Graham Butcher

Monmouth is 100% in Wales, but it is only just.

I worked for a number of years for Halliburtons at their Haverhill factory producing pumping rigs for the the North Sea oil platforms and also special rigs used on many of the oil field fires by Red Adiar to extinguish the fires. Halliburton, engineering solutions for global energy needs I designed, built and installed many of the electrical control systems on them. I would have been very happy to have continued doing that job, as I was held in high esteem by Haliburtons and also developed other things for them. But there was so much money to be made from the North Sea Oil industry that the British Government decided that they wanted to take control of that sector and control it thus make money from it. Halliburtons, being a large American company, originating from Duncan, Oklahoma, decided to pull out of the UK and go back home, leaving only a couple of service depots in the UK, Great Yarmouth and Arbroath. They gave me the option of staying in the UK at Arbroath or going back to the USA with them, I chose neither (possibly the biggest mistake of my life) so I know that there is tremendous wealth to be had from the North Sea offshore platforms. As @Evolution13 says, there are so many liars out there.

The UK refineries going is a short-sighted thing and is a folly. Diesel today is not a waste product, which is not what I claimed. I said it was once a waste product but the invention of the diesel engine changed that.

That is perfectly true, but some is and it still does not have to be shipped via the Straights of Hormuz and so does not have to be influenced by the extra costs incurred; that is just what I was mentioning before – pure profiteering. We are being gaslit. For instance, the cost of oil in Saudi Arabia is dirt cheap, because they don't have to ship it far and they have not linked their retail prices to an artificially created fixed-price cartel to maximise profits. Here diesel is for more expensive than petrol, even though it was a waste product before the diesel engine was invented and requires less refining as well, so why are paying a premium for it? Look at the prices the Saudi's pay at the pumps compared to our prices as shown in the link below. Saudi Arabia energy prices | GlobalPetrolPrices.com The same thing goes here in the link below for just every country in the world retail prices are shown for petrol, diesel and electric and once again we are among the highest. Electricity prices around the world | GlobalPetrolPrices.com

I knew that you would come up with that kind of guff. More carrots will just add to public finances' strain, so that is clearly not an option. Nor is the stick of increasing the cost of diesel or petrol, as that will just massively fuel inflation even more and place even more people into poverty. There is no need for the UK to source oil from the Middle East; we are sitting on huge deposits under the North Sea, and also for that matter the situation in the Middle-East is also going to have knock on effects for other stuff imported in the UK, such as cars and EV batteries and the raw materials, etc., so everyone would be affected, not just ICE owners and drivers. What I was referring to were ways of ensuring that should anyone want to switch over to electric-powered cars but currently cannot for varying reasons, they were empowered to the extent that many of them could do so comfortably. There are many people within the grand scheme of things who are profiting excessively by things, and they know it. We have had for decades now, reducing taxation given out to those higher earners, and also the super-rich have gotten even richer thanks to these tax cuts handed out to them. If taxation were applied in a fair and sensible way, then these things that we are constantly being told cannot be done due to lack of funds could be done, and everyone, including those super-rich, would gain benefit from that happening. We also need to look back in history and see if this global warming is actually happening or are we being moonlit again. There has been bad floods ever since records began. Here in Essex the earliest I can find records of was in 1450. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but the population was very small back then; motor vehicles most certainly had not been invented and there was far less built-up areas so there was more land to soak up rainwater right where it fell. This is a photo taken of a road here in Chelmsford back in 1888 when the population was just 10,500 as opposed to today's 188,803. Local flooding in the past If we all check local history, I'm certain that similar events can be found, so what caused those events if it was not a perfectly natural-occurring thing, I wonder? Was there suddenly a claim that global warming must be occurring and thus mankind had to stop burning things? I seriously doubt that. There has been massive global flooding over the centuries, at a time well before motor vehicles and so on. So, what was the cause of such weather back then? Clearly not global warming caused by the burning of dinosaur juice and yet so many today are claiming today's weather is. It sounds like we are being taken for fools and all too willing to accept whatever we are told by officials without ever questioning anything ourselves. In the 1887 Yellow River flood in China, for instance, at least 930,000 people died and maybe as many as 2 million. Is global warming to blame for that as well? Some interesting links below for further info. https://www.facebook.com/groups/367938123365897/posts/533443083482066 1887 Yellow River flood - Wikipedia How did oil come to run our world? - BBC Teach

I have discovered that if I use the rear window heater to clear ice or demist the window that the DAB signal disappears and the radio is silent until I switch the heater off again. All other bands are fine. Plugging the VCDS in shows that there is a fault found on the digital radio antenna, code is B1103 11 [00001001] - short to ground. Does this mean that the rear heater element also doubles as the DAB antenna? If so, then does that mean there is or should be a decoupling capacitor between the radio and the element to isolate the DC voltage when the heater is switched on from the radio input, while still allowing the AC radio signal to pass? If so, where is this decoupling capacitor located?

Much much more needs to be done in order to even make private buyers consider switching over.

I expect that there will be many others in a similar position to you on that score as well. That would not be an insignificant cost either. That is another thing that politicians, as well as many more privileged people, would do well to understand. It will be many years before home charging becomes a reality for loads of people, even for those that would appear externally to have off-road capability to enable charging.

