Working Poor Ignored Yet Again.

Well, it looks like pople on benefits will be given the option o buying a house. Great.

But what about the working poor. Those on minimum wages that don't have any children at home. What help are they to get from the government?

It looks like the working poor have yet again been passed over and ignored. 

Politicians: What Do they Do For You? Ar They Worth Your Vote?

 There was a time when you felt politicians were trying to make your life better.

Labour would major on worker's rights and the Conservatives would lower taxes.

But over the decades, there seems to have been a disconnect between the goals of the politicians and the desires of the voters.

Now it seems that minority agendas have replaced working to better the lives of the majority and corporate demands outweight the demands of the public.

Right now we are in the grip of the worst cost of living crisis in 50 years or more. Even at the height of the seventies inflation spiral, it was never like this. Of course the government caused this by allowing the printing of excess money. It always leads to inflation eventually. Many clever people think they can control it, but they can't.

But what are the government doing to help in this crisis? Tinker round the edges. 

Today saw the highest single rise in fuel prices for decades. Right now the government must be raking in tax revenue on fuel. Duty is charged as a percentage of the net price and then 20% VAT is added on top of the price of the fuel and the duty combined. Yes, you're paying tax charged on tax applied to the price of the fuel.

So the higher the price of fuel, the more tax the government earns. What they could do is set a target for the tax revenue from fuel, rather than have this windfall and instead taper off the duty the higher the price gets. The government still get the revenue they projected and the consumer pays less tax than they would have, easing the burden. Win-Win. Basically the government give the consumer a windfall directly by not taking tax.

Reducing duty on fuel will have a knock-on reduction in shop prices as the fuel is cheaper. 

I do wonder why they don't do it. We need help now as fuel creeps quickly to £2 a litre. I already downsized my car a couple of months ago as the previous one was costing £100 a week in fuel to get to work. My current little hatchback with an engine half the size looks like it will be costing the same amount quite soon.

If it carries on I'll be priced out of commuting the 7 miles to and from work in a few weeks.

I Give Electric Car 10 Years, Tops.

 The reason for the title? Well, once people begin to live with electric vehicles long-term, as opposed to early-adopter with enough money to overcome issues, they will have a very short life-span.

It's pretty clear that electric vehicles with enough range and a battery charging network fast enough to compete with fossil fuel vehicles is pie-in-the-sky for ordinary folk.

Tesla will continue to lead the market for the while, until the other manufacturers band together to provide an open-source and unified charging network. 

I mean, who on Earth is going to spend hundreds of thousands on a premium top of the range Porsche or Bentley EV, only to rely on a pound-shop charging network.

A charging network that relies on multiple phone apps, chargers that rely on phone apps that don't work when there isn't any network coverage, are not a premium customer experience.

Each charging network should be forced by law to accept contactless direct payments by bank card. No apps, just tap and charge. In addition the ability to pay by PayPal, Google or ApplePay without signing up to yet another app would be a boon to personal security, rather than having a dozen different additional apps on your phone, with a dozen different providers holding your personal information including card information.

Like with pay at pump for fossil fuels, it may be necessary to authorise a higher charge than is eventually taken. But the £100 authorisation before dispensing fuel seems to not have stopped people using pay at pump.

However they do it, the charging network for non-Tesla EV owners needs to improve dramatically. It also need to expand dramatically as the tales of EV owners being fined for exceeding time limits in car parks whilst in the queue waiting to use a charging station are becoming almost daily now. 

Finally 10 years will give lots of EV owners the "joy" of the battery replacement experience at least once, maybe twice. Joy for those that have leased their battery and probably paid over the odds for it or the pain of buying a replacement battery outright from the dealer, if it's still available. 

I've already heard some EVs have have their batteries discontinued. I have no idea what you do then, apart from buying a few thousand Lipo cells and soldering them into a replacement battery bank.

But don't say I didn't warn you. I've a feeling there will never be a cheap EV. Sure the electricity to run it may work out cheaper than a tank of petrol for now, but even that's changing as the cost of electricity increases with the various eco-tariffs upping the cost.