue, especially for artics.

Whilst that may be true plenty of lorries are on the road for several days, they’ll still need fuel.

 Working people are not going tolerate their lives being disrupted if they see richer people buying their way out of the same inconvenience.

but pushing back the deadline to 2035 only benefits the richest who buy their cars new anyway!

but pushing back the deadline to 2035 only benefits the richest who buy their cars new anyway!

So keep the 2030 deadline for expensive cars and extend it for the cheaper ones. That way the those at the lower end of the market have more time to adapt and wait for prices to come down.

Working people are not going tolerate their lives being disrupted if they see richer people buying their way out of the same inconvenience.

Lmao, what, like congestion charging and parking fines?

@dazh I don’t think you really get this – poor people don’t buy new cars. At all. Extending deadlines does nothing to change that fact regardless of how cheap the new car is (unless you can make one cheaper than second hand in which case crack on).

2030 ICE ban

General point of order, it was never a “2030 ICE Ban”.
As things stood previously in 2030 you would no longer be able to buy a shiny new car or van that was only ICE powered, you would still be able to buy Fuel, purchase a used ICE vehicle, and if IIRC a new ICE/EV hybrids too.
So those with a real need to directly burn hydrocarbons in a car would still be able…

The Rhetoric has stuck though and everyone was talking about 2030 like it was some sort of cliff edge beyond which only those with Teslas and Polestars would be allowed to drive anywhere while the rest of us trudge about shaking our impotent fists at those wealthy Eco-bastards.

It’s genius really 1- create a false panic somewhere in the medium-term future, 2- Heroically avert this imaginary disaster for the good of future plebs who probably wouldn’t have been especially affected, 3- sit back and await the applause (slow clapping)…

The Rhetoric has stuck though and wilfully thick ignorant **** were talking about 2030 like it was some sort of cliff edge beyond which only those with Teslas and Polestars would be allowed to drive anywhere while the rest of us trudge about shaking our impotent fists at those wealthy Eco-bastards.

fixed that

Working people will happily vote for their own impoverishment; all it takes is a politician dressing up the means to that impoverishment as giving crusties a bloody nose.

While we’re vaguely on the subject, can someone tell me what separating rubbish into recycling streams has to do with Net Zero?

Absolutely nothing whatsoever.

He’s just conflating all the things gammons get incandescent about as part of his culture war, as the Tory party is so bankrupt of ideas it is literally all they’ve got left.

I’m just surprised he didn’t blame pot holes and the small boats on ‘Net Zero Zealots’. Maybe we’ve got that to come next week?

Absolutely nothing whatsoever.

He made this mistake before at one of the many gammon love meetings they had in the leadership election. He was asked about Net Zero and replied that his daughters were keen on recycling.

Parenthetically, can you imagine how awful it must be to be his daughter?. I went to the school where my dad taught and that was bad enough, and my dad didn’t wear jewel-encrusted sliders.

Waste gets brought into these discussions a lot because it’s tangible and people who want to do something can have agency and take matters into their own hands. The problem with trying to get Net-Zero* across is that it’s an ‘invisible’ non-tangible problem to solve. A tonne of CO2e is not an easy concept to imagine. What also doesn’t help is that whilst we are seeing climate change events happening to us in the UK, the worst, catastrophic events will happen elsewhere first, especially in developing nations so it’s easy for the climate change deniers/non-give-a-shit(heads) to kick it down the road.

The one thing i could give Johnson credit for is that he seemed to give a shit, even if he didn’t know how to do it. It came to light that Sunak killed off any green initiatives whilst he was chancellor.

It’s an impressive feat that i hate Sunak even more than Johnson

*Net Zero is a stupid term and gives the get-out-of-jail card with offsets, most of which are meaningless or ineffective

Also, recycling isn’t the answer and politicians show their arse quite often with the mis-use of our own legislation

Waste Hierarchy 

Recycling is third on the list after Prevention and Re-Use

While we’re vaguely on the subject, can someone tell me what separating rubbish into recycling streams has to do with Net Zero?

