Hard on the heels of Nissan announcing a five year investment plan and a new model for Sunderland comes Vauxhall’s statement of its continued enthusiasm for plant and investment in the UK, with a new model here.
The BBC Today programme made as little progress in trying to persuade Vauxhall they should leave the UK if we leave the EU, as they did with Nissan. Vauxhall pointed out that they have an important car market in the UK that they wish to sell to. They argued that they assume there would be a satisfactory trade agreement with the rest of the EU if the UK decides to leave.
I am still waiting for the Today programme to ask about some of the advantages to business and voters of leaving the EU. It would be good if they abandoned their attempts to talk business people into wanting to cancel their links and investment with the UK were the UK to decide to vote to leave the EU. The BBC still seems reluctant to grasp that business invests in many countries all round the world that do not join the EU but trade very successfully with it.
The campaign to get business to make the case to stay in the EU is not going well. Polls of smaller businesses shows over 40% wanting to leave, and more bigger businesses accepting they can prosper here out or in. Of course it should not primarily be a decision for business or about business. It is far wider, a matter of who governs and whether we still have a UK democracy. There is now comment from Greeks and commentators that the Greek election was largely irrelevant, because whoever won has to follow EU policies. The UK as a non Euro member is not in such a chronic position, but there are an increasing number of matters that a UK election cannot change thanks to our EU membership.
September 27, 2015
The tide is certainly flowing toward the get out now direction. Cameron will doubtless by searching for some fig leafs to try to stem the flow.
Has Cameron actually decided what powers he wants back yet? Other than the right not to give EU migrants benefits for the first week or two?
September 27, 2015
The people and businesses who will certainly be leaving (and in large numbers) are the many wealthy Nondoms. This following Osborne’s very silly decision to abolish this system for longer term residents. It will deter people for coming or returning and it will encourage many people and businesses to leave. It will hugely reduce the net tax take not increase it.
He had better find some way to back track, rename it or something, the sooner the better. Better still just abolish IHT and lower taxes for everyone. At the moment he is deterring the rich, hard working and successful and attracting those likely to be a large net liability. It this really what he wants?
September 27, 2015
The more one looks at the Hinkley nuclear plan the more expensive and pointless it all looks. Almost as bad as HS2 and the Swansea “Lagoon”. Christopher Booker surely has it right yet again today and I am generally keen on nuclear. It just needs to be cost effective and safe – as it certainly can be.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11893698/Hinkley-a-truly-major-national-scandal.html
September 28, 2015
Anyone googling Nuclear energy in Finland would be able to see their disastrous experience with EDF/ Areva and that their latest order is for the modified well tried Russian reactor which was also ordered by the Germans before Mrs Merkel decided to use dirty coal instead. This is to produce electricity at about 40% of the cost of the Hinkley deal, favoured so much by Mr Osborne and the DECC wonders. This is never mentioned by the BBC.
Neither is the fact that China is building more Westinghouse design nuclear stations than the French design, or that the French themselves have given up and are designing a new easier to build one for their next project.
Why is our government the only one in the world stupid enough to commit its electricity consumer to this mad deal?
September 27, 2015
Also from Simon Heffer we have: Suddenly, leaving the EU looks within reach.
I think he is right. Cameron needs to work on his fig leaf production unit. Or will he just find some way of ratting and preventing the referendum given his past record? There is however still the huge bias of the BBC to overcome and the relative popularity of the EU in Scotland and Wales.
September 27, 2015
Its not just the state broadcaster that you have to worry about. Its the rest of the “deep state” that should concern you. If you do not think like them and put your beliefs into practice they will soon be after you. Just like the UKIP foster parents in Rotherham . Or even worse the Christian bakery in Ulster. The case against them was brought by the publicly funded Equality Commission for Northern Ireland.
September 27, 2015
The BBC has its own agenda and is incapable of impartiality. It should be sold off and become a subscription channel. Those who want their left wing views can pay to watch and the rest of us will continue to ignore and condemned it.
September 27, 2015
I find that people with left wing views rarely pay much for anything, other than the occasional “look how green” I am Prius. They usually think it should all be provided (by the state) for them using other people’s money.
Hence the truly dismal sales of the Guardian, Independent & Observer as compared to the Mail, Telegraph, Times, Sunday Times/Telegraph. Rather odd therefore as to why the BBC always takes the lefty, pro EU, ever bigger state, ever higher taxes, greencrap line every single time. The second group having well over ten times the circulation.
