Dear Kemi
The UK government rightly wants to grow the economy and cut inflation. As Business Minister there are crucial changes you could make to help both aims.
The proposed ban on new petrol and diesel cars will destroy our car making capacity prematurely without replacing it by as much electric car output. Only the UK is proposing such an early write off and closure of so many factories with loss of jobs. Businesses are going to put their remaining petrol and diesel capacity elsewhere. From 2030 UK buyers will import nearly new petrol and diesel cars instead of buying UK ones. Lift the ban to rescue the car industry.
The UK is losing capacity in energy intensive industries like steel, ceramics, glass, fertilisers and much else thanks to having the  highest carbon taxes in the world. These drive up prices and progressively close factories. Suspend the emissions trading and carbon tax regime. You can then save the big subsidies you are forced to offer as partial offsets. This action will save a lot of UK jobs and boost other tax revenue.
As the leader of Ministerial efforts to cut out needless regulation, bring forward the repeal of EU laws laying down product specifications. Keep a strong safety law and allow all goods of merchandisable  quality to be offered for sale. This will boost innovation and competition.
Co operate with the Energy department in expanding UK supplies of cheap reliable energy. You cannot have a successful industrial strategy with dear power, unreliable  power and import dependence.
The EU with an overzealous net zero policy has  hit  our industry hard whilst boosting world CO 2 by relying too much on imports with extra CO 2 in manufacture and transport. Please back made in the UK, and change these damaging policies.
Yours sincerely
John Redwood
June 26, 2023
Good morning.
Keep up the good work, Sir John.
June 26, 2023
Why can’t the minister work out these, and other, strategies for himself? It’s 100% common sense!
June 26, 2023
Sorry not Himself, Herself, …..or thereself?
June 26, 2023
Maybe he or she is a Minister named miKe who is muddled.
June 26, 2023
Good work indeed but the party is surely done for next year. No one in government is listening – perhaps even 3+ terms of a Labour/SNP/LibDim disaster awaits the nation. An 80 seat majority totally wasted by the tax, borrow, print and tip down the drain Consocialists.
I too, like the excellent Nigel Farage video, despise what the “Conservatives” have done to Britain.
June 26, 2023
+ many, Ashley. You have to search to find ‘English’ areas of England.
June 26, 2023
An 80 seat majority, almost wiped out. That is astounding isn’t it?
I never trusted Johnson an inch and didn’t vote for the party even though the prospect of Corbyn loomed.
I thought from Cameron onward we had in effect kept in Blair anyway, on many issues. Conservatives (it’s just a brand name now) made no attempt to roll back many of Labours hated policies. Not least their mass immigration policy, which has seen Labour in the wilderness.
An 80 seat majority and the Red Wall came a-tumbling down, which I thought was some kind of miracle, a revolution.
You don’t lose by accident all that support, you just don’t.
It can lead to only one conclusion for me and that is the path we are being forced down, was set a long time ago by people with no right to do so, and it’s a path leading to our total destruction as a distinct nation and people. It’s a reset, a rebuild to bring about whatever it is some think will be better. May they spend an eternity regretting it, and the power and money they make burn their souls.
June 26, 2023
If I were PM I think I might just look at the polls before imposing this household green levy thing on every household ( if I have understood reports correctly).
It all sounds very Poll Taxy if you ask me!
Not a great way of increasing popularity.
June 26, 2023
Yes, actually, if the reports are trueâŠ
why on earth should people who do not believe all the climate rubbish pay at all. Let alone the same as the true believers.
Carboniferous period was pretty hotâŠno men around with coal or gas then. Allegedly fossil fuel was being made at that time by dinosaur compression (đ€).
June 26, 2023
Only 50% of scientists believe the UN IPCC report, but 100% of governments adopt the UN IPCC report âŠ.is it perhaps because they like the outcome i.e power & control
June 26, 2023
Don’t you think Rishi is there to manage the Conservatives’ decline? It’s no skin off his nose, he is now at the top table for life, just like all the crud from yesteryear wearing their pomp at the latest pageant, it doesn’t matter if they fail. MPs probably stand down from so-called Tory safe seats because they don’t want to waste their best productive working years on the opposition back benches, and they know the gig is up.
I read the lefties, they want pensioners with over ÂŁ30k pa private pension to lose their state pension through means testing. Other than state workers (whose pensions and early retirements they want to protect), they want to steal more of the private sector pension funds and savings for their retirement. It started with a green waste bin extra charge if you have a garden, townies want garden taxes. With an increased corporation tax + increased taxes on dividends, don’t bother investing just spend it (the problem they’ve got is it can only be spent once!)
These unions have big pots of pension savings and investments; how many housing estates do they build? These council workers same how many housing estates do they build? Where are their investments to maintain their defined benefit pensions?
June 26, 2023
+++
Yes I do think that. As you say, no skin off his nose. Is he even interested?
Itâs all very dire!
June 26, 2023
+ many
June 26, 2023
glen – Governments are much more gullible, always thought you knew that, haha.
June 26, 2023
Ar yes ….I too have been known to be gullible on occasion
June 26, 2023
Excellent video 2 sept 2022
June 26, 2023
Sunak – despite the pain, there was no other option: ‘I want people to be reassured that we’ve got to hold our nerve, stick to the plan and we will get through this.’
We? Yes perhaps but only without your house or your business!
No other options he says – Well we did not need to have all your vast government waste, vast tax increases, the lockdown & Covid loans and furlough, HS2, the worthless degrees, the PPE fraud, net zero rip off energy, your eat out to help out lunacy, the counter productive (net harm) vaccines (& certainly for people under 60), the PPE scams, the failure to cut back the state or to deregulate, the botched Brexit, your mad QE currency debasing, the schools lockdowns or you retention of Andrew Bailey – did we Sunak? Lots of other option but you got it all wrong.
June 26, 2023
Sir John is talking to the wall. Kemi portrayed herself as a right of centre Brexiteer…………………..until she gained office. I’m afraid the Tory’s have had 13 years and we are where we are as it is THEIR policies. Mass legal and illegal immigration, net zero religion, woke policies in school, highest taxation, encouraging welfare in all its forms. Refusal to cut the state or remove wokism from all our health, education and public services. Pro EU regulation and refusal to remove it. Windsor agreement and Withdrawal agreement all in favour of EU even before we continue to give away our fish for NO REASON.
There’s only one way to get change and that’s voting for REFORM! Its madness to keep voting for the same old tired parties and expecting them to change. The Westminster bubblers are out of touch and not representing English taxpayers and haven’t for a long time.
