Cars now like plane cockpits

It appears that the jury has been out and decided that the motoring lobby is in fact a danger to the planet and has decided to ban the sale of diesel and petrol cars in the UK from 2035.

As a motorist, I need personal transport, but I do not consider myself part of the motoring lobby, but an unfortunate pawn in the lack of competition between car manufacturers for sales and profit.

Nothing wrong with profit; nothing would get done were it not for the notion that we could get out more than the effort we put in. Profit is a measure of approval by purchasers of a seller’s efforts. Hopefully car producers’ efforts are competitively priced, honest, technically competent, long-lasting, and are designed to be easily and reasonably cheaply repairable. A monopoly of makers has seen that very few of these requirements are met. We all know that excessive and unnecessary complications have been built in, and parts are not repairable but must be replaced as large and costly pre-made units. It is next to impossible for a conscientious and mechanicallydisposed car owner to maintain and adjust his modern car.

You can hardly call car makers honest when they build in exhaust emission-cheating software into their software.

The EU has led to this situation, pulled by the nose by car makers to insist on ever more complex installations.driving a car now is like sitting in an aeroplane cockpit, with screens to distract you from the road instead of knobs you can reach and feel as you adjust them. Diesel fuel is very energy rich. It takes 30 seconds to put 20 litres of the golden concentrated distilled sunshine into a car. When this is done 205 kwh of energy has been put into your tank.

This amount of energy would be taken from a 13 amp household socket if a 3KW appliance (say a kettle) was plugged in and left full bore for 68 hours.

The car makers have got to turn their ideas on their head if they are to survive. They need to stop promoting personal transport as a social status badge and concentrate on price and economy.

Cedarview, Canterbury

Among the range of serious policy issues that the three Labour leadership candidates faced questions on at a hustings at the weekend was the inevitable Desert Island Discs question.

Rebecca Long-bailey opted for Everybody Is In The Place, a song by the Prodigy, Keir Starmer went for Edwyn Collins and Lisa Nandy went for Toxic by Britney Spears.

As to luxury items, Long-bailey asked for hairspray, Starmer requested a football and Nandy went for a train set.

If you can decode that, good luck.

■ There are no certainties in any election but Off The Record feels that, as things stand, the next police and crime commissioner for Kent will be the one who already has the job, Matthew Scott.

The Conservative incumbent won’t exactly have a clear run in May but Labour has not yet selected its candidate and won’t know until later this month; the Liberal Democrats are in a similar position.

With the poll in 2016 seeing a dismal turnout of 21%, the election may not be a foregone conclusion but it is pretty nailed on for Mr Scott. But if there’s a repeat of public antipathy after three elections, questions will need to be asked about whether this is a valid and credible model for police forces.

■ So, what plans do the authorities have to deal with the prospect of a coronavirus outbreak in Kent? According to the Kent Resilience Forum, which is responsible for emergency planning, there is one but the full details are hard to come by. That there is a plan is not in doubt but the fine details are not publicly available.

■ The investigation into Home Secretary Priti Patel seems to have reached its conclusion before it has even started.

Off The Record has no idea if the allegations are true and she has firmly denied them.

On a visit to Kent in October last year to the force’s training college in Maidstone, Off The Record was told that there would be no interviews with her and that we were invited on the understanding that we could “observe” the event but not ask any questions.

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