Author: johnredwood

The latest August figures for the sales of battery cars in Europe show a big drop of 44%. The market share of battery cars has shrunk to just 14% with a fifth of those who bought one saying they may well switch back to petrol or diesel. The EU, like the U.K. was assuming battery cars would now be approaching a quarter of the market , with complete phase out of new petrol and diesel 2030 to 2035.

As some of us have been warning for years too many of us think battery cars are too dear, their range too limited, their recharging too difficult and their future likely to include new taxes to replace lost fuel duty. The second hand values are often poor causing depreciation problems for those financing peoples purchases. Hire companies report lack of demand with Hertz cutting back on its use of EVs.

The EU and the U.K. need to think again about their manic policy of ending their successful petrol and diesel car industries before there is a dominant market for battery cars and before the U.K./ European industry  can make affordable ones to compete with the much cheaper Chinese products.The EU and US have ironically decided to impose heavy tariffs to try to stop people buying affordable Chinese vehicles, whilst the U.K. with its import everything government  mentality welcomes cheap Chinese cars in to knock out our home manufacturers.

These latest figures show an urgent need to change policy and stop the attempted demolition of the existing vehicle industry.

The Treasury have drawn attention to the £20 bn black hole in national finances thanks to the collapse of public sector productivity this decade. You would have thought every new MP would want to show how they can help do more with less to start the fight back for higher productivity and better value for money. Not so in Wokingham.

The new Lib Dem MP has advertised under a Lib Dem logo five well paid posts to do his job for him. I assume these are all taxpayer paid Parliamentary staff, yet they go out under the Lib Dem logo. One of the posts is for a “Campaigns Organiser and Communications Officer “ to “ work for Wokingham Liberal Democrats organising campaigns and volunteers for the MP and local elections and for the MP’s Parliamentary office on communications on constituency non party  political matters.” Surely such a post should be a Lib Dem volunteer or party funded staffer if the MP can’t be bothered to do it himself?

He wants a speechwriter and drafter of Parliamentary amendments, questions and interventions. He needs a Chief of Staff to sign off constituents letters he cannot be bothered with, and to run the enlarged office. He also wants a Senior Caseworker and a Caseworker, more normal assistance.He  is offering a maximum combined salary of £214,401 with a salary of £36,744  up to £ 52 ,793 for each job depending on the post gradings.There will be other staff costs on top of the salaries. It sounds as if this will all be paid by the taxpayers.

As the MP he replaces, in the last published year 2022-23 my spend on office staff was £101 ,873. I employed two excellent people.
I did all my own research, wrote all my own speeches and my daily blog to communicate, drafted any bill amendments and questions, kept myself up to date with Parliament’s agenda and with my constituents. I did any local campaigning  myself alongside Councillors and volunteers. My two staff did a great job replying to constituents following discussion with me about the incoming  queries . They ran the Parliamentary diary and worked with local institutions and people over meeting arrangements and events. They followed up and resolved difficult cases with local and national government officials. I dealt with the Ministers and Councillors where necessary to try to get a good outcome.

I could not have found full time work for 5 staff and have no idea what I would have done with my time if someone was doing my research, identifying and running campaigns, communicating with press and public as well as doing all the casework and signing my letters for me. Surely we should expect more from an MP on a good salary. The productivity of the Wokingham MP office has just halved  at a time when everyone in the public sector should be striving to improve it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Lammy made his first Foreign Secretary speech at Kew yesterday telling us the overriding problem of our times is climate change. This is “the most profound and universal source of global disorder”. Recognising many of us might think the wars in Ukraine or Gaza, or the terrorist attacks against shipping might be important , he went on “The threat may not feel as urgent as a terrorist or imperialist autocrat. But it is more fundamental”.  Pandemics are apparently more likely if it gets warmer. All extreme weather of whatever kind is down to CO2.