June 26, 2023
+1 Timaction
June 26, 2023
+ 1
June 26, 2023
Talking of immigration. I was talking to a lovely Hong Konger recently. Heâs a business man whose business in Hong Kong is losing money but he canât sell it either. Anyway, he knows of about 100 other business people who are selling up in Hong Kong and plan to move here, specifically to my borough. I asked where theyâd all live. He said they would be buying up the million pound houses⊠because the schools are very good here.
Heâs a lovely bloke, but I really donât want another hundred, plus their families moving in to the borough! Weâve already got a lot of Ukrainians in our borough which again, in my experience, are lovely people, but where to put everyone?
June 26, 2023
I agree, but reform will do well to win a single seat in FPTP voting as too many always have always will vote X or Y voters who vote for the brand try competing with Coke even Virgin failed.
The sensible Tory MPs and members must recapture the Tory Party from the mad, global, net zero, tax to death, woke, lying Consocialists.
June 26, 2023
You are right, Kemi portrayed herself as a right of centre Brexiteer – until she gained office. Since then she has delivered NOTHING that was promised by the Leave campaign in 2016. Look closely – exactly the same is true of David Frost, David Davis, Jacob Rees Mogg, Michael Gove and most of all Boris Johnson. All Brexiters, all Ministers asked to deliver on Brexit, all did no such thing, all failures. Ask yourself why. Are they all secret Remainers? Or was everything promised for Brexit a fantasy and a deception?
June 26, 2023
OFF TOPIC.
The Kings Fund found:
-Only the US had a worse record in terms of preventing death from treatable conditions
-The UK had one of the lowest levels of life expectancy – although the study acknowledged this would be affected by many factors, aside from the quality of NHS care.
-The NHS has strikingly low levels of key clinical staff, with fewer doctors and nurses per head than most of its peers
– As well as one of the lowest number of hospital beds per capita
-The UK has less equipment relative to its population size: the US has five times as many scanners, for example, and Germany four times
But the think tank also found the UK had low levels of people avoiding medical care due to cost fears – just one in 10 of those questioned maintain there are major difficulties accessing NHS treatment.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said:
“There are record numbers of staff working in the NHS with over 53,600 more people compared to a year ago – including over 5,400 more doctors and over 12,900 more nurses. We will publish a workforce plan shortly to ensure we have the right numbers of staff, with the right skills to continue cutting waiting lists and delivering high quality services.”
June 26, 2023
why held back?
June 26, 2023
???
June 26, 2023
Exactly right so basically Rishi needs to do a U turn on almost every policy he & the fake Tories have been pushing. He tells us to “keep our nerve” how exactly does that help people who cannot pay interest on their mortgages due to his QE, Net Zero lunacy, tax, print, borrow and waste agenda and his lockdown & wasteful incompetence while Chancellor?
June 26, 2023
………………..”keep our nerve” doesn’t pay the mortgage or bills for our young people. It does keep paying for the 4* hotels, food, and pocket money for the invaders who they refuse to deport or send back to France. Can you imagine France tolerating our letting thousands of illegals to leave our shores and invade their Country? Enough of our weak politicians. Lets start to ban French goods and trade until they sort it out or receive their illegals back.
June 26, 2023
Junior doctors in England are set to be offered an extra payment of around ÂŁ1,000 plus 6% salary increase I see in the Telegraph. A close relative of mine starts work for the NHS as a junior doctor in West London next month. After tax/NI/pension contributions, professional body fees, ÂŁ10,000 interest on his student loans, rent on a small room in a shared flat, commuting costs, council tax, utility bills… he has minus ÂŁ14 a day left for food and other living costs. If he get this 6% plus ÂŁ1,000 it will leave him with about minus ÂŁ10 a day for food and other living costs. Can Steve Barclay not do simple sums? Even if they gave them the 35% they ask for he would only have ÂŁ5 a day left for food and all other living costs.
Meanwhile two others his age in the flat with less than half the student debts (as three year degrees, economics and law not six) are on circa ÂŁ105,000 in law and banking jobs.
Does Barclay really expect NHS doctors to work long hours in very stressful jobs and end each year with larger debts than they started off with? Yet in the Lords they get ÂŁ342 a day (tax free) just for popping in for a subsidised lunch. Still we are all in it together as they like to say.
June 26, 2023
Well, it’s quite a good way to deter people entering the medical profession.
So what happens then? Oh yes ‘we need more immigration to cover the shortages’.
June 26, 2023
To pay ÂŁ10,000 student loan they would have to be earning ÂŁ137K. Incurring interest is not the same as cashflow affecting monthly income.
The problem for junior doctors is not that they are paid too little it is that housing costs are too great in this country. Supply, demand and money printing.
June 26, 2023
If it’s supply and demand then the doctors are due their money – we have a shortage. No such shortage of MP’s who start on 87 grand plus expenses for no knowledge at all. Barclay is worse than Hunt was and that is saying something. Perhaps he’d like to live on a junior doctor first year wage? No, didn’t think so.
June 26, 2023
LL always says this, NS, even though he has been corrected many times. It is a 9% graduate tax, not a ÂŁ10,000k pa bill no different than any other English student; the interest is set high to make sure they pay the 9% graduate tax for 30 years and don’t pay it off as too many successful grads did after ten years. It annoys me that Scottish/Welsh and Irish kids don’t pay it within the same so-called Union only the English, thanks to Blair and the heavily Scottish weighted labour cabinet, not remedied by Osborne.
The doctor doesn’t have to do their training FY in London if the London premium isn’t considered high enough, that salary would go much further in other Cities and regions in the UK, and there are other areas like Cambridge/Oxford etc. where that salary should be weighted but national pay bargaining is causing this pain. Everything is looked at through the prism of London.
He doesn’t mention the London weighting that all key workers get even if they don’t live near the hospital but in outer London. ÂŁ4k 1.8.22. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/human-resources/policies-advice/clinical-staff/clinical-staff-salary-scales/junior-doctors-pay-scale.
Perhaps they should have FY1 and FY2 combined avg ÂŁ33,600 pa with an annual increment and do away with the 14% uplift between 1 and 2 and make that smaller to pay more in year 1. Six weeks paid study leave, no obligation to pay back for training should they leave the country. They want ÂŁ40,500 to start their FY1 training. The whole thing is going to crash soon, Barclay better come up with something because this country can’t afford another five days of cancelled ops and care.
June 26, 2023
Correct, but they still work in a hard, stressful job with long hours and end up with more debt at the end of the years than at the beginning unless they can live with parents free or in a tent or van or do not heat or eat! The increasing student loan also restricts them getting a large enough mortgage to buy anything.
