They won’t like us when they are angry…

It could have been worse or even worseserer I suppose especially for drivers. Colonel Rachel Klebb, as we like to call her at Free Car Mag (see further Colonel Rosa Klebb in From Russia with Love, with poison tipped comfortable shoes). Anyway Rosa, sorry Rachel had to fill a pothole that was £30 billion deep apparently.

Freezing fuel duty is supposed to be a positive and we need to be grateful I suppose. This the point at which we hat tip to to old Sir Howard Cox, Founder of FairFuelUK.com he said: “Our months of lobbying in the lead up to the Winter Budget seems to have paid off. A big thanks to MP for Broxbourne, Lewis Cocking for leading our 15th year of this widely respected campaign inside Parliament too, He has made a real difference. Drivers, especially those that fill up with diesel remain the highest taxed in the world, but it would be churlish not to thank the Chancellor for listening in her second Budget to her own MPs, who have received thousands of calls from their FairFuelUK supporting constituents to keep this regressive tax frozen.”

That’s the point isn’t it? Chancellors don’t muck about with the fuel duty because it really delivers bunce on top of bunce for them. It is a ridiculously unfair tax that brings in a large fortune all the time. It is the ‘pay as you drive tax’ that motorists with proper organically powered vehicles have been paying for generations. That will continue of course. Now we can welcome drivers of electricity vehicles.

Of course, the National Franchised Dealers Association put their spin on it and Sue Robinson said “Registrations have fluctuated in a challenging financial climate and the transition to electric vehicles (EV) remains behind the pace required to meet ZEV Mandate targets. As such, there were undeniably missed opportunities in today’s measures, omissions that risk slowing the industry’s progress.”

I’ll translate that for your, no one is buying electricity cars, everyone realises that the ZEV is killing what’s left of the industry and no one is quite sure what to do next. When in doubt, just bring in a new tax. Say hello to Rachel Reeves’s 3p Pay per mile for electricity cars (1.5p for Plug In Hybrids). The thing is those of us on the conspiracy side of things have been warning about this for many years. It really was a trap. Drive a tax free electricity float thing and sleep soundly in your beds. Except that what is happening here is the normalising or ‘pay as you drive.’ Few realise that they already contribute to that sort of scheme already. Give it a year and to stop the EV brigade wailing all the time, the 3p a mile will be extended to organic fuel users, Maybe p more, maybe a p less, but it certainly will be taking the p.

You might also be forgiven for forgetting that part of the tax grab is also VAT and there are 37m drivers that deliver a large fortune every year. Meanwhile the 3p isn’t arriving until speculatively 2028. That’s also because they have no clue of how they are going to do it. Although I could fill many pages hinting at how it might be done, ‘oh it’ll be like a Spotiflix subscription’, let’s see what the next few years might bring.

Meanwhile the Electricity fans can moan about how the 3p (1.5p Hybrid) scheme is going to discourage EV sales, undermine consumer confidence and do in a dealer’s ability to reach their stupid ZEV mandate.

In case you missed it Rachel has increased the Expensive Car Supplement from £40,000 to £50,000 from April Fool’s Day next year. That means the battery car you always promised yourself is now within reach. I mean, superminis, now seem to be nudging £40K so I suppose it makes sense.

As a sop to sobbing electricity lobby Rachel has committed an additional £1.3 billion to the Electric Car Grant. People with solar calculators claim that it will generate an extra 130K sales, but quite why everyone else has to subsidise them has never been properly justified/explained.

The Employee Car Ownership Scheme removal has been delayed until April 2030. The industry are not happy, but buying a car on the company has been eroded over the years and I’m not accountant and I don’t know the ins and outs of stopping it, but car dealers are pissed off about losing this extra tool in their sales box.

Motability was something I did understand. A decade a go I generated the largest number of The Autocart Magazine complaints, by telling it how it all really was. VAT exemptions have been cut on vehicles bought by the Motability scheme. Luxury brands such as BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Alfa Romeo and Lexus will be removed from the scheme. Dealers really will be pissed off by this development.

What didn’t happen was that Rachel failed to take our classic cars away. Despite banging on about it for months, I think they realised that Angry White Middle Aged Classic Car drivers might actually go utterly mental. Confirming that classic cars over 40 years old will continue to be exempt from Vehicle Excise Duty has kept the lid on old blokes and stopped them and their MGBs from storming the barricades.

At least that would have been fun to watch and possibly even more exciting to join in.

Maybe next year.

If there is a next year.

Things will get worserer before they ever get betterer.

Please consider one of my (James Ruppert) books on Amazon or a PDF direct from me.

https://www.flyscreenqueen.co.uk/special-offers/bangernomics-books.html

https://www.flyscreenqueen.co.uk/special-offers/king-solomons-mines-mad-millivolts-solar-factories.html