I think the former papers are now mainly read by some state sector workers, a few lefty dopes, the odd wrong headed economist, the dimmer university students and lots of teachers.
September 27, 2015
With many German cars failing diesel emissions tests in research by London Uni that was passed onto defra years ago we may now see German cars being banned or taken off the roads for expensive refits. This will cost German manufacturers huge amounts of money that they will not be able invest in new plant and research. So British car manufacturers should be encouraged to compete. Vauxhall should also watch out for any German Government subsidies following dieselgate.
September 27, 2015
The regulators set stupid tests for cars to pass, which results in worse cars for the real world. Just as the carbon devil gas religion gave us an absurd energy generation system, CAP a insane farming system, the NHS a dreadful health car system and state schools a second rate education system.
They are few problems that the state can not make worse.
September 28, 2015
Bye the way it’s GM not Vauxhall that is investing. And if anyone thinks other manufacturers than VW are up to much the same tricks, have a look at he Honest John figures where,as our new (named manufacturer ed)petrol award winning engined car produces fuel economy about 40% below claimed figures.
This seems to be a Sir Humphrey moment. As with the immigration statistics, there are targets. It is therefore much better to fine lorry drivers for having brought in a lorryload, in which case they will never report the event and ruin the statistics.
Having balls up on a huge scale, they are looking for the next target, in order to forget the old one. My information, from an area close to a Ford engine factory, is that they are planning a petrol engine for vans. Pus ca change, plus le profit.
By the way our 20 year old 5 seater petrol,with plenty of space inside and 50k on the clock, had about the same mpg as the new huge model, with big lights, big wheels and styling. Sold it to a mate for £200.
September 28, 2015
All of the other manufacturers have similar discrepancies over the last 10 years.The worst are the hybrid mains rechargeable cars, where the fuel economy assumes that electricity for recharging is CO2 free and most trips are made within range of the battery. Also, the battery is CO2 and other environmental factors free. But it suits the current thinking and pleases the artistocrats of green in high places.
September 27, 2015
I passionately believe in direct representation where all of the people decide how government is run and what laws and policies it implements rather than as we do now by being indirectly represented in parliament by MPs. However I know that idea is as yet a totally impractical idea. Not because of the technological means to do it does not exist it does. It is because the majority of people are not yet up to the task as they make up their minds not from fact and evidence based information that they have researched or from proper observation and then considered in a rational and objective way. They do it dependent on other things, ideology, bias/prejudice, selfishness and gullibility. So politicians know that if they wish to win over the minds of the people they work on their emotions coupled with expending considerable energy in repression opposing opinion .
And so it will be with who wins the leave/remain referendum. It will be those who can spin (so incredibly important these days), obfuscate, deceive, lie the best and whose scare tactics(like 3 million lost jobs when the opposite could just as well be true) are best are the ones that will win.
September 27, 2015
The Law Society has produced a self serving remain paper. What absurdity! Lawyers serve a market wherever it is. End of.
September 28, 2015
The legal profession benefit for multilevel courts, a slow & expensive legal process, conflicting laws, arbitrary almost random ruling, vague laws and endless appeal levels.
The exact opposite of what benefits the public, growth, wealth and the economy – namely clear, quick, rational and inexpensive certainty.
September 27, 2015
As I have said several times what is going on in Europe is very worrying. I have read many historians here and the U.S expressing concern at the similarities between the present and the 1930s in Europe.
Catastrophe theory seems entirely approriate to analyse this situation. The slow build up of pressure from the high youth unemployment in the EU economies, globalisation yet lack of global competitiveness, and volatile bond and credit markets and immigration from the Middle East, Africa and Asia – and the potential of very rapid reaction due to proportional representation, undemocratic and fortified EU structures and the European jurisprudence system allowing judges to reinterpret laws. When the release comes against the globalisation in the EU it will come suddenly and even ‘violently’ in terms of political change – I believe – in the form of EU nationalism and anti globalisation, immigration and anti centrist political parties.
September 27, 2015
You’re going to have to be very patient indeed if you’re waiting for the blatantly pro-EU BBC to admit that international businesses are not all going to immediately abandon the UK if we dare vote to leave their beloved EU.
No difficult questions will ever be asked of the pro-EU brigade. They will never be challenged on why a so-called trading organisation requires a political union, completed with free movement of people, when NAFTA doesn’t.
The BBC will never address the point that only 28 countries are in the EU: but very many countries outside it trade with the EU perfectly successfully and happily: it isn’t even necessary to be in the EU to be in the Single Market. Instead they, and the pro-EU commentators they invite to pontificate, continually trot out the lie that 3 million jobs will be lost – which is never challenged.