June 26, 2023
Lifelogic, werenât there hours cut with the WTD? Do they earn overtime over 40 hours at the hospital or not?
There are hospitals all over the Country, most graduates have to house share if they move to the capital after taking a degree, one of mine shared a house with five others, one living in what as the dining room another in the attic.
I actually do think that the years over year 4 should be repaid by the organisation they go to work for unless they leave medicine or the country.
June 26, 2023
These bankers will be paying more in Student loan repayments than the junior doctors.
Student loans are wrong but those campaigning against them need to get their facts straight to argue the case.
June 26, 2023
Well, fancy that, bankers on 105 grand pay more loan repayments than first year junior doctors. Who’d a thunk it?
June 26, 2023
NS, I know bankers, and they aren’t all on that much without working over 70 hours per week. Look at the bank’s graduate programs for the current first-year training gross. Could the junior doctor work 70 hours and get the overtime for it or not?
June 26, 2023
What you pay is one thing but the debt is still there and increasing. A three year degree needs perhaps ÂŁ75 of debt but a six year medical one more like ÂŁ150k so interest is double and is paid of more slowly so yer more still.
June 26, 2023
The doctors pay more as the debt is usually double and they take far longer to repay as earning less, Perhaps as much as four times in the end.
June 27, 2023
Lifelogic, do they ever earn enough to pay it off by your logic? Do they pay 9% for the undergrad part and 6% for the extended loan or not? Do they get reimbursed, bursary, and scholarships for the year 5,6 extension or not?
If the banker earns more than double as you claim [“are on circa ÂŁ105,000”, then that person will be paying 9% on every p over ÂŁ22,015 a year plan 1 or ÂŁ27,295 pa.
Plan 1 grad tax – ÂŁ7468.65 (they don’t have as much interest applied and can repay)
Plan 2 grad tax – ÂŁ6993.45 (these English students aren’t expected to repay within 30 years)
You say your FY1 doctor will be earning ÂŁ29,500.
Plan 2 tax – ÂŁ198.45 and a year wiped off their repayment for 30 years.
The English-only Graduate tax is wrong but it is wrong for ALL or none. The fact we English just allow the Scots, Welsh and Irish to get away with this is infuriating.
June 26, 2023
Rubbish the Doctorâs loans are double and are repaid far more slowly so perhaps four times the interest in the end!
June 26, 2023
How much does the doctor get charged for each of their 4, 5 and 6th year? What is the rate of repayment an extra 6% for the extra 3 years? The debt gets cancelled out after 30 years the same as other degrees. I have a child that did five years at degree level. I thought I read that year 6 was FY1?
Perhaps this 6% part of the years over 4 should be covered by the NHS whilst working for the NHS but not if they leave the UK or donât follow a medical career after all the training.
June 26, 2023
You can apply for an NHS bursary from your 5th year on the 5 or 6 year undergraduate course or from your 2nd year on the 4 year accelerated graduate course.
It is possible to get a fully funded scholarship to study medicine in the UK. Imperial College London and the University of Central Lancashire are two medical schools that award full scholarships to eligible students every year.23 Feb 2023
https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/sites/default/files/2023-01/NHS%20Bursary%20Funding%20for%20Medical%20and%20Dental%20Students%202022-23%20%28V5%29%2012.2022.pdf
June 26, 2023
I agree that newly qualified doctors are paid too little,, however, some junior doctors CHOOSE to stay as junior doctors. I do not know whether they are not good enough to rise through the ranks, or whether the pay improves after a couple of years.
I agree newly qualified barristers get more than newly qualified doctors, but I know a lady who qualified for the bar but chose to work at a bingo hall. I never discovered why.
Doctors benefit from a job for life, huge pensions, and flexible working. I recently discovered that hospice nurses are given a choice of fulltime 3, 4, or 5 days working of various lengths to suit their lifestyle. As an ex-business owner I am ashamed my first thought was ‘ Thank goodness I don’t have to work out the rosters’. but I could then see why some days were understaffed, and other days were overstaffed.
June 26, 2023
Shirley, I was told all doctors are called Junior until they become consultants. I was also told it takes longer for British doctors to train than those in other countries.
June 26, 2023
MaybeâŠjust maybe they donât want us to have doctors?
Has anything we have seen in the past 30 years or so convinced us otherwise?
Especially during the total closure of our paid for âhealth serviceâ??
See how they are controlling our access even to medicines previously bought in a chemists shop without an inquest. All the rubbish about âaddictionâ ( like they care??) and âresistanceâ(rot).
For our own good?
All they are after is TOTAL RESOURCE CONTROL.
They are not good shepherds.
They are the wolves.
June 26, 2023
The bean counters at No10 have determined that its cheaper to import EVERYTHING
June 26, 2023
+++
Have you done your update yet today?
Mahyar Tousi reckons that the govt. has upped the estimated cost per day from ÂŁ6m to..
ÂŁ30m!!
Can that be true?
June 26, 2023
Barclay has no budget available perhaps but he could nominate all junior doctors, at least those in London and so near enough, for House of Lords membership. We might even see an improvement in legislation as a result.
Surely the NHS could assume responsibility for the student debt in return for doctors signing up to work for it for say five years or more?
June 26, 2023
I’m more interested in how UK student loans board gets the 9% graduate tax from those high earners in Australia and NZ we keep being told about.
June 26, 2023
Spot on Lifelogic. My Junior Doctor son after 6 years at Cambridge and two years working in a busy London hospital working unbelievably unsociable long hours for little reward is leaving the profession as he cannot afford to carry on living in London otherwise. Sadly many of his peers are doing likewise. Morale is very low and this Governments attitude towards them is making them feel even more undervalued than they do already.
Did some research yesterday, MPs have received a 42.7% salary increase since 2008, Junior Doctors have seen a cut of 25%. Thatâs on top of MPs having a plush London apartment paid for by the taxpayer with council tax and heating thrown in whereas Junior Doctors even have to fork out for their own stethoscopes. Apparently our greedy MPs also get an extra ÂŁ9,000 a year âallowanceâ for each child to help with London living costs. I know where I would rather see my taxes go and it isnât into to a bunch of self serving, mostly useless MPs.
Reply Your pay figures are wrong, confusing real terms and cash. MPs do not get a plush London apartment as their main home. They get expenses to stay in London where their home is in the constituency. Some rent a bedsit or small one bed, some stay in a hotel on qualifying nights. I bought my own flat.
