Luton is reeling from the news that Vauxhall is set to close its car factory after 120 years in a move the company is blaming on the Government’s Net Zero EV sales targets. The Mail has more.
Stellantis, which also controls the Fiat, Peugeot and Citroen brands, has blamed Government EV sales targets for the decision to shutter the factory, which first opened in 1905 and has been making vans for almost a century.
The Luton factory had been set for a retooling to make the electric version of the Vivaro van before the plug was pulled on Tuesday afternoon – to the shock of workers, some of whom have worked at the plant for decades.
Factory workers were handed notices yesterday to inform them of the plan to consult on the plan to close Luton, while also investing £50 million in the Ellesmere Port facility in Cheshire so the vans can be made there, 140 miles away.
More than 1,100 jobs are at risk – though Stellantis says “hundreds” of roles will be transferred to the other factory, with relocation packages on offer.
The leader of Luton Council, Hazel Sim called the news a “devastating blow” for the town.
Some, including one forklift driver, had to learn via messages on WhatsApp because he wasn’t on shift – a move the worker described as “pretty rubbish”.
“There’s a lot of people there, a lot of people coming up to retirement and youngsters – it’s going to hit the town hard,” said the man, who spoke to the BBC anonymously.
“As there’s a lot of people that depend on Vauxhall to supply parts, there’s going to be a big knock-on effect.
“It’s going to hit the town hard. It will be huge.”
Cllr Hazel Simmons MBE, leader of Luton Council, said: “Today’s news that Vauxhall plans to close its van making factory in Luton is a devastating blow for our town.”
Seems that Luton is another town missing out on all those ‘green jobs’ we were promised.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: In the Spectator, Ross Clark says the “EV craze is killing our car industry“. He points out that the Zero Emissions Vehicle mandate was introduced by the Conservative Government using its Brexit freedoms to be stricter than Europe (thanks, guys) and that Stellantis was all in favour of the mandate when it was consulted on it 2023. Madness.
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.
So when the Fascist pigs want to terrify their own people, each scariant is deadlier than the last, including the Kentiscariant. But when Macron wants to score a point against Britain (how very novel for a French leader!), our Fascists suddenly find that the Kentiscariant is a tame lapdog.
Well well.
I am not giving Macron a ‘pass’ here, he should have resisted the enormous pressure from his ‘experts’ that sometimes make SAGE look like poodles. But in his speech he was careful not to phrase reference to the Kent ‘variant’ as if it was a ‘britsh/brexit’ issue, which is how most of the UK MSM and this article are painting it. This doesn’t help anyone.
I agree that the almost linear rise in ‘cases’ is more a function of increase tests than anything else, but its also reflected in numbers of hospitalisations and ICU admissions, again in a linear increase.
This is highly unusual behaviour for a virus. There is no explanation I have seen for this.
I suspect some of the numbers are very suspect, and are part of an attempt to convince at least part of the 50% of the French population that are saying no to vaccination.
If people will need a booster jab in September that’s billions more in profit for big pharma and another reason to reintroduce restrictions if there is a seasonal rise in cases before everyone has their booster. I wonder who is lobbying who to push the largely nonexistant dangers of all these variants.
Since viruses continously mutate, and presumably have done for hundreds of millions of years it seems obvious that the immune system would evolve to be able to fight variants of a virus as well as the strain that is currently circulating. Any organism that was immune against new variants and not just the old one would have a competative advantage and be more likely to pass on the genes for developing this immunity. This is another reason why it would’ve been better to allow the virus to spread among people at low risk of serious illness. Natural herd immunity is likely to be better than vaccine induced immunity. Sadly this is one more basic principle of biology/virology that the “experts” seem to have ignored, for reasons only they can know.
Not yet.
A few months ago someone leaked the contract. They can choose to make a profit from July, if I recall correctly
It depends on who gets to call the end of the emergency at which point
1. AstraZeneca can start charging market rates.
2. Authorisation for use under ’emegency’ provisions must surely be called into question ?
… which gives the rationale for continually upping the ante in terms of new Scary Fairies, and continuing the suppression of possible cheap prophylactics like Ivermectin.
They are experimenting on millions of subjects for free, whilst getting lots of coverage, that’s a nice win-win
Your link to the PHE study is hilariously, embarrassingly wrong.
It is actually the link to a BMJ study (March 10) concluding that the Kent variant is indeed much more deadly.
Please provide the correct link.
Yes – even in the report written by the “Swiss Doctor” there is only a link to an article in the Daily Telegraph. The study seems not to have been published (or peer reviewed) yet, and its existence is only known due to a press conference at 10 Downing Street.
There could be an easy explanation for increased hospitalization rate not accompanied by higher mortality rate. The propensity to admit could have been increased compared to the first wave ie less sick cases admitted. The health care sytem did not collapse in the first wave might increase “overhospitalization” ie doctors admit more,knowing it would have less effect on the system. Really the excess mortality and the the true C-19 mortality is the only way to estimate if a variant really is more dangerous.
The Swizz doctor is a bit leaning to van den Bosche scenario saying if neutral antbodies are affected as above could be problematic although they allude to something called T-cells immunity. But another study published a few days ago,again showed that T cells have a broad immunity incl. against variant.
One would bet that natural acquired immunity ,is the most effective T cells response as known by everybody pre 2020 and that an artificial immunity like vaccine can never come up to that level. The article above is down here
https://academic.oup.com/ofid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ofid/ofab143/6189113#.YGTXD75sdDQ.twitter
CD8+ T cell responses in COVID-19 convalescent individuals target conserved epitopes from multiple prominent SARS-CoV-2 circulating variants
This study examined whether CD8+ T-cell responses from COVID-19 convalescent individuals (n=30) potentially maintain recognition of the major SARS-CoV-2 variants suggesting that virtually all anti-SARS-CoV-2 CD8+ T-cell responses should recognize these newly described variants.