It’s laughable in thr situations you describe. However there are some cycle lanes which provide better safety yet some decide to chamce it busy traffic and then blame the drivers when it goes wrong. There needs sone better road / cycle lane design , but where the lane is safer then cyclist should use it, but some wont as the thonk cyclist can just do what they want. There are still some clowns that cycle on a motorway
Tell me about it! I went from paying £20 a year for a diesel to £145 for a hybrid.
According to the link below £8.3 billion raised by VED for 2024/25 or 0.3% of national income
A Billion here and a Billion there eventually you are talking real money
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It would be interesting to be able to accurately quantify the economic costs of the societal impacts of emissions, including those necessary to maintain the network infrastructure of petrol stations and petroleum imports.
For example, how much money is needed to pay for the healthcare required as a consequence of chest conditions caused wholly or partly, or exacerbated, by vehicle emissions? How does the pollution emitted from tankers and vehicle transporting ships contribute to localised (UK specific) air quality?
There’s a lot more that can be dived into here, getting into scope 2 & 3 emissions, but they then become less specific to vehicles that attract VED.
My gut feeling would be that the £8.3m income from VED still represents a net economic loss against the costs that ICE vehicles cause or contribute towards.
Ran out of oil (again) and turns out my immersion heater no longer works. Well then, cold showers it is!
Dipstick…
…is a thing you should really purchase so that you can check the depth of oil in your tank. I use one frequently now.
It was only refilled in Jan. It’s been a cold few months, but that’s taking the Michael… Am wondering if someone had pinched some oil in that time! 
Assuming you can only get a minimum of 500 litres delivered too?
If so, that really has gone down very quickly, even taking into account the long winter this year.
However, for fuel duty + VAT on the top = double whammy:
Fuel duties are levied on purchases of petrol, diesel and a variety of other fuels. They represent a significant source of revenue for government. In 2023-24, we expect fuel duties to raise £24.7 billion. That would represent 2.2 per cent of all receipts and is equivalent to £850 per household and 0.9 per cent of national income.
Hmmm, now look please at the other side of the coin. What are the economic costs for the continual drive to EVs? Look at the areas of South America related to lithium requirements.
Oh:
Chinese companies have direct ownership of 15 of the 19 primary industrial copper-cobalt mining concessions with the DRC.
Who want to export lots of EVs / associated batteries - China? Not the best human rights country.
Send some kids for managnese mining, you know it makes sense…
It is by no means a balanced argument, whichever way you look at it.
If we still go ahead in 2025 to new cars that must be EVs, where is the power production coming from? Several years ago, the utility companies reckoned we would new a new nuclear power station, similar to Hinckley Point C- what’s the latest cost for that? Maybe £46 billion??
Oh, who has ownership of that:
EDF Energy (66.5%) China General Nuclear Power Group (33.5%)
Ah, buy more reactors from China??
It’s also necessary to look at the socio-economic factors relating to non-EVs - no car, no job. No trucks, no food in the supermarket. Simplified argument of course, but necessary to consider.
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you can, but how long do you think it would take to fill a car with individual 5ltr containers? wouldn’t be effective.
Doesn’t stop llegal driving.
If people are desperate enough, they still might, although would be a faff
If you can’t make drivers accountable when there is a plethora of evidence, it does bother me about when there’s no evidence.
I live more rurally, and do like a good road biking, but of course there’s barely any camera footage. I wear a Hi-Viz jacket and have lights on, day or night. Yet for some reason I’ve nearly been hit by someone emerging from a T junction into me, and by someone illegally crossing double solid whites.
I don’t wear a helmet camera (although privately I’ve mulled the idea over) and not enough people have dashcams to make it a reliable source of evidence. Which bothers me a lot, because that potentially puts me in a position where I get hit and nothing comes of it.
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GMG: Tendered for a cleaner to do a checkout clean for my house; a tidy 3-bed bungalow, so it’s not massive.
The cheapest quote so far is £460. Bearing in mind that my deposit is only £860, and I’ve yet to get a quote from the chimney sweep and window cleaners, I might just not bother hiring any professionals…
You don’t have to get a professional clean. Landlords aren’t allowed to insist on that.
Just bear in mind though, that if they reasonably incur costs above your deposit they can bring a claim against you for the balance. Not often done, especially as you’re fleeing the country in disgrace, but just something to bear in mind
“Brit extradited back home for unpaid cleaning fee”
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I had a bad experience when I moved out of my last place. Genuinely believe it to be fraud, but don’t have the evidence as I wasn’t in a good headspace at that time, so just had to get out.
The process of moving is again scratching those scars, despite me being in a much better headspace now. This agency have been poor too, so I’m not holding out much hopes of everything going smoothly even though it should.
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Fingers crossed for you buddy
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