June 26, 2023
So Mark Carney (another over paid dope, pusher of QE (currency debasement) and the net zero lunacy blames Brexit for inflation. The blame lies mainly entirely with you, Andrew Bailey, Sunak and the BoE mate. Brexit has almost nothing to do with it and we do not even have a real & sensible Brexit yet anyway – thanks to remoaners like himself. Carney read PPE Oxon needless to say.
June 26, 2023
Lifelogic,
Three in a row. A PPE reference and Ashley before you says âtip down the drainâ.
June 26, 2023
Tip not piss!
June 26, 2023
LL,
Yes, a bowdlerised version of your catch phrase.
He also echoes your view about doctors paying âfour timesâ the interest.
June 26, 2023
So Brexitâs not to blame. And Brexit hasnât happened. Logic isnât you Brexitersâs strong point is it?
June 26, 2023
It’s perfectly good logic. If Brexit hasn’t happened, then Brexit cannot possibly be to blame.
June 26, 2023
Brexit in name only.
June 26, 2023
We are out but are not asserting our independence in the interest of the British people. We are however, still doing a whole lot better than the EU, which is in its death throes.
You Remainers are not what you would call âintellectually agileâ are you?
June 26, 2023
I said âBrexit has âalmostâ nothing to do with it and we do not even have a âreal & sensibleâ Brexit yet anyway. So nothing wrong with the logic at all!
June 26, 2023
France and Germany have announced that they want the EU veto to be ended this year. That is an enormous power grab.
We might not yet be free, but we are no longer shackled.
Miller incorrectly denied that 70% supported Brexit in a nationwide poll.
Bet itâs more once they read the headlines.
June 26, 2023
Brexit almost nothing to do with it he said, not Brexit’s not to blame.
1% Brexit, 99% bad government would be about my assessment.
June 26, 2023
Rishi acts like he has just come into government rather than been in charge of the finances for the last 3 years. It’s mostly his and before him Osborne’s fault that we are where we are with public services. You can’t keep expecting people to work everyday and get poorer. Now it seems they are ignoring the wage review councils. Never happens with MP’s pay does it?
June 26, 2023
Absolutely right, LL
June 26, 2023
Dear Kemi
You’ve sacrificed your principles and this nation down the river for a job in government.
The Climate change and NZ agenda is Marxism in all but name. Please confirm this through the issuance of a public statement
Yours
John Redwood
June 26, 2023
Work for yourself by all means Dom. Kemi simply does not have the wherewithall. Have you thought about that?
June 26, 2023
Good try Sir JR.
You could have just said ‘stop believing the climate change nonsense’
June 26, 2023
following rather than believing I feel. Going along t get along
June 26, 2023
The first leader of the opposition has maybe been promised to give Starmer an easy ride right off the bat.
June 26, 2023
But we know that the mad group think (& globalism) of our almost entirely scientifically illiterate MPs means that over 95% of them are either “believers” in this religion or vote for it as they get paid “consultancy” fees, party donations or have vested interest in the green “grant farming” industries. Only a handful did not vote for the Miliband’s moronic Climate Change Act and May’s appalling “Net Zero” was nodded through without even a vote.
A delay or pause is surely better than nothing!
June 26, 2023
âŠ.and lets not forget that the policy of ânet-zeroâ isnât to satisfy the voting majority of the UK, its to satisfy the minority and the United Nations bodies
June 27, 2023
Dis United Nations….a big boys Masons?
June 26, 2023
Even the “Science” Minister has a Geography Degree which hardly counts! Look are what the dire Net Zero Theresa May gave us with her Geography degree!
June 26, 2023
Not just “overzealous” but bonkers, insane, totally deluded, completely irrational, anti-scientific, dangerous, economic and environmental insanity.
I just listened again to the old Nigel Farage: I despise what the Conservatives have done to Britain video – about the time of the Truss/Sunak election – he was right on every issue.
June 26, 2023
+100
It is all deception and corporate greed.
Kill cows because of non bl**dy existent methane yet destroy the rainforests for soy bean production using incredible amounts of water.
When they come for our water it wonât be because there is a global shortage âŠthey will just want it to water their soy bean plants.
So they can sell the beans back to us as fake cow!
And apparently in The Netherlands they are putting in place a plan to virtually negate home ownership.
June 26, 2023
Sir Nigel was and continues to be right in the face of obstructive, anti democratic, unpatriotic legacy party fools.
Whenever the legacies agree on anything like mass illegal and legal immigration, woke/political correct ideology, high taxation, more welfare, promoting minority issues and banning free speech through so called “equality laws” we know they are wrong. It’s time for more referendums so the people can instruct our stupid class in Westminster on what WE WANT. NOT THEM. WE DO KNOW BETTER. Lets start with the repeal of the Climate Change Act and net stupid. We can’t afford the bills, the manufacturing job losses and tax receipts as a result of these own goals. For what? To export manufacturing, our CO2 footprint, to import it back with more CO2 via dirty diesel powered ships?
June 26, 2023
Reply to letter:-
Dear John
Sorry, I don’t decide anything on policy.
Please contact Graham Stuart, Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero. Or better still, Chris Stark, Chief Executive of the Climate Change Committee.
Best wishes,
Kemi
June 26, 2023
They don’t decide anything on policy either. Policy is decided by the UN/EU/WEF – all safely immune from what passes for democracy.
June 26, 2023
Donna – Certainly seems that way!
Apparently, if Starmer gets in at the next election, Klaus Shwaabâs wannabe successor, one Tony Blair, might return to main stream politics.
June 26, 2023
does anybody mention the word democracy anymore?
June 26, 2023
“Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero” is surely self contradictory drivel just like “Minister for Women and Equality” or as Ms Cresida Dick put it “We want to recruit the best of the best for the Met and for it to reflect London’s diversity” – mathematically you clearly cannot do both dear! It would be a one in a trillion+ chance if the best of the best just happened to also reflect London’s diversity!
June 26, 2023
@Lifelogic +1 A bit like some people calling those that have stolen power a Conservative Government and the Conservative Party letting them get away with it. Any one with a conservative nature/view will get the blame for all this failure, and the very concept will get lost in history.
Didnât we as taxpayers expect our money would be spent on achieving the best of the best were ever it went? Logic and Common Sense is lacking in those that have high-jacked authority way above above their own mental capacity.
June 26, 2023
Good letter Sir John. It lays out what most of us would regard as the truth. Sadly the new religion of climate change and net zero have different truths, far removed from reality.
June 26, 2023
……………………….but it’s their truths………………..
June 26, 2023
I just hope that your relentless efforts come to fruition and that you are joined by like minded colleagues. For the thought of a Labour administration is beyond the pale.
