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The Sun
17 minutes ago
- The Sun
Fury after motorists paid more than £20billion in VAT last year just to buy and run cars
MOTORISTS paid more than £20billion in VAT last year just to buy and run cars — making it one of the biggest taxes on driving. Figures show consumer spending on vehicles hit £137billion in 2024, the third highest on record. That generated £22.8billion in VAT for the Treasury, almost matching the £24.6billion raised from fuel duty. But £14.9billion of that fuel duty came from diesel, which is mainly used by haulage firms — not everyday drivers. Meanwhile, tax receipts from Vehicle Excise Duty are around £8billion a year. AA president Edmund King said: 'There's a threat of increased motoring taxation as the Chancellor seeks to balance the books. "But the latest Office for National Statistics consumer spending statistics reveal the hidden tax take from private motorists.' He added: 'The danger of ramping up motoring costs is that it affects individuals and businesses — and ultimately fuels inflation.' His warning came as fears mounted that Chancellor Rachel Reeves is considering a fuel duty hike in her next Budget to cover the cost of reversing welfare cuts. The Sun's Keep It Down campaign has helped freeze fuel duty since 2011 — saving drivers thousands. Reform UK's Richard Tice said: 'These figures show drivers are being clobbered with a stealth tax bill worth billions. 'With VAT raking in more than fuel duty, the idea of hiking it further is a disgrace. Labour must commit to freezing fuel duty — anything else would be a kick in the teeth for working people.' Drivers forced to pay new 'Doomsday' fee every day under July plan - it's already in effect depending on where you park_1 A Treasury spokesman said: 'We extended the fuel duty cut this year, saving drivers £3billion, and we're investing £1.6billion to fix up to seven million extra potholes.' Treasury Minister James Murray refused to comment on Labour's tax plans yesterday. He told Sky News: 'There's lots of speculation about lots of different tax measures, and I'm not going to get into that.' 1
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
RAY MASSEY: Buckle up for a chat with the new AI Mercedes
Do you talk to your car? If so, you'll love the sporty new Mercedes-Benz CLA which I've just been road-testing – and chatting to – out in Denmark. Thanks to the addition of AI it not only answers questions but – the manufacturer claims – can hold and sustain 'complex conversations'. Offered for the first time in the CLA, the system is certainly a step up from Amazon's Alexa – but it's not infallible, simply ignoring the question when puzzled. There's an undeniable eeriness to conversing with the assistant, too. I drove the all-electric CLA 250+, which will be the first version in a new family of variants to reach UK shores by autumn. While bigger all-round than its predecessor, it still looks reasonably compact inside, and the legroom in the back is certainly a little tight. That said, the space up front is actually more generous than it looks, and there's a decent boot, at 405 litres, plus a handy front trunk under the bonnet adding another 101 litres. Exterior styling is sporty, with a sweeping, coupe-like smart-casual vibe on what is essentially a sleek saloon. Some 142 illuminated LED stars adorn the front grille, plus many more sprinkled around. The interior is a mixture of modern and sophisticated, with flashes of bling that verge on looking and feeling a bit cheap. The dashboard is dominated by a 14in display, and there's an option to elongate it for the front passenger to form the MBUX Superscreen. Without it, the rest of the dashboard is covered in more stars. In urban areas, the new CLA is comfortable and quiet for tootling around. Various warning sensors signal the driver when there are other vehicles, obstacles and cyclists (of which there are many in Copenhagen), giving you time to take evasive action. On faster country roads, it has a feistier side. Powered by an 85kW battery and a 200kw electric motor, the two-speed gear-box accelerates from rest to 62mph in a sprightly 6.7 seconds, up to a top speed limited at 130mph. It performed well on corners with instant speed for overtaking. With a claimed 484 miles – allowing for some reduction with real-world driving – you can safely cover the 400 miles from London to Edinburgh on a full charge. Mercedes says a ten-minute blast on a fast charger will give you a 200-mile top-up. Prices for the new CLA were never going to be cheap – and they are well above the £37,000 cap for the Government's new Electric Car Grant of up to £3,750. There are three trim levels starting from £45,615 for the Sport Edition, rising to £49,375 for the AMG Line Edition, up to £51,770 for the range-topping AMG Line Premium Edition. Maybe I should ask my AI companion for a discount. With a claimed 484 miles – allowing for some reduction with real-world driving – you can safely cover the 400 miles from London to Edinburgh on a full charge CHAT CLA The fourth generation of Mercedes-Benz User Experience – or 'MBUX' - infotainment system integrates AI from Microsoft and Google, combining knowledge gathered from the Internet based on ChatGPT4o and Microsoft Bing Search. So I also 'road-tested' my AI companion – speaking with an educated English woman's soothing, classless tone – with some testing questions. 