The Uxbridge by-election was one of those moments in political life when ordinary people, who were not political activists or campaigners were given the chance to cast their verdict on what was being done to them, by politicians who took their opinions for granted. These ordinary people, who work hard whilst counting their diminishing pennies, astonished commentators when they voted no to the incompetent Mayor Khan and his very expensive but bogus net Zero policy – ULEZ.
Poll after poll tells us that the majority of the people are tired of being taken for granted suffering extra taxes and levies in the pursuit of arbitrary Net zero deadlines.
All this scaremongering has left us making peculiar decisions. In the last decade, as the USA ramped up gas production, the UK went in the opposite direction winding down our oil and gas production in the North Sea, replacing it with gas and oil from parts of the world – now including the USA. The result - our consumers pay vastly more for the energy they use compared with the Americans, at least two and a half times as much per Kilowatt Hour, adding greatly to their bills. Worse, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine showed, we had thrown away our energy security.
As a previous chancellor Philip Hammond pointed out, politicians haven’t ever come clean with the public about the cost they will have to bear. In financial terms, that cost he claimed will be higher than £1 Trillion.
Over two thirds of the public, have made it clear they now don’t want to be faced with a financial ‘punishment beating’ to meet an unnecessary and arbitrary deadline - ending the sales of petrol and diesel cars by 2030. A deadline imposed without ever addressing the extra financial cost to taxpayers. People are entitled to know, now when the EU and the USA have moved their 2030 deadline back to 2035 to ease the burdens on industry and taxpayers, why does the UK refuse to do the same? After all, the UK is the country with the lowest emissions amongst the top 5 wealthy nations.
Why should average households have had to bear the extra burden? As ONS data shows they have had to pay £15,540, in direct and indirect taxes already. This, in the name of a 2030 deadline our competitors have already postponed.
Whilst the OBR estimates the cost of Net Zero to the UK by 2050 of at least £321bn and other estimates of the cost of expanding the electricity grid in the hundreds of billions, we now have to add the very expensive upcoming ban on new gas boilers as well.
One thing is sure, the cost of net zero will be paid for by every household.
Yet now, added to these problems is a greater risk. China is a systemic threat to us as a nation and difficult as things are with the challenges of Net Zero, China is about to make them a great deal worse. That’s why China’s communist government is rubbing its hands in anticipation.
Massively subsidised by the Chinese government, they have been opening Battery factories every few weeks and now almost every battery in UK vehicles is Chinese. Already, the vast majority of electric cars are built in China, to add to that, their battery companies are building cheap electric cars, ready to swamp the UK market.
The absurdity is that the UK, alone in the developed world, is ideologically stuck to the 2030 deadline. This leaves our car industry, once the world leader in lean burn engines looking enviously at the EU and the US companies who have been given a 5-year delay.
This is not just about competition; China is first and foremost a country guilty of genocide and slave labour; it has invaded the South China seas and plans to invade Taiwan. It’s been penetrating our politics, our universities and incredibly some defence projects and more.
Recently Downing Street discovered it ‘s cars were being tracked by Electronic Control Units, (ECU’s) embedded in the Cars, in Chinese made elements. We know that this is a common practise by the Chinese. They are capable as acting as switches, to disable elements of batteries and engines.
The irony is that China’s electric vehicle dominance is being done whilst being the world’s largest polluter of the environment by a huge margin and they won’t be sticking to any of the net zero targets we are obsessed with.
Surely given all of this, isn’t it time that like our allies in Europe and the USA we should think again about this arbitrary 2030 target. We need to do this to ease the burden on our hard-hit taxpayers, to give our car company’s time to compete and most of all for the sake of our country’s security.