June 26, 2023
Sir John
I agree with the points you make in your letter.
I would also add that, with the world in such a perilous place at this time, it is necessary for us to keep our heavy industries open. I am sure that, as we get sucked further and further in to conflicts as each day passes, so we need facilities such as steelmakers, ship builders not to mention more home grown food. We need our own power and energy so we’re not reliant on another country for it.
Net zero will leave us as sitting ducks unless we stop the madness now. Net Zero is a dereliction of the first duty of government, namely to protect it’s homelands and it’s people.
June 26, 2023
I agree, Sir J, we need to get rid of EU product specifications, eg. power of vacuum cleaners. The rest of the world may not want low power vacuum cleaners (I don’t!) as it takes the same power in the long run when you vacuum for 40 minutes with a low power vacuum instead of 20 minutes with a high powered one. Manufacturers will still produce low powered ones if there is market demand.
June 26, 2023
@Shirley+M your low powered vacuum cleaner is only half as good, so it has to work more than twice as hard and twice as long â so it gets to consumes more energy. That means we get to NetZero quicker in the Boris Raceđ. Common sense and logic wasnât around when some where indoctrinated through the education system. That’s the new ‘Blob’ discipline brought to you by an emancipated government lead by the unelected and unaccountable. (sarc)
June 26, 2023
Letter from the Business Secretary to Sir John:
Dear Sir John
Thank you for your letter and the very interesting proposals you outlined. I have passed it to my Permanent Secretary for review.
It’s been filed in the usual place.
Kind regards
June 26, 2023
This was printed in the Telegraph this weekend: “Households will pay a ÂŁ170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of âslylyâ shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
The cost of the levies was shifted from consumer bills to be funded instead by the Government, following a year-long campaign by energy firms and MPs amid spiraling gas, electricity and food prices last year.
It will again be imposed on consumers, although there has been no formal announcement. ”
More confirmation, if any were necessary, that this government is working against tghe interests of those whom they purport to serve. Any MP who does not oppose these actions is complicit and should lose their seat. In fact, we need a thorough clean out of the Augean stable which is the House of Commons.
June 26, 2023
Appealing to people like Kemi the same as clutching at straws – you’re wasting your time
June 26, 2023
Sir John knows. His party left him, like us, a long time ago. It’s quite sad really that our host retains his personal qualities and integrity in what must be hugely frustrating policy and ideological differences. He has little to no influence, so understands how we feel with none. He also knows his party has gone.
June 26, 2023
As Peter Woood has said above : Why can’t ministers work these issues out for themselves ?
The problem and the solutions are obvious but nobody does anything to sort them.
I can think of only three reasons :
1. The ministers are all signed up Greenies who believe in all this Green Crap
2. The Civil service are all signed up Greenies and the ministers across almost all the relevant departments are too weak or ineffective to impose their will on the department, perhaps for fear of being accused of bullying ?
3. The ministers have been given dodgy polling information that shows that the green policies over cars, heat pumps etc are popular with voters.
No 2 seems the most likely and I suspect the problem stems from the very top of government where Sunak and Hunt seems happy to tow the establishment line on everything, especially the economy, whatever cost to voters, even when an election is looming ever closer.
June 26, 2023
When Left moves Right ( Blair)
And Right moves Left ( Major, Cameron, May)
You get corporatism = a toxic mixture of right-wing corporate power, socialist totalitarianism and state power.
It trashes individualism, families, neighbourhoods, personal enterprise, the nation state and parliament.
I suppose some might call it communism or the other one ( that we canât mention).
It has happened before.
Politics and history ( as taught) are just diversionary magic lantern shows to fox us!
June 26, 2023
Cuibono – spot on!
June 26, 2023
In the media yesterday – Jeremy Hunt is quoted as saying austerity necessary even if it has to be forced.
Sir Jake Berry. âAndrew Bailey is pursuing what I call blobonomics, which is the sort of flawed economic principles of the Treasury. And I think the problem he has is that every prediction that is being made is wrong.â
Then – âsome MPs warning that changing the leadership at the Bank would further destabilise Britainâs financial reputation in a period of turmoil.â – isnât the over-riding problem though out UK. MPâs know things are wrong, very wrong, yet they also know to raise their heads above the parapet might cause an election, an election were they could loose their cushy do nothing position.
June 26, 2023
@Ian B – correction ‘isnât that over-riding problem though out UK’
June 26, 2023
Ian B
One gets the feeling when people like Hunt make those comments that :
a) they are really removed from reality and the consequences for the ‘little people’
b) he is prepared to go for the economic nuclear option and save face rather than do a U-Turn.
June 26, 2023
She does not appear to have replied perhaps because she suffers collective responsibility, the classic way of closing down original thinking and or spreading the blame. Face it SJR , from the day of the illigitimate coupe the blob has been in charge and will be until they are all lined up against the wall of a general election. Labour are even more beholden to the blob so no lifeboat there. The UK is in need of that Damacene moment of realisation that 550 of you in the Commons need to be replaced.
June 26, 2023
Sir John
Keep up the very ‘good’ work, it is nice to know and feel that some MP’s are still serving their electorate, their constituency and the Country, and not the Universal Socialist Party(Uni Party) in acted by the âBlobâ
June 26, 2023
Good luck with that. I guess we know what the answer her Civil Servants will allow her to give.
And in other news I see public sector workers are going to be offered a âreducedâ increase in pay. Why not reduce their numbers, get more efficiency/output enabling the âpotâ to be shared with fewer people better rewarded,
Could even help with inflation?
Anyone in government understand the economics of that
June 26, 2023
I thought Ms Badenoch was supposed to be one of the more independent thinkers among the leadership candidates, so l am very disappointed that it is necessary for you to write to her in these terms.
Please let us know if, and how, she replies.
June 26, 2023
Indeed and she read Computer Systems Engineering albeit only at the University of Sussex but better than PPE Oxon!
June 26, 2023
It would be political suicide for her to go against net zero or do anything to support Brexit. I do applaud you for trying but I donât expect her to reply as she is another WEF sellout.
June 26, 2023
Agree â we need the mass resignation of every traditional & true Tory MP âŠwe need to reawaken the passion in politics âŠtoday
June 26, 2023
Unfortunately ‘Common Sense’ is clearly something that eludes a number of the clowns that we have in government at present.
June 26, 2023
@James1 – it is said quiet rightly that âCommon Senseâ has been driven from the UK psyche, from its education system and from its politics.