I suggest you google William Dartmouth MEP’s speech to the UKIP conference: he gave a blistering and well-deserved critique of the BBC’s bias, which I’m sure they absolutely hated having to broadcast on the Parliament channel.
September 27, 2015
Absolutely agree that it is not just about business – or trade for that matter – so what is Carswell (whom I had never heard of at first but who has come up with some distinctly odd and inappropriate do-gooder type comments since his outset with UKIP) doing wanting, best I understand, for Business for Britain to take the lead on getting Out?
September 27, 2015
Now I know everyone is going to say the same thing – why is the BBC so biased? Who is running the BBC, are they Fifth Columnists?
I have a pride in the achievements of the UK and its long history of engineering success. The BBC supports the green blob in their climate change meme in the destruction of the Electrical & Gas Power Industry. Renewables do not provide affordable 24/7 energy. Industry cannot compete in world markets, why is Germany building so many new brown coal fired power stations?
The BBC portrays all the thousands of migrants heading for Germany as Syrian refugees fleeing a war zone. The UN has produced figures showing the majority to be economic migrants from other Countries.
The BBC and much of the media will make every effort to prevent the UK leaving the EU.
September 27, 2015
Indeed it is quite a feat of management to ensure that every member of BBC staff or interviewer pushes virtually the same BBC line on every single issue.
You know what line the BBC are going to take before they even open their mouths. It is always exactly the same.
They are pro EU, pro open door immigration, pro an ever bigger state, pro the EU + everything from the EU, pro higher taxes, hate landlords, hate bankers, hate business people, hate sensible economists, want ever more taxation and regulation of everything and ever more endless green crap.
September 27, 2015
There is so much emotional blackmail about money and business retraction if we leave. Mr Farage speaks of ‘Business for Britain’ not being able to make a firm stand on leaving but makes the point that if we were do fully integrate with the EU , then 100% voters would want to leave. Alas that would be too late.
Vauxhall are making a lovely small car: the ‘Adam’ . I wish they would make a 4 door version of this . It is so difficult to manage a young family with child seats etc with 2 doors.
September 27, 2015
I think you’ll find that GM have their eyes on the larger prize of the Trans Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – the TTIP.
Once we are signed up to that small matters such as the EU aren’t so important to them any more – that will be yesterday’s politics.
September 27, 2015
Mr R, another post confirming the fact that most businesses are now admitting that the UK market is too big and too important to be sanctioned by the EU in the event of a Leave vote.
And you are right, it’s not all about trade – although the EU should be just that!
I’d like to point out though, to some folk who don’t get out as much as me, that not everyone will do exactly as they are told by the CBI and business leaders, never mind the BBC and the government. If someone like Alan Sugar gave them a pointer they might listen, but apart from that they will ignore unknown tycoons and chief execs.
I’d also like to point out that most folk get their news from papers like the Sun and the Mail, whatever some people may believe about the BBC being the only news source.
The perceived enthusiasm for the EU in Wales and Scotland is also confined to the separatist parties who need an alternative underwriter. The Welsh and the Scots want to preserve their societies as much as the English do. Whatever Sturgeon might think, an EU referendum in Scotland would return pretty much the same result as the English one.
And regarding opinion polls, I have never been polled in my life, so – as with the GE opinion polls – I don’t hold much stock by them.
September 27, 2015
In 2005 the BBC was taken to task in the Wilson report about its EU coverage, but what has changed since then? Not much. The BBC still spends most of the time reporting splits in the anti EU campaign, and as you point out puts loaded pro EU questions to people and organisations with the intention of getting a pro EU response.
Asking the BBC to change it s ways and respect impartiality has been proven to be futile , the only way to combat the BBC’s propaganda is to make sure the public are informed about the BBC’s tricks and games.
September 27, 2015
You would need to change almost all the front of screen staff at the BBC, they are all ridden with “BBC think” drivel to their core.
September 27, 2015
John Whittingdale (Cons, Culture Secretary) has the power to do something guaranteed to be effective with regard to this issue but it appears he will not. Although he has indicated that the BBC Trust is likely to be dismantled, he seems unwilling to address the issue of the licence fee, (and that is what would really be effective). Why is this?