These figures of 85% and even 90% relate to what? It looks to me to be percentage of EV drivers/owners who have access to either home or destination chargers and, as such, are totally irrelevant to the discussion re public charging. To get more people taking up the option of driving electric, you have to get into the real world and reside outside of that cosy bubble of having the ability of home charging and also destination charging at your place of work.

It is exceedingly bad practice to use your car in such a fashion; you should always be thinking that once your SoC reaches zero, that is it, no more left. The same applies to ICE, the car might well drive on for a few more miles once zero has been reached, but in an ICE car you might well be building up issues with all kinds of debris being sucked into the system. On a BEV, that extra buffer you go on about all the time is more than likely the batteries safety zone, reserved to ensure that your battery does not become a brick. Rechargeable Li-ion batteries once they reach a critical point will no longer accept a charge.

True, unless you're buying a pure petrol or diesel secondhand cars, then buying a used car is now going to be a real minefield and is highly likely to be an expensive ownership proposition. The reason being that any of the alternatives, MHEV, PHEV or BEV there are so many factors that can and will come into play. A BEV, you can get a SOH report on the battery to take away some of the risk. But with hybrids, you get the added levels of complexity which could well cause buyers massive bills. Some petrol cars these days come with Active Cylinder Technology, shutting down some cylinders once at a crusing speed, which again adds further complexity.

What makes you believe that load of guff? Most ICE drivers are well aware of what their MPG is and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to quickly calculate how many gallons are required to get you back home and possibly to another filling station where much cheapness can be enjoyed on the fuel, for instance, there is a Shell garage near me that has diesel @ £1.69 a litre and there is a BP garage where I can get diesel @ £1.33 a litre. Now my car is currently doing with a mix of urban and town driving roughly 45mpg so that 31 miles that Evolution13 speaks of only costs me £4.13.

And to just add further insult to injury, if you was in a petrol, you are already paying a massive amount in fuel duty so inadvertently assisting the government to pay its way. When in the BEV you will soon be charged an extra 3P a mile so that brings your cost for 31 miles to around £6.63 and if in a PHEV to around £7 for fuel. So that makes a BEV suddenly one to avoid unless you can either do all or most of your charging at home – much cheapness there, then – or you don't pay for your charging, as it's a company car.

And the the only electric motor in sight was the starter motor.........

Its interesting when you consider the sheer amount of HP that the Yangwang U9 Xtreme (308mph), has (2959HP ) compared to the 1578HP of the Bugatti Chiron which did 304.773mph. It really is not all that good at converting that HP into MPH is it. I can't help but wonder just what could the Bugatti do with that same amount of HP under the hood. While Thrust SSC wins hands down on the sheer top speed, you couldn't actually call it a car in the true sense of the word, it would not be capable of being used as a real car.

Well, considering it is just shy of 3,000 HP, almost double that of a Bugatti, is it that surprising??

@Lee01 Yeah, I know, the relevant parts have even more slop so you never read the Scottish Power article either 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Then quite simply, don't is the answer to that. However the original article where I copied the section in quotation marks, came from article about EON who used that technology in Germany and also had or have a trial somewhere in the UK. That said, however, it did not come up just now in my online search, but that means nothing, it might be in the process of being edited or something. Interestingly this article How does the Data Communications Company work with smart meters? | Gas and Electricity Company | ScottishPower from Scottish Power did come up in the search and if you read, it does indeed say that some meters do send data from the meter via the powerline (the one that runs along the street distributing single phase and three phases as required. I have a smart meter installed for both gas and electric (no digital display unit) and this meter sits in the intake box, which is steel box built into the house wall, which is a Faraday cage. Radio signals are therefore unable to penetrate the cage so the only way for that data (send every 30 minutes) is over the powerline cable in the street. Which goes off to a collector unit somewhere in the area where all the other meters connected to the output of the local area substation transformer and extracted and sent to a mast-mounted antenna.

Lee, you could start here? https://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/499506-the-truth-about-electric-cars/page/427/#findComment-5975387

Well it does say on the website Smart Utilities and mentions water and also electric meters but does not go into any real details. So it could be for electric meters, as I read that EON were using the local power lines (240/415v lines, not the grid HV lines) to carry data from meters, digitally encoded to collector boxes where that data is filtered off the power lines and sent to local wireless transmitters. Each one of these transmitters could handle the traffic from so many meters in a given area. So I say, never say never, the technology does actually exist. Whether these poles are used for electric meter data gatherings or not, who actually knows for certain?

Back in Oct 2025, @wyx087 claimed that smart meters used wireless technology to send the readings back to the service provider for billing purposes. I said that the data is also carried on power lines to the radio equipement, which he disputed, saying that data could not coexist with corrupting the data, how does he explain this then I wonder??

Some people actually like the sight of the turbines with their blades slowly turning SWMBO does for one🤔

Oh, sorry, but the way you phrased it sounded like you didn't like the pylons carrying power south into England. Made it look like you were saying that the English didn't care about the pylons spoiling the countryside in Scotland, as long as the English got cheap power. And of course it won't just be the Scots who will see the pylons is it, The English will also have to put up with them, they want the power. It's a bit like my other half; she wants the gear, landline, internet, TV etc but no wires and no ripping the walls out to bury them – in other words no mess🙄

Lets return to more on-topic things, shall we? I think this is a well-balanced view of the current position on the push towards electric cars.

Oh come on, we have hundreds of miles of overhead pylons crisscrossing England and Wales so you're no different to the rest of us. Its the price we all have to pay for modern convenience.