June 26, 2023
Ashley
I think the conservatves are merely the tool via which outside forces exert their power. It was much easier for them when we were in the EU because Parliament was emasculated and all decisions were taken by civil servants in Brussels plus any organisation that was strong enough to exert pressure. The electorate and democracy were consigned to history. Thanks to Cameron’s error of judgement the electorate spoke in 2016. Then the real battle began, do not delude yourselves, it is ongoing and the appalling performance and path of our current government is hit you in the face evidence. The UK’s current state is a self inflicted wound. For me the only solution is to put, those who gave us Brexit, in power via the electorate, which effectively means Reform. Farage was right in the past and even more so today.
June 26, 2023
@agricola +1 as @james1 above âCommon Senseâ is being denied
June 26, 2023
Correct
June 26, 2023
@ Agriola: “Farage was right in the past and even more so today.”
Interesting. Farage wants to have proportional representation in elections.
So you want that as well?
June 26, 2023
Having lived and worked in Italy many years ago Peter, PR would certainly not be my first choice for stable government. I can’t say I’m happy with the current choice of ‘electable’ Parties because at the moment they all seem to have quite similar policies in practice. On balance, I’d rather wait for either Reform to gather more support or the Conservatives to actually find their way back home.
June 26, 2023
Nigel is a practical politician :
He knows that there is zero chance of a new party making progress towards government under our current electoral system. He proved it with UKIP, which came nowhere in general elections but won the most seats in the European Parliamentary election run under PR.
However, judging by what has happened in various European countries, like Italy and Germany, for example, you either get very unstable government or a small party like the German FDP in coalition with one main party or the other for decades, and nothing much changes.
In the UK, neither of the main parties will introduce PR because they know they will never win a clear majority again.
All we can do is hope and pray that the Conservatives realise the error of their ways and abandon the whole Green Crap agenda and go back to proper Conservative policies, starting with sound money and low taxes.
In the meantime, it probably doesn’t matter very much which party wins the next election. Things will be a bit worse under Labour but the hold the establishment now has over monetary policy will stop them spending too much. The thought of Starmer and (deputy Ed)running the country is not a pleasant one !
June 26, 2023
Agricola
You are very likely correct. UK Column had a chart on their website a couple of years showing the governing hierarchy⊠governments were about third from the top.
June 26, 2023
Excellent letter SirJ, could you also ask the business secretary why the banking sector has tanked for the past two months and is tanking today on the stock exchange wiping billions of their value and no media outlet is reporting the data âŠ.This under the stewardship of the Sunak PM, maybe heâs re-established the No10 disinformation unit
June 26, 2023
Don’t see why the banks are tanking – they are getting a windfall for no effort, just like the oil and gas producers. There is usually a reason for this kind of thing – i.e. the big boys sell out to shake out the minnows and then buy back at cheap prices.
June 26, 2023
The banks share-price is a barometer of the financial health of the nation, they foretell of mortgage arrears, business closures and unemployment, and in the long term a labour government, cost of net-zero, and uncertainty of the single market and scottish home rule âŠ.they donât see any profit in UK Plc
June 26, 2023
Didnât Kemi Badenoch attend the WEF conference in Davos earlier this year, the conference where Sir Keir Starmer said he preferred Davos to Westminster?
June 26, 2023
eyes on the swinging pocket watch on a chain repeat after me ‘net zero good, CO2 bad, net zero good, CO2 bad’.
June 26, 2023
In the UK all offerings of any form of financial services(mortgages, investments and so on) the recipient is asked to sign that they agree and understand that interests rates âcan go up as well as downâ(or words to that effect).
Suprised, or an expectation of bail outs seems a bit odd.
There should be serious indignation that your elected Government the power behind the Bank of England, its management. The same Conservative Government that say the BoE is independent but they âgiveâ the BoE tax payer money to cover their(BoE) loses. The same Conservative Government that hires and fires the BoEâs leadership and defines its aims and direction â then refuses to manage outcomes.
There should be serious indignation that the Conservative Party after 13 years of success at the poles allows it appointed MPâs to go rogue and appoint a Socialist Government. That is why we get what we get, the Conservative Party has given up, it is now part of the Uni-Party. The Conservative Party for some time now has banked on the alternatives being âworseâ. Worse than what? The leadership in all the political groupings in the HoC are all signed up members of the WEF aligned Universal Socialist Party. That is 100% the opposite of Conservatism, freedom, the free market and entrepreneurial spirit. Their party membership may stand for certain views but their leadership has brought the HoC, Democracy into the gutter.
At the next GE we will all be asked by our local candidates to vote for one view, direction or other. All very noble, honest and inspiring. The when they get to Parliament their leadership will point them in the direction of not rocking the âboatâ that they have to comply with âblobonomicsâ or risk isolation and get briefed against. So you donât get to empower your MP, or pay for an elected Parliament a Government to work for the UK, you get to vote for ⊠âwell nothingâ it has no value
You may as well vote for someone that identifies as a âDuckâ, it makes more sense
June 26, 2023
All politicians have been allowing anti-business, anti-capitalist critiques for years and years now. Co-operatives are better, they say; employee ownership is better. Well, come on then, children of the future, Blair’s education, education, education generation, where are these shared ownership businesses you’re all supposed to be creating on equal footing, sharing fairly between you all? They don’t appear by magic. Levelling down hasn’t worked out in State education; if your government spent a tenth on the top 5% that they spend on the bottom 10%, we would be moving forward. Instead, we’re all stagnating paying for thousands of kids, whose parents can’t be bothered to take them to school, taxis every day just to get them in the building.
Families of entrepreneurs – so battered by taxes, with more being promised, and state control over the years no longer able to set their own pay policies and have to jump through hoops to tell someone they’re not performing well, and don’t bother trying to remove a bad egg – these kids no longer want to follow their parents into creating or keeping on business.
I don’t care if you don’t believe me or want to listen to me. When our generation retires, and much more of Labour’s promised punishment for us, it will be sooner rather than later; it will all finally blow.
June 27, 2023
Many in our generation have already retired: on top of all the other lunacy we’ve had from the Not-a-Conservative-Government for the past 13 years (and Blair/Brown beforehand), the moronic lockdowns and two years of deliberately wrecking the economy finally pushed them into downing tools and opting for a quiet life.
Now we get Ministers imploring them to go back to work – to pay the inflated taxes they’ve imposed to pay for the madness they created and put up with the woke lunacy in the workplace – and guess what, most have ignored them.
From personal experience, it’s quite satisfying living a less stressful life and depriving the Blue-Green-Socialists of as much of my money as I legally can.