'Who said E=mc² ?, I asked for openers, before receiving a treatise on Albert Einstein's famous equation linking energy and mass from my virtual assistant. 'Why was Chancellor Rachel Reeves in the news?' I ventured before receiving an oral report of her tearful performance in the House of Commons. Then I went for a moral conundrum: 'If everything I say is a lie, am I now telling the truth?' Gotcha! The AI response did not answer, nor even seek to tackle the question. It just changed the subject, like any wily politician caught out. Humanity 1, AI nil. For now. But I do not doubt as the tech advances, the levels of subtly will increase exponentially to the level of KITT from TV's Knight Rider. IN THE PIPELINE Although only the 250+ version of the CLA is being launched in the UK for now, I also drove the more powerful (260kW), punchier all-wheel drive 350 4Matic version which accelerates from 0 to 62mph in just 4.9 seconds ( 1.8 seconds quicker) up to the same 130mph governed top speed. It felt a gutsier and more muscular drive. From early next year a petrol-electric hybrid version of the CLA will be launched with 48-volt technology, a newly developed 1.5 litre 4-cylinder petrol engine and an electric motor integrated into the eight-speed dual-clutch transmission. I also had an early peek in Denmark of a second generation CLA Shooting Brake estate version following the first launched in 2015. The German car giant's first battery-powered estate car with a claimed range of up to 472 miles goes on sale next Spring and features hundreds of three-pointed stars including 158 embedded into the glass on the car's stellar panoramic glass starlight. Other variants will follow. VERDICT The new all-electric CLA 250+ is a smart and sporty choice with decent acceleration and ambience – though if you want more punch wait for the CLA 350 4Matic all-wheel drive. Either way, you'll never be short of conversation. Confusion over Electric Car Grant scheme On the face of it, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander's announcement this week of discounts of up to £3,750 as part of Labour's £650million Electric Car Grant scheme sounds like good news to stimulate flagging sales. But my motor industry contacts, while supportive, warn 'the devil's in the detail', as a complex system will determine which cars qualify and for how much, based on how green they are, including production. Additionally, it is only available for cars costing up to £37,000 – which rules out top-selling Teslas – and carmakers must apply to see if their vehicles are eligible, putting extra bureaucracy on to dealers.
The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
Eco-mental Labour must've let Diane Abbott do maths on EV plan – it'll cost BILLIONS while families struggle to buy food
IN A desperate bid to make Britain full of light breezes and scented pine freshness, the Government has announced that if you buy an electrical car, they will give you a chunky £3,750. But not if you buy a Tesla. 10 Why? Ah well, that's simple. The Labourites want to be fully eco-mental of course, but not if it means putting money into the pocket of Elon Musk. Because he's the anti-Christ. He helped put Donald Trump in the White House. He made a Nazi salute. So yes, they want to be green but not if it means helping that far-right bastard. The £3,750 grant is only available if you buy an electrical car that costs less than £37,000. Teslas start at £39,000. If you buy one of those, you're on your own sunshine. There is, however, more to this story than meets the eye. We are told that the cost of this scheme is going to be £650million. But who did the maths? Diane Abbott? Because they don't make sense – £650million is only enough to pay the grants for 173,333 cars. And that's about half the number of EVs sold in the UK last year. The Government must know this. They have access to Google, and they have calculators on their phones. So they must know that if this scheme runs for a while, it'll end up costing billions. And how can they justify that? How can they say they have no money to mend potholes or repair schools or keep the Navy going? But they do have enough to help someone buy some electrical crap from China. Staggering drone vid shows vast Chinese EV mega factory bigger than a CITY with its own football stadium Don't they see what they're doing? They're actually paying us to send our money to Beijing. It gets worse. They are prepared to subsidise