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/may/11/john-whittingdale-culture-secretary-bbc-charter-renewal
“….While Whittingdale said there is no “serious possibility” of the licence fee being axed in this charter renewal period, the BBC’s governing body, the BBC Trust, is likely to be dismantled…”
September 27, 2015
Which rather pust paid to the argument that pulling out of the EU would be bad for business. If these businesses thought so, they would have waited until after the referendum, but this investment shows, that as far as they are concerned it doesn’t matter either way.
September 27, 2015
Where I have to pay a compulsory annual TV tax to a very biased, left wing, corrosive, anti-business, anti-English organisation intent of undermining our freedom, democracy and wealth creation, I refuse to do so. This means I can’t watch TV in the UK. It is about time we were freed from this divisive tax and the BBC was made to earn and pay its way in the world against other media channels.
If I’m forced to pay, as proposed, a regressive tax to them as part of my council tax, then I will be leaving the UK.
September 27, 2015
You only can’t watch live TV!
So much of government is about forcing people to pay taxes which are then used to try to programme your mind with “BBC think” propaganda.
September 27, 2015
Much of the bias at the BBC is from omission. For instance, the only time the term ‘taxpayer’s money’ is used, is when they are referring to Trident or some other scheme that the Left opposes. The BBC would never refer to “taxpayer’s money” going into education or welfare.
The Vauxhall example is similar: the questions are loaded with the BBC’s point of view. This has the effect of forcing the conversation onto BBC/Labour territory and plants a seed in our minds that was never there in the first place. When the BBC does this enough times it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The same with the current European immigration crisis. I have lost count how many times the BBC has asked: “is the UK doing enough to take in migrants?” However, I still haven’t heard the BBC ask if the German government acted wrongly by inviting more people to risk their lives to come to Germany.
Mind you, I’d prefer it if the BBC got out of politics altogether and followed events rather than trying to shape them.
September 27, 2015
Indeed and CO2 is always pollution. Why do they never talk about the oxygen produced by plants and trees as pollution?
September 27, 2015
“They (Vauxhall ) argued that they assume there would be a satisfactory trade agreement with the rest of the EU if the UK decides to leave. ”
Wow what an assumption. National elections in EU member states with unknown outcome; internal EU political hanky-panky with unknown outcome; China-US bilateral trade under discussion at this moment between President Xi Jinping and President Obama. A new untried President in Mr Trump of opposite politics to President Obama likely in the White House soon.
And Vauxhall believes it a good idea to invest in the UK with a Prime Minister at the head who literally the day before yesterday was massively emphatically for illegally getting shut of the sovereign nation of Syria’s democratically elected President by armed force but today thinks that perhaps the President of Syria can stay on.
One should not buy a secondhand Vauxhall car from Mr Cameron. Perhaps it is inadvisable to buy even a new one from anyone.
September 27, 2015
“Perhaps it is inadvisable to buy even a new [Vauxhall] from anyone.”
It is inadvisable to buy a diesel powered car because they are dirty and smelly and environmentally damaging; they have been thrust into prominence by Green Loons convincing politicians that diesel cars were in fact the opposite of what they are because they produced per joule of useful work, less carbon dioxide, an entirely harmless and environmentally beneficial gas, resulting in politicians giving them tax breaks against petrol cars and thereby artificially ramping up demand with the result that major cities are as bad for human health now as they were before the Clean Air Acts.
September 27, 2015
Now would be a good time to get rid of all the left wing twits that inhabit the the upper echelons of the BBC, preferably without enormous pay offs.
September 27, 2015
Cameron like it like that, hence Lord Patten and Baron Hall of Birkenhead
September 27, 2015
The BBC should be told, not too politely, to wind in its neck and take an impartial stance regarding the EU referendum. We should not be forced to pay for a licence to watch national TV, and listen to national radio channels that exercise bias in cases of such political importance.
September 27, 2015
John, good article once again, but the central question is : Why is the BBC allowed to campaign vigorously for a subject they support (and one that supports the BBC with millions of euros) – against the wishes of it’s viewers? Every day, the BBC vigorously defies it’s own royal charter, campaigning on Socialist issues and for it’s own self-interest. It is way overdue for our representatives in the government to finally take action against these disloyal quislings.
September 27, 2015
Because they know that is what Cameron and the state sector want.
September 27, 2015
How much money (directly or indirectly) does the BBC receive from the EU?
September 27, 2015
Officially, the BBC received £22 million (over seven years) from the £1Billion EU communications budget.
September 27, 2015
Apologies to Ferdinand. I scrolled down to find the answer had already been supplied. I was not aware of the CBI grant. however. That explains their standpoint regarding EU membership. Very disturbing.