June 26, 2023
âOnly the UK is proposing such an early write off [ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars] and closure of so many factories with loss of jobs.â
The UK is the only country in the world proposing such a total ban. The EU is not proposing ANY ban at all, just that new ices must use e-fuels by 2035.
In fact any ice can be relatively easily converted to e-fuels and a far more sensible way forward would be to legislate for new and existing ices to convert to compressed natural gas (CNG/methane) to reduce emissions followed by green natural gas to be finally CO2 neutral rather than expensive, impractical and dangerous bevs.
June 26, 2023
Why do we always have to be seen as the leader.
Take German car industry, not rolling over but coming up with synthetic fuel to replace petrol and diesel it not a new idea but if taken up it will save the car industry. As anyone seen the video on twitter 1000s of EVs dumped in fields as the manufacturers take advantage of all the subsidies in China. Is it a fake report or for real?
June 26, 2023
âCo operate with the Energy department in expanding UK supplies of cheap reliable energy. You cannot have a successful industrial strategy with dear power, unreliable power and import dependence.â
Yesterday the PM told the BBC :
âInflation is the enemyâŠ..there is no overnight fix [to our existing problems]âŠâ
The primary cause of inflation and hence the âenemyâ is the enormous cost of Net Zero and there is an overnight fix. It is to refute the false CAGW religious extremism for which there is no current, historical, experimental or theoretical evidence and repeal the CCA, cancel the Net Zero Strategy â Build Back Greener and revert to a sensible energy policy as followed by those countries not in recession and heading for economic disaster.
June 26, 2023
It’s a shame that such decisions are no longer made by our own elected officials.
Net-zero is like a large rumbling train, gather speed, unable to stop until everything hits the buffers, by which time it will be too late to save anything!
June 26, 2023
The advice to the Business Secretary is sound but what are the chances of it being adopted by her Department ?. The trouble is in the centre ; I doubt that Sunak and Hunt will take heed .
June 26, 2023
âCo operate with the Energy department in expanding UK supplies of cheap reliable energy. You cannot have a successful industrial strategy with dear power, unreliable power and import dependence.â
The PM is keen for maths to be taught in schools until 18.
I wish he, the CCC, DES&NZ, Ofgem and a majority of MPs had learned at school that N x 0 = 0.
If the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining then simply building multiple times the current the capacity of wind turbines and solar panels will not produce any significant increases of energy during those periods.
Downloading data for demand and wind and solar power from the Gridwatch website for 2022, then multiplying the wind and solar capacity as proposed by Sir Keir Starmer to make us a âclean energy superpower by 2030â I find that renewable power is so low that a high 47 GW of demand will be short of power by an enormous 42 GW when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining.
How do MPs propose to cover this missing 42 GW?
Just close down the country and call it an environmental lockdown necessary to save the planet?
June 26, 2023
Is it just rumour on conjecture when all the chattering class sees it . Or has this Conservative Government of 13 years imported enough buckets of sand into #10 to bury their heads in?
Over at Conservative Home
âAs Karen Ward, a member of his advisory council, has put it, the Bank of England â deprived as its Monetary Policy Committee is of any monetarists â âhas been too hesitantâ when it comes to interest rate rises. It might be painful, but it isnât painful enough: companies and workers donât yet feel sufficiently nervous about the future. Bailey therefore has no choice but to âcreate a recessionâ.
âYet any subsidy program that blunts the pain of rate rises too much is self-defeating. In the words of John Major, âif the policy isnât hurting, it isnât workingâ. We need unemployment to be rising, businesses to go bust, and homes to repossessed. It is hardly the news any politician wants to hear on the eve of an election year.
https://conservativehome.com/2023/06/22/inflation-and-mortgage-rates-sunak-and-hunt-should-tell-the-terrible-truth-that-if-the-policy-isnt-hurting-it-isnt-working/
âSunak needs to bite the bullet and get ready to junk his inflation pledge if the numbers do not improve. Sacking Bailey would be useful sign that he takes the mission seriously, even if it skates a little too close to last yearâs chaos. But there is no point in denying reality. A bitter pill needs swallowing.
âcreate a recessionâ?
June 26, 2023
A very good and well articulated letter to the Business Secretary. I hope very much that the government takes your recommendations onboard and acts swiftly to deprioritise net zero and instead focus on economic fundamentals.
Good work.
David Bunney
June 26, 2023
Great letter but needs the signatures of many M.P.s to put some real pressure on (and a copy to Sunak).
June 26, 2023
Off Topic: One of the simplest wins of Brexit was to ban the export of live animals and strengthen animal welfare standards which we apparently couldn’t do while in the EU. This has broad cross-party and public support. This was in the Conservative 2019 manifesto and the government introduced a bill to do this under Boris as PM in May 2021. In May 2023 under Sunak the government totally abandoned this bill before it became law. One can only assume Sunak firstly doesn’t feel bound by manifesto commitments and secondly wants to stay aligned with the EU. Pathetic.
June 26, 2023
The UK is losing high energy intensive industries not only because of high carbon taxes but , primarily, because the cost of power in the UK is very high by comparison with our industrial competitors. For instance UK electricity costs are some 50% higher than in Europe, why ?
June 26, 2023
Because May agreed ‘No competitive advantages,’ so disadvantages are fine.
June 26, 2023
Your first sentence states ‘The UK government rightly wants to grow the economy and cut inflation’ – in my view these objectives need to be pursued within a framework of strengthening the UK’s resilience to cope with events which occur outside the UK ie we need to solve more of our problems ourselves and rely less on solutions from other countries – this approach would, I believe, result in changes to the way in which the government is presently approaching, for example, the sourcing of nuclear small modular reactors, which we are told is to be via tendering rather than developing a UK national champion.
June 26, 2023
I see Scientists (who must be right) are predicting a massive volcanic eruption of âEurope supervolcano on brink of first eruption since 1538 sparking global winter fearâ.
Looks like the end of the Naples shoe trade and possibly also the end of âglobal warmingâ.
Is the U.K. prepared for a âglobal winterâ – you know – dark and cold and hard to feed animals or grow crops?
Has Kemi read the MSM and does she think the turbines will do the job?
June 26, 2023
The original paper is nature.com 09/06/2033 âPotential for rupture before eruption at Campi Flegrei Caldera, Southern Italyâ, C.R.J. Kilburn et al.,, Communications Earth & Environment, 4, 190.
The three possible outcomes are described near the end of the âResultsâ chapter in a paragraph starting with âIn 2020, the crust entered the inelastic regime of deformation âŠâ.
