I’ve written a short piece for today’s Mail on Sunday about how much I enjoyed the summer of ’76. Luckily, there were no climate change alarmists and public health panjandrums around back then to tell us to stay indoors, unlike during the current heatwave.
For me, the extraordinary summer of ’76 holds some of my happiest childhood memories. I was a healthy 13-year-old boy living in North London who spent as much time as I could playing outside with my friends.
According to experts at the time, it was the hottest summer in the British Isles for 350 years.
It certainly wasn’t an excuse to cancel sports day and stay inside. Rather, the unrelenting good weather was just a stroke of good fortune and we were determined to make the best of it.
I kept a diary back then and flicking through its pages brings it all flooding back. Far from avoiding danger, my friends and I sought it out wherever we could.
‘In the morning I phoned up Edward to see if he could come skateboarding because he’s just bought one from Hamleys,’ I wrote on June 19. ‘We play a game called Death Race 2000 where you have to push each other off.’
One time that summer I went boarding barefoot and cut my big toe so badly I needed stitches. Luckily, we were able to get a face-to-face meeting with our local GP straight away and he stitched up the toe on the spot. Those were the days.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
The vast majority of sales are corporate, with less than 5% being private sales.
Dealers find themselves encumbered by stock they cannot sell and shenanigans are afoot in terms of releasing their new stock into the market and using Auto trader ghost ads of not-for-sale vehicles at high prices to game the AT algorithm which decides whether the prices of the cars actually on sale are higher/lower than average (Geoff buys cars on YouTube).
They won’t take EV in part exchange either, so many people are beginning to realise they own a lemon.
The mandatory selling ratio of EV vs ICE will drive dealerships to the wall. They’ll need to make a massive and very public fuss or go out of business.
It looks like a case of “prevention is better than cure” re batteries catching fire. The risks may well be related to quality of manufacture, and also to the way they are used. It appears that there are a couple of different chemical structures in use for Lithium ion ones – Nickel/Manganese/Cobalt (NMC), and Iron/Phosphorous (LFP). Some say that LFP is less likely to incinerate than the other – but at the expense of being heavier and with lower capacity.
And not actually being significantly safer either, I’ve seen LiFeP batteries burn in the past.
The battery packs are underneath and therefore vulnerable to damage – bumping up curbs, stones or other debris thrown up by the wheels and also water damage.
The effect may not be realised immediately.
True with full on battery electric ones. My Toyota hybrid’s traction battery is inside, under the back seat beside it’s petrol tank and 12V LA battery.
Battery next to petrol tank sounds interesting! Wonder if car ferries and channel trains have factored in the fire hazards of these bombs on wheels?
If you had criminal intentions, how easy it would be to trigger an explosion and EV fire and cause all sort of damage.
There are no recycling facilities nor end of life facilities for these products. Nor are there enough technicians to fix those that are damaged. I feat that we will see a lot of burnt out fly tipped evs before too long in gateways and hedgerows up and down the country. I hope I am wrong. The environmental damage will be great.
As more EVs are on the road we will see more of this – probably also will increase with the age of the EVs on the road.
They used to make good milk floats.
They did, when it was normal to have milk delivered at home most days, usually in glass bottles that got used again and again. Big lead acid batteries on those; no chance of it incinerating.
We still have milk delivered in glass bottles, though as the houses who take deliveries are far apart, a proper van is needed to get between them in a reasonable time.
Many years ago (maybe mid-80s) a friend crashed his Ford Fiesta into a milk float – he swore it was the float that crashed into him. Fortunately he and milko were unhurt.
The milk float barely moved – his car was in pieces across the road.
To be fair his car was a rust bucket – I did say it was a Fiesta of many years ago, didn’t I?
Milk floats had to be built like a brick outhouse, the batteries are large and very heavy and the milk is also heavy when in bottles and in quantity.
Doesn’t sound like it would float.
Oooo, images of Barbara Flynn have just passed through my mind….
We have our milk, eggs and fruit juice delivered direct from a farm 15 minutes away. They sadly deliver in a diesel van and not milk float these days.
I grew up with one like that. The local farmer had a small herd (only about 12 or 13 cows) and a little dairy at the farm. Untreated whole milk in glass bottles. He had a Morris Minor van, and collected the empties when delivering. Not many small farms like that now, in the dairy trade.
“Thermal events” is one of the best euphemisms ever. “Israeli rockets may or may not have caused 60 thermal events in Beirut last night…”
It’s a BBC type word to avoid saying the real word like “Terrorist”.
Imagine when, note when not if, one blows up on the school run in static traffic. So far they seem to be isolated incidents but look at the picture and tell me nobody gets hurt when it happens outside a school.
Net zero is a religious creed. Those who want to live by it will see a small percentage of vehicle fires (because let’s face it, it’s a tiny percentage.of the total number of vehicles) as a price worth paying for salvation. Especially if the bad luck is befalling someone else. (It’s a narcissistic religion, one that pretends to be about caring for others and but is actually completely self absorbed.)
It is the ‘net’ result of the left’s war on faith…
“Welcome to a future where electric cars become common…”
Daily almost, in Europe, the US reports of huge drop in sales of BEVs, automakers abandoning production plans, shutting down production lines, firing workers, losing £billions, car rental companies dumping BEVs as customers don’t want to hire them – yet commentators make statements like the one above, and Governments carry on as if BEVs will replace ICEVs because they have decreed it.
In what World do these folk live?
In 100 years time I predict that some new technology will have come to the fore and our descendants will not be driving petrol, diesel or lithium battery electric cars. I have no idea what that technology will be but it will not come about by meddling posturing politicians it will come about, as ever, by the inventiveness of mankind and the ability of the rest of mankind to recognise and take up a good idea when they see it.
As it is politicians are so full of net-zero hubris and arrogance that they are petulantly stamping their feet and shrieking at current technology to deliver something which, at present. current technology cannot deliver. It looks destined to by a bumpy ride into a right mess before there is any chance of it getting better.
I am delighted to learn that the common sense of ‘everyman’ and the market has seen through this. How long it will take politicians is another matter.
‘Clown World’
“Electric Vehicle Explosions Rise 46% in a Year”
– but only about 540 of the 921 report Li battery fires seem to be from vehicles, when you sum up the number of fires per vehicle category in the table. So what makes up the difference?
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/10/2875
A bit of insight into how flipping difficult it gets.
Oil is so beautifully simple.
Coincidentally, your house & building insurance goes up if unfortunately you have an EV as the reality is, is that an EV fire can burn your house down. EV’s are the Betamax of the automotive industry.
670 of those fires, over the two years, were most likely indoors as it’s unlikely that you would charge or keep your ebike or escooter outside due to it’s nickability.
How long until home insurance bans these things from coming indoors?
My company building insurance, recently renewed, now no longer accepts any liability for fire caused by lithium battery recharging on the premises. It won’t be long before they start applying this to domestic premises as well, I’m sure.
Do you have the figures for (seemingly spontaneous) fires in ICE cars? If so then a relevant comparison can be made.
Tesco are changing their fleet of over 5,000 delivery vans to full electric. How’s that for a £300m minimum virtue signal? That’s circa 10% of their gross profit. Glad I’m not a shareholder.
It would be nice if you had a balanced view on EV’s.
I have been a huge supporter of the dailysceptic but your utter bias on this has started me to wonder if you are as bad as the people you claim are polluting the public’s minds with utter rubbish.