Electric Fires

 

I think we used to have one like that.

But, of course, that isn't what this post is about.

It's strange how the news stories I find to comment on come about.  There were only four in October while I've already done four this month and there are TWO that caught my eye on the BBC News site today.

The first one annoyed me - it is top of the most watched videos at the moment.  Now I realise that it is the job of the news to report on unusual events and, compared with those happening to fossil fuel cars (as Moggy from electric Classic Cars calls them) or piston cars (as Jonny Smith from The Late Brake Show calls them), electric car fires are very rare - even if they can be more spectacular - that rarity isn't mentioned at all.

In fact, given that the Liverpool Arena car Park fire was caused by an old Land-Rover and the Luton Airport Car Park fire was caused by a Range-Rover, then maybe the BBC should look to be covering the next JLR car to catch fire.

Talking of London airport car parks, the other story today didn't annoy me.  It tells of temporarily repurposing a car park at Stansted for a drive-in movie location.

"Airport bosses have stressed that pilots will not be distracted by a large LED screen at a temporary drive-in cinema at its site in Essex."

The whole article goes on about how it will be safe and all checks and authorisations are in place - I'm not sure why the whole article is about that - NOBODY HAS SUGGESTED OTHERWISE!

Do they think that some passing pilot might fancy watching Top Gun? It has been suggested before.

Viral Stupidity

Eek!! Four of the people recently shipped to my local hospital have tested positive for Coronavirus!

What am I going to do!?  Does this mean I'm going to die of it!?

No.  That would be stupid.

The chances of catching it is negligible and the fatality rate is 2%.

The virus has, however, caused a rise in racism.  And in stupidity.  The Daily Show Correspondent Ronnie Chieng highlights the issue:

Those of you who are members of Facebook can enjoy the whole brilliant segment here.

But what, I hear you ask, has the Coronavirus and stupidity got to do with cars?

I refer you to the most popular comments under this BBC story and its equivalent Daily Mail story.

The story is about Jaguar Land-Rover flying in car parts in suitcases as they prepare to run out of Chinese-manufactured parts produced in factories that have been temporarily shut down due to Coronavirus.

That pink one has a couple of alternators in it.  Hope they don't get an excess charge.

 

All of the BBC and Mail Gammons are saying that we should be manufacturing the car parts in the UK and adding that this is proof that it will be OK after Brexit because we aren't getting our car parts from Europe after all.

 

OK, except buying British parts would currently make the cars more expensive and therefore uncompetitive.  A reason the Chinese parts are cheap (ignoring the crap wages and conditions) is that they come in at EU tariff rates - this differential (that's in the yellow suitcase) may well come down after the Brexit Transition period but we'll still be producing uncompetitively priced cars.

 

Oh, and if you think the term "Gammon" is racist, remember Boris is in charge now SO WE CAN ALL BE AS RACIST AS WE LIKE - SUCK IT UP SNOWFLAKE!