People interested should read the three potential outcomes and see whether even the more brutal one â3/ Uplift continues until the upper crust breaks completelyâ is likely to bring âa global winterâ.
June 26, 2023
Good letter, Sir John, but should it really be necessary to state the obvious to the Business Minister? We have a PM & a Chancellor who have both said they would accept a recession to curb inflation. Everything they do seems to be designed to squeeze people’s incomes & make life harder. What do they do all day? Do they never think, let’s get the cost of government down significantly so there is room for tax cuts to encourage people & lift the economy? Why do they not challenge Net Zero? Have either of them read a book showing net zero is nonsense? Cheap reliable energy is the basis for a successful modern economy, how can they not see that?
June 26, 2023
Sir John:
You are evidently a true Conservative, so I do not know why you waste your time with this shower of WEF stooges.
One of the very first things Boris did on becoming PM (apart from selling Northern Ireland to the EU) was to embrace the Green madness, and announce the ban on the sale of ICE cars from 2030, five years earlier than even the EU planned to do, and have now abandoned.
People in the know said that Germany would never permit the EU to do this, and they were right. But what was Boris’s excuse? Was it just an off the cuff example of greenwashing, carried out without any planning or cost/benefit analysis? Why of course it was.
Boris is not a serious man. He was not a serious politician and he was not a serious PM. That is what brought him down. You cannot announce a lockdown for the country and continue to have “morale boosting” drinks parties at Number Ten. It is basic leadership, and it was the end of him. If he had been a Conservative I would have felt sorry for him. As it was, it was the end of a bluffer who wasted an 80 seat majority.
The Conservatives will be out of power for years, but since they were not in any particular way Conservative, who will miss them?
June 26, 2023
Of course you are right SJ and I have little doubt that the Minister accepts all that you say.
However, as appears to be the case with this government, Ministers are no longer in control of their respective departments nor their policies so any thoughts of u-turning are squashed by unelected officialdom. No matter such changes would improve our economy and be a boost to the re-election potential of this pseudo-conservative government because any change to existing policy would show a “loss of face” and that is a fate worse than death within those circles.
Odd that protocol is so similar to that of the officials within the CCP and EU too and neither of those can be called conservatives in any sense of the word.
June 26, 2023
Sir John, I’ve just been watching Kemi Badenoch give evidence to the European Scrutiny Committee.
During which she said that she is an engineer not a lawyer, and not an arsonist – from 11:29:24 here:
https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/270bcf4b-7ee7-49d8-a29b-83c51f45a0fc#player-tabs
So you may even get a sensible reply to at least some of your points.
I may be a bit biased because I agree with her over how to deal with the laws we got from the EU:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2023/06/21/regulating-artificial-intelligence/#comment-1395007
“But we donât have to immediately and indiscriminately dump all the UK laws which originated from the EU …”
June 26, 2023
This, as with yesterday’s commentary, confirms the strength of Sir John as compromiser and concessioniser right at the start.
We need more than that, we need determination to protect all our lifestyles and reject what is wrong, not just a little bit of it, or just slow it down.
June 26, 2023
Badenoch is a disappointment. Perhaps she’s biding her time, playing the long game, but what’s needed now is people who stand up in a time of need, as JR is doing – and has always done. However, the impotence of a backbench MP is palpable – except, of course, to bring about a change of leadership.
And we’ve seen so many politicians pretending to one thing to get elected, then showing their true colours, so Badenoch really needs to show some consistency in her views and actions if she is to be taken seriously in future.
Anything good she might do now would be for the country’s sake, because the Conservative Party is done for. There is no policy change that would persuade me to vote for Sunak/Hunt – especially one that comes so close to a GE, since any such policy can be conveniently discarded once it has garnered votes from the gullible.
June 26, 2023
Another damning report from Net Zero Watch. But have no fear our leaders are not paying attention
Professor Hughesâ thoughts are set out in a new article at Net Zero Watch: Wind costs will remain high
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/06/26/wind-isnt-working/
June 26, 2023
+1
June 26, 2023
What on earth is the foreign secretary making speeches in the House about Russia for why can’t he just mind his own business for a change.
I don’t see the foreign ministers of Belgium or the Nethetlands or any of our other neighbouring countries making speeches about Russia. ‘Cracks starting to appear’ he says jeez there’s no end to it – he should know that we are in a different place now 2023 with thousands of food banks up and down the country.
June 26, 2023
The country is being run by the blob not by politicians. Writing to senior politicians is a complete waste of time. None of the complaints processes in the public sector work. None of the political oversight works.
And the difference between our main parties is marginal and unlikely to achieve anything as the blob will interpret as they see fit.
June 26, 2023
Home Office â 25 June 2023
Illegal Immigrants â 163
Boats â 4
June 26, 2023
Fear of recession. It might not be in the media you read but it has been widely discussed (FT, 22/06/2023 âUK bank shares fall as recession fears growâ; some investment âgurusâ (TheMotleyFool) even advising to buy Barclays shares, 21/06/2023; FT, 23/06/2023 âGlobal stocks cap worst week since March as data fuel recession fearâ).
It has been more or less on the news since at least middle of last year, with recrudescence of warnings since January 2023:
12/05/2022 âCity bosses warn of UK recession this yearâ, ft.com
02/01/2023 âUS and UK poised to fall into recessionâ, ft.com.
16/01/2023 âRecession in 2023? That depends where you are in the worldâ.
June 26, 2023
Pothole damage is twice as bad with electric cars compared to petrol. Just saying Kemi.
June 26, 2023
In my neighbour its impossible to find a road âwithoutâ a pothole âŠand I donât live in Wales were theyâve curtailed all pothole repairs
June 26, 2023
Correction â all the new cycle-lanes are clear of potholes (and bicycles)
June 27, 2023
well you don’t want mass prosecutions from pedestrians, joggers using the cycle lanes tripping up and going to A&E, do you!
June 27, 2023
All good stuff. The non-production of petrol/diesel cars from 2030 needs emphasising at all times. Keep the heat on as this is a ridiculous idea. We are a small contributor to the CO emissions debate and should not make ourselves look stupid by abiding by strict rules that will hurt our economy and workforce. This has happened with the EU and look where it got us? Farming needs watching with fertilisers as we need to get back to natural farming without pesticides. I think people should read old books on herbs and flowers and how they contribute to stopping pests and illnesses. Phil Drabble was one of the earliest farming gurus in my life and I still look back on him with reverence for his views. Everything has been jazzed up these days to try to take on board the younger generations but it is a mistake and hard graft and how it was done in the ‘olden days’ would go down better for our re-entry to sovereign stateship.