Monthly forecourt purchases of these vehicles, which will save the world from burning to bits, fell 17 per cent at the end of last year when compared with 12 months previously.

4

Companies that make EVs are reporting very slow business indeed.

A considerable lack of interest from the likes of you.

Shocking, huh?

And do you know whose fault it is? Yes, you got it in one — it’s Blackadder’s fault.

The House of Lords was told that Rowan Atkinson had written a hugely “damaging” article about electric cars last year.

It was headlined: “I love electric vehicles — and was an early adopter. But increasingly I feel duped.”

And that’s why everyone’s stopped buying them. Makes sense to me.

Whenever I’m thinking of buying anything I always check to see what Blackadder thinks of the product first. And after that, Baldrick. I assume you do exactly the same.

I don’t know who the Green Alliance are. I don’t really care, to be honest.

But sufficient to know, they are making themselves look very stupid.

Sales of electric cars have also slumped in Germany. Maybe the Germans are all worried about what Blackadder thinks of them, too.

The truth is, the green lobby is panicking. Not just here but right across the developed world. In country after country, people are suddenly twigging that they’ve been fed a pack of porkies.

Linda McCartney plant-based porkies, maybe, but porkies all the same.

Farmers in Germany and France are protesting about green demands on how they produce food.

Vegan and even vegetarian restaurants are closing down.

Many of us are suspicious of electric cars and heat pumps.
We all want to do our bit to save the world. That’s why we got on board with all the stuff they told us to do. At first.

But the politicians and green activists were not totally honest.
Heat pumps

Take those electric cars, for example. People still have very serious misgivings over the range they can travel. And over the length of time it takes to recharge the batteries.

There are concerns, too, about environmental hazards posed by the lithium ion batteries.

Heat pumps, we were told, would keep us all warm and save the planet.

But they can be massively expensive to install and often don’t work well in older properties.

And too many people who bought them are still wrapped up in tinfoil blankets because they’re so cold.

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The technology just isn’t quite there yet.

Farmers, meanwhile, have to keep producing cheap food so that the poor don’t starve.

But they have been told to cut out the pesticides. That means, immediately, that the food is dearer.
Right now, they don’t know who to please — the consumer or the politicians.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has reportedly been considering scaling back or even junking his pledge of £28billion for green investment.

No surprise there — he’s junked pretty much every other pledge he’s ever made.

But the reason, I suspect, is that he knows the population has become disillusioned with the green lobby.

We feel, a bit like Black-adder, that we have all been duped.

We would all like to fight climate change.

But in order to do so we need to be armed with the truth — not a whole bunch of wishful thinking and unicorn tears.

We will fight them on the bridges

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NOW here’s a bargain. Millionaire Geoff Thompson, aged 75, has just bought a set of Sir Winston Churchill’s false teeth.

They only cost £18,000, which is about what you would pay for a full set of dentures today.

Not that you can ever get near to a dentist who might rip out your existing teeth.

I quite like the idea of a museum of World War Two exotica. Churchill’s teeth, charred remains of Hitler’s nutsack, Mussolini’s toenail clippings, etc.

It would draw the crowds.

Best of British to King

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KING CHARLES III doesn’t have much luck, does he?

Waits for decades for his chance then is diagnosed with a horrible illness.

But our previous kings called Charles didn’t have much luck either.

The first ended up with his head in a basket.

Charles II had to put up with exile, the Great Fire of London and bubonic plague before dropping dead at age 54.

Charles III, however, is a much better monarch than those two.

I haven’t always been his biggest fan. But he has carried himself with enormous dignity since ascending to the throne.

And I hope he remains our King for at least a couple of decades.

Good luck, Your Maj.