What an ingenious idea it was to call an airport car park ‘business parking’, as they do at Heathrow.
It’s nearer the terminal than the regular long-stay parking and has small but more frequent shuttles, so it’s more convenient and therefore more expensive.
Yet hundreds of thousands of people flying for work each year will have no qualms about submitting expenses receipts from a facility seemingly designed precisely for them. Imagine if it had been called ‘luxury parking’.
All of those people headed to meetings, site visits and conferences might think twice about using it, because what might the finance department think of a middle-ranking account manager presuming to use a ‘luxury’ facility? ‘Business’ pitches it perfectly: if you’re travelling for work, steer this way.
From a marketing perspective, what one calls things is of course vitally important. But it’s a trick that can be used if not to deceive then at least to add a little vagueness, some sleight of hand, to any manner of things.
As I write (albeit not necessarily as you read, depending on who ticks which boxes this week), it’s the UK government’s intent to fine car manufacturers that don’t sell a sufficient proportion of zero-emission vehicles.
The requirement is 22% ZEVs this year, more in the future, although there is a complex algorithm that allows trading between manufacturers, offsetting against future model introductions and so on. But ultimately the cost is £15,000 for every car on which a manufacturer falls short.
Most mainstream manufacturers say they won’t countenance paying it and are setting up their model ranges to suit, often modifying the number of cars that they will produce or import.
Calling it a fine very much makes it feel like the onus is placed on the manufacturers, that it’s their responsibility to comply.
Clearly, the ZEV mandate will shift the market. But there might be cases where it doesn’t. I’ve heard a couple of rumblings from manufacturers that could consider the fine acceptable. Say one that just about ticks its 22% (or whatever) box but still has demand for certain ICE models.
There is, of course, a way that such cars could be available to you: by becoming up to £15,000 more expensive, to cover the fine, or whatever proportion of it would cause the manufacturer to fall short of the regulations. The manufacturer can’t be reasonably expected to pay it, but for the right car, maybe the customer would.
Given that it’s not the manufacturer that will be paying the extra, then, and was probably never going to be, is it really still a fine on the manufacturer? Because at that point it sounds more like a carbon tax on the customer to me.
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40k annual deaths in the UK from air pollution. Man-made climate change is real, despite what the oil industry and tinfoil hat brigade says. It is right that the UK demand that some zero emission vehicles. We have to pick up the tab for NHS asthma and lung disease costs after all
However, it's a 'TAX' you have the choice wether to pay or not.if you buy from a manufacturer that meets the ZEV conditions they will be cheaper than those who have failed their customers.
It's a very communist style of regulation - quite literally, since the state is centrally planning how many cars and for what price they should be sold at rather than allowing the market to decide what kind of car they want to buy. The real plan of course has nothing to do with emissions or the environment and is really about pricing the peons out of cars and onto woeful public transport to make them more dependent on the state.
And that goes for both sides of the uniparty, all of them are in hock to the technocratic globalist agenda. All of them hellbent on robbing even more of the wealth of the working and middle classes for themselves.
This is in no way communist. All governments support and regulate industries. The oil industry has received billions. Car companies are causing air pollution which causes health conditions that are expensive to treat, it's fair enough that they pay for it.
Nothing to do with Jews, it's billionaires, politicians and "policy experts" all coming together to decide on policy rather than countries deciding through democratic means. The result of all these policy decisions is invariably large-scale wealth transfer from the poor to the rich, or at least it always seems to conveniently work like that.
And pre-ordaining production targets is literally how centrally planned economies work. They'd always miss the mark as they couldn't quite match customer demand, which meant excess supply or shortages. The government can demand 20% be EVs, but manufacturers can't hit the mark unless the demand for them is actually there, which evidently there isn't.
Finally, "they" don't pay for it, "we" do, in the form of massively higher prices for cars that have the effect of pricing out car ownership for many. An effect that again seems a little too convenient for those setting the rules; rules that we don't seem to have any control or influence over.