Getting there ... slowly - by Richard... Saturday, October 23, 2010

Getting there ... slowly - by Richard... Saturday, October 23, 2010

Thanks to Gordon Brown's profligacy, says Charles Moore, the public is about to have to pay more tax for fewer services. But the cost of green policies, he says, does not feature much in the latest debates, because most of it comes not through taxes, but through electricity bills.

It is programmed to rise. This year, the total levy adds £6 billion to our household and business bills. In 2015, it will be £10 billion; in 2020, £16 billion (which equals 4 pence on the basic rate of income tax today).

For the Government, Moore notes, and the generators, this is a beautiful way of doing things, because they get their money effortlessly. So it is ugly for you and me. We pay for the renewable obligation subsidies, we fund the Feed-in Tariff. We pay more and more for sources of energy which will not reward us with cost reductions for at least a generation.

For years, governments have gone on about the wickedness of "fuel poverty". Today, 4.6 million households are officially defined as living in it. The prevailing policies make it inevitable that fuel poverty will rise for as far as the eye can see. By 2020, our energy prices will be between 30 and 40 per cent higher than they would have been without them.

And so on. We are getting there, slowly ... but it is so slow.

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Local politics - by Richard... Friday, October 22, 2010

It is not for me to intrude on private grief, but what the hell is going on in Tower Hamlets?

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Joy in Heaven - by Richard...

Sales of new electric cars in the UK plummeted by nearly 90 percent in 2009 compared with their peak in 2007, according to motoring trade association figures released this week. These tidings are brought to us by The Guardian, which tells us that just 55 of the "green" cars – whose fans include Boris Johnson, Jonathan Ross and Jade Jagger – were registered in 2009. That compares with 397 in 2007.

This is on the eve of the start of the government scheme to offer a subsidy of £5,000 to any idiot stupid enough to buy one of these machines - so it is possible that we will see an uptick next year. There is one born every minute, they say, and most are coloured green.

One of those is obviously Richard Dyer, transport campaigner at Friends of the Earth. He says: "The number of electric car sales are certainly disappointing. It could well be down to the recession, and the fact that they are priced at a premium over normal cars. But the government grant in January should mean a change in the fortunes of electric cars."

Somehow, I doubt it. Electric models which will be available include the £28,900 four-seater Mitsubishi iMiEV, a right-hand drive version of the unpriced Norwegian-made Th!nk City and the £28,350 Nissan Leaf, which Nissan claims is "the first mass-market electric car".

But with the prices of the Ford Focus starting at £12,731.91 (and hefty discounts available), Dyer is dreaming if he thinks the Great British Public are going to fall in love with his electric crappo. Five grand doesn't even dent the difference.