September 27, 2015
Or just as perniciously from the licence fees.
They get this because government still allows it so they broadly follow the Cameron line on the EU, the green religion and much else. So their line does not change.
September 27, 2015
I heard the BBC coverage of a conference near Cambridge on the future of TV and the mix between broadcasting and streaming. John Whittingdale, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, was due to give a speech but the Guardian correspondent thought his speech might be ‘ideologically-driven’. You could not make it up! So the Guardian is not ideologically-driven?
September 27, 2015
It is little surprise that the BBC promotes the EU. it receives massive sums from the EU. – over £22 million in the last seven years. (the CBI receives over £40 million a year from the EU so guess who they support.)
September 27, 2015
Annual budget of BBC is around 5 billions. You quote 22 millions in the last seven years, so roughly 3 millions per year.
Have you ever thought to keep things in perspective and stop parroting your ideologically-driven right-wing newspapers?
September 28, 2015
Would you be so relaxed about this money Bob, if it were being gifted by the Conservative party or the USA or (others ed) and you felt the BBC showed a positive bias towards them ?
September 27, 2015
One of the headlines in the CBI report on the EU is:
“The benefits of EU membership to 57 British business have significantly
outweighed the costs”
Yes and not hard for me to think why either. I enjoy working for the international company that I do, they are also a contributor to this report.
If you consult for corporate clients advising on regulation and legislation then initially it isn’t a problem if different countries operate different regulations as that is more consultancy work.
However, at a higher level efficiency savings can be made if the same regulations span a continent. And if the same regulations span the continent then else where in that continent will be cheap labour that also understand the regulations for the cheaper back office functions.
Ultimately it removes choice for how we want things done here, relative to our culture and views and all to serve a corporate efficiency percentage. What’s more important. The business will carry on it’s just that they are sacrificing choice of people for a spreadsheet percentage.
“The benefits of EU membership to 57 British business have significantly
outweighed the costs”
Yes because the work we do in this closed market is not really affected by competition from the global market. You can raise the costs within a global market and have the same business activity but that ignores what the citizen/subject earns and pays at grass roots level.
They don’t have our interests at heart.
September 27, 2015
Don’t get me wrong, these guys increase the share price value that I in part will be invested in including pension. I expect them to do what is best for the business.
I live here though so will probably be taking a slightly different view.
September 27, 2015
And Ford is planning a £181m engine production project in Bridgend.
(With a little £15m encouragement from the Welsh Assembly).
September 27, 2015
The Taxpayers Alliance report that George Osborne is giving £3 million of our money to train 5,000 football coaches in China and raise awareness of our “thriving football sector”.
Presumably this will be borrowed money?
At least it’s cheaper than the £4 million to promote the Ethiopian Spice Girls though, and after all it’s not as if we have tens of thousands of elderly people dying because they can’t afford to turn on their heating every winter, is it?
September 27, 2015
We will all wait a long time before the BBC says anything that is remotely detrimental to the wonders of the EU. The balance of their political discussion programmes are heavily skewed to all things left wing but when you consider the £ millions they receive annually from Brussels I suppose it’s payback time.
I seem to remember ex newscaster Peter Sissons saying during his time at the BBC it was unwise to be seen reading anything other than the Guardian on the premises.
On the opening morning of UKIP’s conference one presenter, this time Sky, remarked following a interview with Farage that he was a congenial chap but he would never consider voting for him. The visual media certainly controls the political airwaves.
I read the following yesterday on the disastrous handling by the EU re the migrant crisis. I wish I could remember who said it as it was so accurate and succinct. I paraphrase.
When the EU was designed it anticipated the good times would always be in play but when things got difficult they couldn’t cope and some member states decided nationhood was preferable to club membership.
Part of me would rather not have a referendum as a vote to stay IN would feel like entrapment – and the way things are moving it is quite possible the whole ghastly edifice will collapse under its own socialist authoritarianism. I can but hope.
September 28, 2015
John just for the record, are you for leaving the EU no matter what ?
In the very likely event that the EU continues to screw up on migration, refugees, the Eurozone, economic growth, legal challenges, car exhaust emission tests, et al, isn’t there every chance by 2017 that Cameron will have more allies arguing from within so he could finesse a commitment to sufficient change to win a vote to stay in ? Would you then campaign to stay in or leave ?
Reply I voted to leave in 1975.I want a new relationship based on trade and co operation, outside the current treaties. How many more times do I need to explain that?