Politicians are known for saying bland things. That’s what they do. If they say bold or interesting things, they make enemies faster than they make friends. The exception is firebrand populists, who usually say whatever they feel, safe in the knowledge that it isn’t costing them a chance to run the country. But those who run the country have to say bland things.

Sir Keir Starmer visited Jaguar Land Rover today, in order to announce a slight watering down of the absurdly-punishing Zero Emission Vehicle mandate.

Quoth he, in part:

So today – we’re going to introduce much more flexibility into EV mandates.

We’re going to help car companies based in Britain reach the targets in a way that supports growth.

We’re going to cut any fines – which I do not want or expect to see – by 20% and any money that is raised – would be invested directly back into support for the British car industry.

He doesn’t want to issue any fines, he doesn’t expect to issue any fines, but he’s cutting the size of the fines he does not want to make nor expects to make. Make sense to you? Why not just… I dunno… drop the fines that aren’t going to be made, if they aren’t going to be made?

He also came out with:

As Rachel has said, we are also putting £2.3 billion pounds into the British car industry, giving people tax breaks worth hundreds of millions of pounds a year to help them switch to electric.

Improving charging infrastructure. That is a massive factor when people are thinking about switching and our approach means we are seeing a new public charging point popping up every half an hour.

Because this is the moment when we back British business and charge up the electric revolution.

British electric cars running off clean British power, made by British workers.

British cars for British workers! 

It’s a wonder that the workers standing behind him didn’t just get back to work at that point. Ya know. Back to making the British cars for British workers.

Afterwords, in response to a question from the Telegraph, he said:

I see net zero as a real opportunity. There’s a global race on for the jobs of the future in relation to net zero, more investment is coming into this country in relation to renewables than any other sector. I don’t think now is the time to step away from that race, now is the time to double down on that race.

I would like to point out that the lion’s share of the investment coming into the UK in relation to renewables is for building wind and solar farms. For example, in October 2024, the PM’s press office was pleased to announce a “Tidalwave [sic] of clean energy investment worth billions.”

The total announced was apparently north of £24 bill. The press release helpfully lists:

• Iberdrola doubling its investment from £12 to £24 billion. £4 billion for East Anglia 2 wind farm – no mention of what the other £8 bill is for.
• Orsted coming in with £8 bill for a wind farm
• Greenvolt with £2.5 bill for a wind farm
• SeAH with £225 mill for wind technology in Teesside [monopiles I think].
• Macquarie with £1.3 bill for a solar farm and ultra-fast chargers
• BW Group with £300 million for a battery energy storage system
• Holtec with £325 for a materials factory for Hinckley Point C

So apart from about £550 million, the identifiable projects of the investments are not actually building anything – they’re installing things manufactured elsewhere, things that they expect to get a handsome return on, by overcharging the UK public for electricity. And the £550 million remainder does not really inspire confidence that it is going to be creating something that might increase the UK’s overall wealth.

(Side note. I think I’m the only one who has read this press release since October. For it includes this paragraph:

This follows the announcement earlier this week that up to 500 UK manufacturing jobs are set to be supported as bus operator Go Ahead confirms a major £500 million investment to decarbonise its fleet including. This includes creating a new dedicated manufacturing line and partnership with Northern Ireland-based UK bus manufacturer Wrightbus.

SIC.)

On went Sir Keir with his answer,

Some country’s going to win the race when it comes to renewables and the changes for net zero. I want Britain to be in that race and I want us to win that race. So yes we will work with all sectors, as we’ve shown today, we’re not ideological, we’re pragmatic, if there’s flexibilities that help which is what we’ve done today then of course we’ll take those steps.

If we win the race to Net Zero, it will only be by installing things that other countries, often geopolitical rivals, have built for us. The owners of the new facilities are usually foreigners, and such wealth as is created by overcharging us for electricity flows out of the UK. Ha! Unlike the leccy.

And even if we were winning some sort of technological race, to build the first small modular reactor, whatever, it would not benefit us if our geopolitical rivals were mysteriously able to simply cut and paste our methods into their far more efficient economies. Alternatively, we could let them win the race, and then buy their stuff, and install it here. Why break the habit of a lifetime?

