No Car for Me, Thought Boris was Bad? Another new PM.

No Car for Me

I made the difficult decision to sell my beautiful car last month. There are a number of reasons for this; I don't use it very much any more, tax is very high despite most of my journeys being electric, I could do with reducing my expenditure given the rising costs all around us. We still have the Mini, my wife's car, which I really enjoy driving.

A beautiful car to drive and to look at

It's interesting to compare the annual car tax on the two cars; it makes it clear that the government incentives are not in favour of low emissions driving:

Bonkers British Annual Car Tax:

BMW 330e £510: CO2 Emissions 38 G/Km

Mini Cooper £30: CO2 Emissions 114 G/Km

Furthermore, from next year there will be restrictions on driving into Oxford and there will be no concession for electric vehicles, only for vans, lorries and buses. Maybe I should get a van :)

Thought Boris was Bad?

Liz Truss making her resignation speech after 44 days in office

Those of us who thought Boris Johnson was the worst Prime Minister in decades were wrong. Liz Trust has shown in her first 6 weeks that she is considerably worse. As I summarised in my Blog last month, her first three weeks were abysmal. Well it got worse and she had to resign on October 20th after just 44 days. She now holds the record for the shortest serving PM ever. Previously that record was with George Canning (who?) who served for 118 days and then died, in 1827.

Why was she so bad? With her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng (whom she subsequently sacked) they announced a very high cost unfunded set of measures without first running it past the Office for Budget Responsibility. The financial markets reaction was utter chaos, driving up the cost of Government borrowing and mortgage rates to unsustainable levels whilst Sterling fell to new lows. Incompetence.

George Canning used to be the shortest serving PM ever

So the lettuce won, although it does look a little the worse for wear to be fair, and unlike Liz Truss, it won't get an annual pension of £115,000.

The Daily Star ran a competition to see if the shelf life of Liz Truss would be longer than a 60p Tesco lettuce. She lost.

Another New PM

The Conservatives put in place an accelerated leadership contest to replace Truss which led to Rishi Sunak being appointed just 4 days later on October 24th. The only thing that that made that possible and allowed the Tories to unite to appoint this new leader was their dread of a General Election. Polls at the time showed they would be almost wiped out and lead to the greatest majority ever for the Labour Party!

The only good news about another Tory PM (the third this year) is that Sunak and Hunt together are likely to have a more calming effect on the markets, thereby limiting somewhat the financial carnage we have seen under Truss in recent weeks.

Good luck Rishi Sunak. You will need it!

“People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.”
Alan Moore, V for Vendetta