There was no evidence to back any of this up. There was no learned statement of where he thinks the world is in getting to the point where CO 2 starts to reduce. There was praise for China’s renewables with no mention that they account for more than 3o times the amount of CO2 put out by the UK or that we assist them to do this by buying so many imports from them. There was  no analysis of why there had been plenty of climate change in the world before mankind arrived, and more again before mankind invented petrol cars and gas boilers.

He did tell us the IEA thinks the world will get to peak fossil fuel usage by the end of this decade. No great sense of urgency there then for most countries but no complaint from Mr Lammy about the big CO 2 producers who are increasing their output of what he sees as a devilish gas.

China, India and Russia are leading the way to more CO 2 this decade. Some think fossil fuel use will still rise after 2030 as emerging market countries continue to develop , drawing on more coal, gas and oil.

He had grand words for the need for the advanced world to do much more to help the emerging world go direct to renewables and electricity, missing out oil and gas based growth. Yet he also reminded us how many in low income countries still have no access to any electricity, and pointed out how much more grid will be needed before the renewables can be connected.

He recalled the promise oft repeated that the advanced countries would make at least $100 bn a year available to emerging economies for green matters. He was unable to tell us when and how that would happen.  Turning to the UK all he could pledge was a £900 m guarantee for the Asia Development Bank. He indicated support for the idea of increasing the capital of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development but did not mention any  Treasury approval to ship them some cash.

So David Lammy, who are you kidding? It is very unlikely the UK herself will be producing all carbon free electricity by 2030. It is a racing certainty the world’s use of fossil fuels and carbon output will continue to climb while he is foreign Secretary. His speech was empty of detail and free of any further UK financial commitment. I agree with him in not offering more cash.I would be happier if he made world peace and prosperity his mission rather than net zero, and took seriously the issues of Ukraine, Gaza and the growing restrictions on trade from tariffs, bans and windfall taxes.How much longer can senior members of the government deny the reality that they are not going to hit U.K. targets for net zero and that most of the rest of the world has no intention of closing down all its fossil fuel based activities. There is still no U.K. government estimate of the costs of all this.

If the Chancellor wanted to pay pensioners their winter fuel allowance she could do so. If she wanted to avoid the threatened tax attacks on enterprise, investment, home ownership and pension savings she could do so. The crocodile tears from the government that they do not want to do these things but have to owing to the budget situation are false.

If the Chancellor is bright and understands the OBR and Bank as she should she can see as I can see how you could make different choices, avoiding the unpleasant spending cuts and damaging tax rises. Finding £20 bn would easily fix it. So here are some of the ways she seems to be turning down.

1. Ring the Bank of England and tell them to stop selling bonds at huge losses and sending the bill to taxpayers. No other Central Bank is doing this and the Bank of England says it is not crucial to its monetary policy.

2. The main austerity check is the need to get public debt falling as a percentage of GDP by year 5.For some unknown reason they use public sector debt excluding the Bank of England. If they used the wider definition including the Bank of England, debt would be reduced by the huge cash payments the Treasury is currently making to the Bank, as that cash reappears as an asset at the Bank.

 

3. Recapture the £20 bn of public sector productivity lost since 2020. just stop external recruitment of admin, civil service and back up staff and run the numbers down by natural wastage.

 

4. Implement the excellent Labour slogan that if people can work they should work. Provide the support, training and incentives to get more people out of long term worklessness.

Taking the fuel payment away is a calculated  political decision. Letting a wide range of threats to tge self employed, to strivers, to savers and go investors worry people for 2 months before a budget is also a political choice. It is driving people abroad, leading people to sell assets, get out of being landlords and selling U.K. shares before the attacks materialise. The danger for the Chancellor is it may prove easier to undermine confidence and depress people than to pick them up again after a nasty budget.

Why did a MP earning a good six figure salary with an intelligent and capable wife need a rich man to buy clothes for them both?  Why when he accepts free clothes for his wife did he not automatically register the gift? He would of course have known of his wife’s good fortune.

Any MP knows that gifts and grants worth thousands of pounds all need to be registered promptly. It is not as if he forgot, as he registered his own gift of clothes. He decided a gift to his wife did not need the same prompt treatment, then his office decided rightly they did need to register this.