Carbon reductions are one of the benefits that accrue from increased recycling. Recycling waste reduces the carbon emissions associated with its management, but more so with separate collections as cleaner material is more easily retained within a circular economy as it increases the possible outlets for the material.  With low or zero emission vehicles which we are increasingly seeing in collection fleets that benefit is even greater.

But in the context of the speech it is conflating environmental issues that may be unpopular with Net-Zero and positive climate action to make it seem bad

‘Long term decisions for a brighter future’

Referenced against average shelf life of a Conservative Minister, long term is about 6-12 months so give him a break!

It’s an impressive feat that i hate Sunak even more than Johnson

Same for me. Every time I hear him getting interviewed, he just gets worse and worse. He was awful on R4 this morning.

if the tories do better than expected in Mid Beds will he call a GE ?

Every time I hear him getting interviewed, he just gets worse and worse. He was awful on R4 this morning.

His voice is like nails down a blackboard for me. Actually… its his whole general tone and demeanor. It actually angers me listening to him, the way he talks down to everyone as if he’s exasperatedly explaining something complicated to a class of particularly dense 4 year olds

Patronising doesn’t even begin to describe it

You can tell that his sense of entitlement is an inner voice in his head saying “why do I have to even deal with these idiots? How dare these plebs even question what I do?!”

@mrhoppy – you’re absolutely correct and that’s a cracking description of the potential benefits.

I was being dismissive of the discussions around recycling because of the relative impact vs other interventions such as improved domestic insulation combined with non-combustion heat generation

Our local conservative MP for Stroud has gone extremely quiet today – usually has at least one social media post or local news story. Today nothing.

The Stroud extinction rebellion lot must be absolutely fuming as I can see massive grey clouds over that way…..

Nothing in the shop today but contempt for the conservative party from most, but as ever the gentry conservative zealots just go quiet.

It’s an impressive feat that i hate Sunak even more than Johnson

I actually found myself wondering if Johnson was that bad this morning.

Yes obviously he was objectively bad, but comparatively bad? Out of the last five PMs he’s probably only 3rd worst

@dazh I don’t think you really get this – poor people don’t buy new cars.

Oh I do. I don’t think you understand basic economics. In 2030 the demand for ICE cars will still exist, but the supply will be removed. What do you think that will do to prices in the used ICE car market? And we’re not talking about ‘poor people’, we’re talking about working people with decent incomes (like myself) who can’t afford electric cars at current prices. So come 2030 we’ll be left with a choice, buy an overpriced used ICE car, or buy an overpriced EV. Then after a coupel of years when EVs outnumber ICE, the petrol station infrastructure will start to disappear, making ICE cars pretty much useless, then forcing people to buy an overpriced EV*. If you think people will vote for that then you’re deluded.

*No doubt you’ll say the price of EVs will come down, but there’s no guarantee of that, and do you really trust in the car industry to not fix prices at a higher level to take advantage of the transition to boost their profits?

you’ll say the price of EVs will come down

There was a report today (Guardian and/or BBC) that this is all ready happening. Lithium and battery prices are down 35% so far this year.

A postie colleague of mine came back into the office this afternoon and announced that Rishi’s news was the best thing he’d heard in a long time. “He’ll definitely get my vote now! I’m not voting for that stupid **** Starmer, he’ll take us down that eco road and we’ll be properly screwed then. He’s going to let all them ******* immigrants in as well!”

I shouldn’t need to say that this colleague is a Daily Fail reading, hard of thinking car nut but how many more like him are there out there?

I don’t think you understand basic economics. In 2030 the demand for ICE cars will still exist

Is the demand for ICE cars or just for cars? Cross-elasticity of demand between fossil fuel cars and other fuelled cars would be strongly positive, wouldn’t it, as they’re highly substitutable, surely?

His fossil fuel sponsors won’t even allow him that easy win. He could announce an acceleration of the charging infrastructure investment over the next five years, and not even do much about it until an election he knows he’s going to lose, in the same way that there’s apparently a hospital building programme at some point.

Just imagine how well the family recent investments in oil companies are doing. This is the second big u turn in favour of oil since they made their investments.