Back to Sir K.

But not to understand that net zero, the electric cars of the future… There’s a global race for that, we don’t wanna back away from that race, we want to win that race because therein lies the wealth of our country, the wealth of our businesses like this [JLR] and the jobs of not just the people standing here but the jobs of their children and the jobs of their children’s children.

What a load of tosh. Balderdash. The electric cars we are ultimately forced to buy, through no fault of our own, will be made in countries where electricity is cheap and labour is cheap and environmental standards are lower. I foresee a good market for used petrol cars for the next hundred years, unless our leaders see fit to tax them off the road.

Jaguar Land Rover, it may be said, is not a British company. And whatever the Land Rover part might be doing, Jaguar seems to be the ultimate in self-recycling companies at the moment. Which is a crying shame when you look back at some of the cars they have made.

I may also note that the government decided today, or they decided it before but announced it today, that small manufacturers would be exempt from the ZEV mandate. So the likes of Aston Martin, which is on the verge of bankruptcy, will not be driven off the cliff entirely by being forced to build electric cars that NO-ONE WANTS. Thank heaven for small mercies. But as the entire country is on the road to hell, it’s probably only a temporary reprieve. British cars for British workers.

Add emphasis here. As the saying goes.

Bonus track:

Sit back, kick off your shoes, etc. Thirty-six years old.

By Jo Nova

Todays magic trick is how to make electricity look cheaper by taking money from children

Tomorrow — we pretend to control inflation by printing more money.

The Labor Party tried to control the weather with our power stations and promised us it would cheaper. For some reason that every engineer can explain, they damaged the electricity grid and electricity got more expensive.

In order to hide this, they have to borrow money to pay us so they can pretend electricity is slightly less expensive, and inflation figures are not so scary. Since our children will pay off that debt one day somehow, the Labor Government is nicking the money from babies and telling us how compassionate they are.

More expensive that what Jim?

The next magical  $150 electricity rebate to households will cost $1.8 billion dollars. Think of it as a performance art, a piece of theatre, or a band-aid on a gaping wound. For Australians this will be the third year of rebates, so the total cost, respectively, is $3b in 2023 , plus $3.5b in 2024, plus $1.8b for a total of $8.3 billion.

There’s no intellectual merit in the rebate, it’s not like it’s an incentive scheme for homeowners to “stay alive” or use more or less electricity. The sole point of the rebate is to hide the failure of the governments energy plan. It’s to bury the market signal which is screaming “bad, bad, bad” so the Labor Government can do more of the same “bad things” that got us into trouble in the first place.

The PM also thinks giving away money reduces inflation:

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the cost of living measure would put downward pressure on inflation.

We wonder why any country ever suffered inflation when the solution is so easy?

$8 billion in Rebates could have made electricity cheaper for 30 years

Unfortunately “rebate” doesn’t reduce real electricity prices or inflation, except in advertising and ABC news. If the government is going to incur a debt on our behalf, it could have used this $8 billion to buy at least four new gas plants and an advanced efficient coal plant, any or all of which would have reduced the price of electricity for 30 years to come (or 60 years in the case of a coal plant).

For reference the cost of the 660MW Hunter Power Project is expected to be around $1b.

China started building 92GW of coal plants last year, which is twice as much coal power as Australia has.

You’ve heard of the “hockey stick“, that infamous climate doom graph created by by Dr. Michael Mann, patched together using some shonky statistical methods, and exposed by McIntyre and McKittrick as being spurious. Mann has made a career out of defending his statistical sausage, and now it seems karma has come full circle.

So, let me introduce you to the newly created “Hockey Hole.”

As we reported here, it seems that combative climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann has been found to have made false statements to court in Mann vs. Steyn and has been ordered to pay a huge amount in legal fees. Steve McIntyre takes it all apart here.

Gosh, that’s tooooo baaaaad. Of course, few people were surprised that Mann would do this. Reason? As I have opined in the past, Mann’s ego is so large he can’t fit through most doors.

Josh is on the case with a new cartoon.

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