This is a bigger issue because we were promised greater transparency and honesty from the new government. Labour in Opposition were eternally vigilant for the slightest error or questionable judgement by Conservative Ministers and MPs . We were promised a new puritan era of government staying well within the tight rules. I remember being challenged because I had not declared an article I had written for the FT. They were so disappointed when I explained that I refused payment so there was nothing to declare.

The U.K. does not give the PM’s  wife a national role as First Lady with official engagements and an admin office to organise events. We have  a royal family to do that. Only occasionally does a PM’s wife accompany her husband when he has a work engagement. She is not the focus of attention and it would be a distraction if a PM ‘s wife wanted to make her fashion sense the talk of the journalists rather than the event they were attending. A PM ‘s wife can dress well from any store or mail order retailer at affordable prices and can wear suitable garments on more than one occasion. There is no need to rely on a donor for a fancy wardrobe. Mrs Starmer has her own senior role in the NHS paying her a salary.

This is one of those gifts that comes with a big political price.It jars with many voters when it is the background to taking away £300 of heating help for pensioners. Well paid Labour MPs charging taxpayers for energy bills on their second homes also sits uneasily with the present news.

It is difficult to comprehend the stupidity of this government. Dear energy and inflation helped bring down the last government. The Labour opposition hammered them for the rising prices, the impact on people’s budgets. They supported energy subsidies and wanted them to be bigger. Now they are in office they have presided over a 10% increase in managed fuel bill prices and taken away a crucial winter fuel grant from many low income pensioners. Their whole energy policy is based on pricing fossil fuel out of use.

They have put Miliband in charge of energy policy. He has set about destroying the U.K. oil, gas and residual coal industry. He is taking measures which will leave the U.K. more dependent on imports, more vulnerable to power cuts and facing the reality that more renewables with the  necessary fossil fuel back up will be dearer, not cheaper. He no longer promises the £300 off bills as more renewables come in that was offered in the election.

Labour has taken on the de industrialisation policies of the last government. It has dumped the softening of the policies when the past government re opened exploration and development licences for our own gas and oil. The last government was in favour of getting out our own metallurgical coal.It did heavily subsidise residential energy bills. It never considered taking fuel payments away from pensioners.

The public wanted change. I wanted a policy more directed to energy security and to affordable energy. Instead the new government has decided to be greener and nastier than the government they displaced, Taking away pensioner fuel payments after a big hike in rigged energy prices and against a background of overtaxed dear energy is a bad error. It antagonises many Labour voters and is opposed by energy and industrial Unions.

Woven into Labour’s broad message of change in the election was the roll out of a superior industrial strategy.We were told Labour would not accept the loss of jobs in steel despite large state subsidies, and would want a manufacturing revival.

Instead Labour has signed off the death of steel making in blast furnaces at Port Talbot and looks likely to do the same at Scunthorpe. Instead of it dismantling the penal taxes and carbon charges the EU and the last government imposed they are intensifying those. Like the last government they will pay large sums to subsidise some more steel recycling in the U.K. after a hiatus when we import all the lost steel from the closures. We are told we need to wait until next spring for a steel plan, carefully delayed until our present  steel making industry has been closed down.

We also wait for the general Industrial Strategy. Any worthwhile one has to start by addressing the huge extra costs U.K. industry has to pay for electricity and gas compared to the Chinese and US competitors. Much of this extra cost is the direct result of extra taxes, carbon prices and regulations, and the high cost of trying to replace much of our generating capacity with renewables.

The government should work hard to try to avoid a closure of the Grangemouth refinery. The U.K. does need to be able to produce its own petrol, diesel and other fractions of oil instead of turning all that productive activity over to imports.

We were promised in Labour’s  Manifesto a new era of transparency. The Labour leader came over as a virtuous puritan, out to clean the stables and run an austerity policy. Modest additions to spending would be precisely costed and specifically funded by a small tax rise here or a small spending cut there. It was not exciting or uplifting, but some people liked it whilst many others wanted to show their disapproval of the then government.

