Before Radio Five Live’s ‘Brexit Barometer’ was activated on the Breakfast Show and I switched over to BBC 6 Music, there were signs, finally, that the corporation in general, and its presenters in particular, have managed to grasp the reality that not everyone around the land is as middle class and relatively wealthy as they are.
Actually, this is a bit unkind because the lead presenters, Nicky Campbell and Rachel Burden are closer to the lower orders than most and, unlike many others at the Beeb, get it. Today’s discussion about electric cars was a case in point.
There was a story about how users of electric car users could benefit by being entitled to free parking and being able to use bus lanes. I was seething. I have messaged the show before and pointed out that electric cars are the preserve of the affluent middle classes and not the lower orders who have little choice but to travel from A to B in a fleet of old bangers. Many of these supposed ‘lower orders’ work in the care sector. Buying any kind of new car, never mind a new-fangled electric car, is not an option. But still the guest banged on about it.
He pointed out that there was a growing second hand market where people could buy an electric car from as little as (my words) £7000. For many people £7000 might as well be £1 million. If you are on the minimum wage of £8.21 an hour, as millions are, some of which will be taxable if you work full time, the idea of spending £7000 on a car is fanciful in the extreme.
I fear where this ‘green’ car movement is going. I mean, of course I support any move to cleaner and greener cars. Who wouldn’t? Yet, what we now have the beginnings of is a regressive tax system where the wealthy, who can afford new electric cars, gain huge tax subsidies and the working poor pay extra. The wealthy salesmen in their expensive new electric cars park where they like and sail past the riff-raff who sit in gridlock.
The problem with all this is that there is no solution. The government can come up with all the tax breaks and incentives it likes, but the gap between the haves and have nots is vast and growing. There are many millions of people earning poverty pay who, no matter how high the minimum wage rises, will never afford an electric car. The state will not subsidise new cars for working people, especially in a post Brexit small state, low tax economy world, and it certainly won’t provide them.
Increasingly, cities and towns will begin to ban, or restrict the use of, older, more polluting cars, often driven by – yes, you’ve guessed it – low paid working class people, forcing minimum wage carers to help feed and clean the most vulnerable in society via a dysfunctional and expensive bus system. All the while, well-off reps and salespeople will travel the length of the land in their company electric cars and politicians and media pundits will declare them as stars, unlike those filthy working class people.
Much of the media talks to itself, not realising or caring that actually some people have next to nothing. The debate over electric cars is but one example of that.
