Hard luck, Humph

What other people think or assume about me has been out of sight in my rear view mirror for a good few decades.

I’m not so sure I’d want more rules, in fact I’d welcome fewer. In particular I dislike retrospective penalisation of vehicles that met the requirements in place at the time when they were new.
There are cars less than ten years old being penalised for their emissions.

Absolutely, which is why the ULEZ is so irritating to people, even those of us who will probably never need to worry about it. The environmental cost of manufacturing a new car when a perfectly satisfactory older one is still running - and the cost of buying one to people who do not have the money to do so.

I really feel for people who do not have the disposable income to be able to make a change in their lives. They are at the mercy of politicians, extremists and big business. They have no say. My accountant says that money does not buy you happiness, but it does buy you choice. The poor of London and other cities which have imposed ULEZ type areas are saying to the poor "we don't care about you". The wealthy can buy a new car, the poor cannot and yet the poor are the ones who cannot afford to live in the city centre but carry out the basic jobs that are located in the city centres so have to drive in if public transport doesn't meet their requirements.

I get very angry about this, as despite seeming like a right wing lunatic at times, being a property professional, I can see that massive injustices are created by bad or no government policy (from all parties) on housing. There are so many ways to deal with the problem if the politicians worried about the country and not their jobs. Sometimes, I do wish we had a benign dictator in charge..

We had the same discussion when our daughter was taking driving lessons about two years ago.

I would suggest that for families which do not have a manual car for a child to learn on or will have access to after they have passed their test, then learning on a manual is probably pointless now.

However for families like Al's and ours where there is a manual car available then it meant that the child would have their own car immediately after passing their test. So learning on a manual made a lot of sense.

Not sure why it kills the used car market stone dead. EVs have fewer moving parts and are an infinitely better product reportedly.

The tech moves on, the modules are plug and play, you can plug an RJ45 cable into a 15 year old laptop or a brand new one. I can, for £500, upgrade the screen in my 13 year old car to touchscreen giving me Android auto and Carplay.

I don't think people shopping for a £2k - £5k car care if they have the latest puddle lights. They want something reliable which is going to last a few years.

The ten year old car would be the new three year old car. It covers the sustainability aspect of personal transport.

I'm not suggesting what I wrote above is the answer just using a stick to provoke some thought.

What we know is how we've always done things and understand that (rampant consumerism) cannot continue. This revolution in personal transport is an opportunity to rethink our relationship with the car.

What comes out the exhaust is only one part of car ownership.

The owner of the business my son did his placement with had an interesting conversation with him on the way to one of the jobs. He drives an EV. He was talking to my son how the car is only one tool we have to enable movement not the only tool. Walking, cycling, public transport are all alternatives whether we like the idea or not.