So what went wrong? Why are MPs and journalists told that they should not expect to know what is in the alleged £22 bn black hole we hear about continuously? Maybe one day the Treasury will allow us to peep, but not before the budget. We hear large uncosted and unfunded spending commitments being made as the government offers inflation busting pay awards to various public sector groups well above the pay inflation allowed for in the budget figures. Why is there no formal Treasury statement of cost and explanation of how it will paid for? Why is there no Office of Budget Responsibility forecast and commentary as promised? The government is busy breaking the new law it is bringing in to make an OBR assessment essential for such events.

Why have various senior civil servants turned up as senior advisers or. Ministers? What does that tell us about civil service impartiality? Why have donors turned up in jobs or with favoured passes and access?

Why are they agreeing to close down our primary steel making capacity before completing and publishing their steel strategy? What is the point of a strategy if you have no industry left?  How are they allowing in the budgets for future revenues for the accelerated decline of the oil and gas industry? This is  the industry  which pays several times as much tax per pound of profit as anything else?

All the government says about anything is that it is all a mess thanks to the previous government. It also complains about all of us, alleging there is a societal black hole. Government is about tackling the problems before you. Normal governments explain the issues and then set about supplying the remedies. When they announce increased spending they cost it, get it approved and explain how it is being paid for. Most leaders try to point the country to a better tomorrow  and take pride in what is working and is good. How much longer can this government keep up the bad mouthing of the country, the NHS, political groups they do not like, and the state of society?

 

I have long been asking why GDP per head is twice the EU level in the US. Those who want the U.K. to obey more EU laws and pay the EU more money never want to answer this or think it some fabricated Brexiteer question . Now Mr Draghi has written a long report saying that the EU this century has fallen badly behind. Its productivity is poor, its investment too small, its skew to making cars rather than digital products and services is impeding growth in real incomes and living standards.

Central to Mr Draghi’s case ( as mine) is the EU – just like the U.K. in and out of the EU – has gone for dear energy whilst the US and China have gone for cheaper. He says EU electricity costs 2-3 times US and gas is a knock out 4-5 times US. China goes for cheap coal. He sets out the large extra costs of the EU’s net zero policies which he supports.

So what are his remedies? He says the EU must impose more tariffs and the carbon border adjustment tax on imports to offset the advantage. That means higher prices for consumers. He says the EU must find 5% more of its GDP to invest every year. He says the EU must borrow more itself to pump prime the hundreds of billions of investment needed.

Germany and some other states are against the EU building up yet bigger debts. The U.K. by Brexit has avoided responsibility for its share of the Euro 800 bn they are already borrowing, dodging a Euro 120 bn bullet. The U.K. would be well advised to study Draghi’s analysis of EU poor performance and move our policy on energy closer to the US one, as more affordable energy is crucial to industrial success.

I went to Jon’s launch yesterday in London. His book makes a strong case for lower taxes, fewer areas run by government and less regulation. He condemned the attacks on free speech and increasingly intrusive rules and bans on motorists.

He started his talk by pointing out there are now 8 bn people alive. Over all the years of human history there have been 109 bn in total, now dead. Multi billion populations are very recent. The average age of death was 30 for all those dead, lowered in part by a much higher level of infant and child mortality. he argued 80 bn of those died of disease.The reason life expectancy has shot up so much is the huge advances in medical science with vaccines and antibiotics given us a much longer life. More people now die in older age of inflammatory conditions. Maybe medical science will make more breakthroughs there.

It is free enterprise that has taken scientific and technical advances and applied them to products that prolong our lives. It is that same combination that has given us the car, the plane, the digital Revolution, the food conservation and supply revolution.

The book shows how high living standards and faster growth go along with lower tax rates, controlled public spending and regulation limited to the most important. It is well worth a read. I do not agree with all its challenges to the much loved principle of free healthcare at the point of need or to some of welfare measures the U.K. has developed.