So We Haven't Quite Annoyed Everyone Enough Yet.....

[ToraToraTora]

https://www.express.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/1951668/Ed-Miliband-boiler-tax-heat-pumps-energy-policy-Labour-Party

So we'll all have to spend 15k on the most obvious snake oil.

Wonderful. Come on even you Labour groupies must be getting embarrased by now.

[Old_Geezer]

The government forced car sellers to sell electrical dodgem cars instead of ICE ones, so hardly surprising government would consider forcing pump manufacturers to make unwanted pumps. Both demonstrate equally incompetent governing and both are attempts to ignore the workings of the market.

[douglas9401]

Meanwhile, in a rare moment of sanity:

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c79n1vdv553o

[Gromit]

// Miliband won't directly force households to rip out their boilers and install heat pumps.

Instead, he's turning up the heat on boiler makers by forcing them to make more gas pumps. //

So the heat pumps are not compulsory and no one is being taxed.

The Tories tried to introduce something similar and chickened out due to the General Election. Labour have a massive majority and the next General Election is 5 years away. You will have to get used to policies that the last Government bottled out of.

[Gromit]

// The government forced car sellers to sell electrical dodgem cars instead of ICE ones  //

Obviously not true. Manufacturing a new car is a multi-million £ investment and the UK government has not introduced legislation mandating a switch. There are plenty (too many) new petrol and diesel cars for you to purchase.

[Old_Geezer]

The mandate is there, the percentages defined.

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pathway-for-zero-emission-vehicle-transition-by-2035-becomes-law

 

[New Judge]

"There are plenty (too many) new petrol and diesel cars for you to purchase."

And long may that endure. Because it is a matter of plain fact that the UK could cease all its emissions tomorrow (and I mean all, not the nonsensical "net zero" which is bandied about) and it would make absolutely no difference - none whatsoever -  to any problems those emissions are said to be causing.

Because another plain fact is that  the big hitters (China, India, USA and Russia) have no intention of jeopardising their economies, their security, their industries or the wellbeing of their citizens, in a valiant but fruitless effort to achieve the unachievable.

"Net zero" is a pipedream, a fantasy, and is something that will only be achieved by creative accounting along the lines that fools us ino believing that Drax power station - the biggest single site of CO2 emissions in the UK - is "carbon neutral". 

Fannying about with electric cars and heat pumps - both suitable for only a minority of people and neither having any chance of being sufficiently supplied with electricty under current plans - will make no difference. This country - along with almost every other with any sort of technology -  needs to burn fossil fuels for the foreseeable future.. If it doesn't burn them in internal combusion engines it will have to burn them in power stations. And if it doesn't consume them here to fuel our industry, that industry will simply be offshored to countries  whose politicians are no so foolish.