DAVE PHILLIPS
T he Voca l Yokel
REGULAR READERS of this column will know that I’m no fan of politicians, local or national, of any persuasion. Most of them aren’t up to the job and all of them are overpaid. The current mess the House of Commons is making over our nation’s exit from the European Union just underlines what I’ve been saying all along: they’re unfit for purpose. I believe in small government. In other words, the less politicians get involved the better. They are part of the reason why the Land Rovers we all love are getting so complicated. The other part of the reason is down to the huge egos of certain JLR executives who are determined to cram in as much pointless technology as they can, but that’s something I’ll talk about later. For now, let’s return to the role played by politicians in killing off the cars we love so much.
If the last sentence sounds like I’m accusing them of motoring murder, so be it. As far as I’m concerned, the state of the automotive industry is tantamount to a crime scene, with politicians’ finger prints all over it. And I mean politicians of all levels, from your local councillors to national government and the EUS. None of them can keep their meddling fingers out of stuff they don’t understand – and it’s the motor industry that suffers most.
Like I said, it starts at local level. In my early years as a journalist I worked as a local newspaper reporter; my duties included attending parish, town, district and county council meetings, where piss-poor decisions were routine. If you want to kill off a town centre, allow inept councillors to make important decisions on one-way systems, car parking charges and double yellow lines. Even in rural areas with little or no public transport, you will still find brain- dead councillors declaring virtual war on the motorist.
Hundreds of crumbling market towns with high streets full of charity shops and boarded-up commercial premises stand testament to decades of mismanagement by these elected local politicians.
Instead of heading for decrepit town centres, motorists instead drive to out-of-town retail parks, with their free and convenient car parking – which, perversely, usually get planning approval from the same councillors who have killed off those town centres. You couldn’t make it up.
Idiocy is no less prevalent at national level. The British motor car industry, which after World War 2 was the second-biggest in the world, was virtually destroyed by the interference of governments from both sides of the political divide. The only reason Land Rover escaped the car-crash that was British Leyland
was partly because it was largely left to its own devices, and partly because a very clever man (Michael Edwardes) was eventually put in charge of BL who recognised the special value of Land Rover and plucked it to safety before the fatal collision.
Even after the great BL misadventure went so catastrophically wrong, politicians still managed to make bad decisions. The financial meltdown of a decade ago caused huge problems for the motor industry, thanks to the failure of the banking system. The government of the day happily baled out the undeserving and reckless bankers, knowing they’d never get their money back, but when Land Rover’s prudent new owners, Tata, asked the government for a loan to see them through a rough patch, the terms offered by government were so onerous that Tata sensibly borrowed from Indian banks, instead. More recently, government minister Michael Gove’s illfounded pronouncements on diesel engines literally cost JLR billions of pounds in lost sales, at a time when they had invested heavily in designing and building a new generation of ultraclean diesel engines.
Ironically, JLR’S decision to push forward the frontiers of diesel technology was mainly due to politicians higher up the food chain, in the European Union, who had laid down strict carbon emissions targets which could only be met by designing and producing ever-leaner diesel engines. Since the dawn of the 1990s, every advance in Land Rover’s diesel technology came about because of ever-tighter EU rules on emissions. Now, thanks to scaremongering by politicians, car buyers are shifting back to petrol engines – and carbon dioxide levels are on the increase.
This is serious stuff: the very future of the planet is said to depend on carbon levels coming down. Yet Michael Gove, the man most responsible, is widely tipped to be a candidate to replace the present Prime Minister. That’s an outcome unlikely to gladden the hearts of the men who have the unenviable task of running the automotive industry.
As I mentioned earlier, I’m not exactly impressed by the JLR decision-makers who fill modern Land Rovers with all sorts of unnecessary electronics and wizardry that’s sure to go wrong further down the line. But at least they do it well - and they’d do it even better if they weren’t continually tripped up by hopeless politicians.
Gerry Mcgovern for Prime Minister? In the unlikely event of ever being given the choice, I’d vote for him. I’m sure I’d disapprove of many of the decisions he’d make, but at least he’d be sure to make a success of it.
“The state of the automotive industry is tantamount to a crime scene, with politicians’ finger prints all over it”
EX-LRM Editor Dave has driven Land Rovers in most corners of the world, but loves the British countryside best