Our disposable society has caught up with us

Why is nothing built to last? Why are we fed lies about the environment to encourage us to get into debt? When are we going to stop being used as mugs by crooks and charlatans?

I can't think of a better example of why we should not trust governments with environmental, energy and indeed any other policy. We don't spend enough time asking ourselves WHO influences our politicians - where do they get their policies from? In the UK and most of the anglosphere they are meant to enact policies for the good of their constituents, yet these days that seems very low down their priority list and this has been the case for a long time now.

Go back in time to the late 1990s.

Before Volvo was bought by Ford they prided themselves on building cars that had a minimum... MINIMUM lifespan of 25 years. This is why you still see so many 1980s and 1990s Volvo 240s, 740s, 940s and 960s when the last of those cars were built nearly 30 years ago. Every component was built to be low stressed and over engineered, the 'red block' engine, developed in the 1960s holds the world record for longevity - with a 1960s P1800 Coupe which is in regular use and has over 3.5m miles on its original engine - which was rebuilt every 500k whether it needed it or not. If you have any sense and want reliable, safe, economical motoring which has paid back its carbon foorprint many times over then seek out one of the above.

My point was things were built to last.... our first family dishwasher was inherited from neighbours who had owned it since 1968 - it was 15 years old when we got it - it served us until 1989. The one that replaced it lasted 5 years. Last year I binned a 14 month old Bosch Dishwasher, 2 months our of warranty it cooked its PCB - cost of a replacement PCB was £280 - cost of dishwasher £300….

Until some people decided our economy should be driven by consumer debt, so When Volvo were bought they were told by Ford they couldn't make such cars anymore.

The French automotive sector had always had a reputation for reliability and affordability but sometime around 2000 they changed their business model - Renault and PSA (Citroen/Renault) decided to become Finance Companies which built cars - pay us £x per month and we will give you a new car every 3 years.

I can recall working on a friend's 2004 Ford Focus in 2011- it had a corroded main earth line - when I took the faulty line out of the car and split it, the copper was seriously corroded and only 60% of current was making it through, this had happened because the cable had never been greased with petroleum jelly to keep the water out. I was so incensed at this I called Ford to point it out - the response I got was 'well what do you expect? the car is still 7 years old, they are built to last 6'.

So what has this got to do with politicians? Well they are the ones who have been telling us to upgrade our cars with new ones 'for the environment' when everyone knows that the most damage caused to the planet is the making of the car - in the 1980s if you were 'green' you bought a car with a small petrol engine, you maintained the hell out of it and you drove it until it eventually fell to bits - thus over its 30 or 40 year lifespan it repaid its carbon footprint many times over.

Peter Mandelson’s ‘scrappage scheme’ conned thousands of us into scrapping perfectly viable, and sometimes classic cars of some value, in exchange for a modern car - a diesel one because we were told that they were ‘better for the environment’. This was a cynical move to bolster new car sales and therefore new loans to feed the bubble - and we were told it was for the ‘environment’. Some people fell for this lie. I can recall being fingerwagged in an Edinburgh car park for driving a 1953 Morris Minor with an 850cc engine, meticulously maintained.. the woman who was upset with what she considered an environmental disaster was driving a brand new Range Rover with a V8 engine.

So politicians, in hock to a motor industry and a financial services industry that depends on shackling people into debt, failed in their duty to their constituents by kow towing to big business whilst their voters descended into further consumer debt on the lie that they were ‘saving the planet.’

And this generation of politicians are exactly the same, only they are disappointed that we won’t enthusiastically applaud their efforts. Ed Miliband recently expressed frustration with British people angry with him about his hairbrained Net Zero plans. His ire was that he couldn’t encourage and lead other countries to abandon coal and gas unless we did it at home…. there you have it, he’s happy to sacrifice British jobs and prosperity for his image with his WEF cronies. This winter will probably be a harsh one and the inevitable power cuts and increases in bills will likely see the end of his ambitions but only after hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs and familes have sunk into further debt.

What’s prompted this rant this morning?

Well, here is my 2004 Renault Coupe Cabriolet. It’s a perfectly functional car, with only 40k on the clock, it benefits from the amazing 2 piece folding hardtop roof which was designed by Bertone and is a thing of genius, the engine is Renault’s 2.0lt 16v which is as bullet proof as its 6 speed manual box. The car is amazingly practical having a huge boot when the roof is up. However, despite all this, today it is getting scrapped. Why? because there’s £700 worth of suspension damage which I can’t do myself, it needs new tyres all round and a new battery there’s also a series of persistent electrical faults all of which are false readings - why? Well these cars were built to last 5 years, not 20, so the electrics are often - and I am not joking - literally tinfoil strips. Had the switch gear been made from traditional copper wire and decent components then the car would be good to go for another 20 years if looked after. But with £2000 of work and parts make it no longer viable, Being a 2.0 the kids can’t drive it because of the insurance and we need to spend our back up car motoring budget on small engined cars for them.

This is a great example of the throw away society we developed in the late 90s and which we are paying the price for now. The Renault has paid back its carbon footprint because I kept it on the road and maintained it, it could stay on the road for another 20 years, but the state doesn’t want that. It wants me to buy and EV with lithium batteries and miles of copper wire all mined by the poor in nations like the Congo often under slave level conditions. It wants me to buy and EV built in China, by a factory with horrendous working conditions and with steel produced in a coal blast furnace and with electricity from one of the coal fired power stations that China builds at the rate of one a week.

So boo to the politicians who play the ‘environment’ card, you’re a pack of charlatans and liars, in hock to the banks and big business, the renewables racket and who would sell you or I out for their annual jaunt at Davos. I for one am fed up of being mugged by these crooks and the charlatans who peddle us shoddy goods.