people who want to move around but as we have seen in the last year, they are absolutely not prepared to subsidise the food you eat. There is no government money for farmers. All of the grants and the subsidies that were introduced back in the last century to make sure that even the poorest people in society could afford to feed their families are systematically being taken away. Rachel Reeves tells us she has to do this because the coffers are empty. And yet there are billions on offer for people who need transport so they can pick up their benefits more easily. ARMY PROBE NOT ON THERE'S a lot to be depressed about at the moment, but I think the thing that's getting me down most of all is the plan to investigate former soldiers who served in Northern Ireland to see if they shot someone that perhaps they shouldn't. There is to be no investigation into the yobboes who were throwing petrol bombs at them or blowing up buildings in the UK. The thugs who shot Private Tony Harrison, a paratrooper from London five times in the back in 1991 while watching television with his girlfriend. No one will be bringing them to trial. The British government is only interested in chasing British soldiers. We're told by Starmer 's Stasi army of human rights lawyers that the chance of a conviction is very small. But very small isn't the same thing as 'impossible' is it. So imagine. You're a former soldier. You've now retired and are spending your old age, tending to your roses and reflecting on a life well led. A life where you were prepared to sacrifice yourself for the good of the country and the people in it. And now you've been told that a secret army of lefties is going to be looking into your activities from when you were in your twenties and that if anything untoward comes to light, you'll have to go to prison. It sickens me. I'm not sure our court system is working very well at the moment. 10 Because if you cut down a tree and in so doing slightly damage a wall, you get four years plus change. But if you stagger out of a Wetherspoons pub and punch a policemanwoman in the face, you get fined £160. JOHN'S AXING A PUZZLE FUNNY isn't it how Top Gear was always seen as the bad boy of the BBC. Every week, we'd be in the papers for doing something wrong or saying something inappropriate. And as a result, we were always being carpeted by bosses who told us to sit up straight and clean our teeth and behave ourselves. Ha. It now turns out that compared to every other show on the Beeb, we were saints. But that said, I am a bit worried about this John Torode chap from MasterChef. Because he seems to have been sacked for an offence even though no one can quite say what the offence was. He's been told that at a private party seven or eight years ago, he sang a song which someone thought was racist and that as a result, he has to go. Who reported him? Dunno. Was there any context? No one's saying. BOTTLE JOB ON 'MILK' BOFFINS advising the Government have announced that there's a problem with vegan milk. Well yes. It's not milk. But there's more to it than that. They say it must be stuffed full of chemicals if it's going to be good for us. And that soya milk is potentially harmful – they warn it may give young children something called Kawasaki Disease which will crack their lips and give them a fever. So what will our vegetarian leader do about this do we think? Reverse his thinking and on the way home tonight, stop off for a Big Mac and a shake? Doubt it. I suspect he'll throw the report in the bin, and immediately import another avocado from Ecuador. IT'S ALL A BIT LIKE 1976 . . . WITH NO ESCAPE FROM REALITY 10 10 BACK in 1976, there was such a long spell of hot, dry weather that hosepipe bans became necessary. And there was a Labour government in power who were busy making a complete mess of everything. The economy was tanking. Strikes were rife. And the Prime Minister was claiming that he'd inherited all the problems from the Tories. Meanwhile, there were calls for the party to lurch to the left and in the middle of it all, the country had to go to the International Monetary Fund and take out what at the time was the biggest loan the world had ever seen. We were called, with good reason, the sick man of Europe. And now let's spool forward to 2025. The year so far as been so hot and dry that a hosepipe ban is in force across large parts of the country. And there's a Labour government in power that's tanking the economy and blaming the mess it's making on the Tories. Many are saying we are the sick man of Europe, and that soon we will have to go cap in hand to the IMF. The only difference between then and now is that then, we had some decent music to entertain us. Bohemian Rhapsody for example. And we were all eventually rescued by Mrs Thatcher, who told us we had to take our medicine and turned us into an economic powerhouse. Today, we have Pink Pony Club and a promise that in the next election, a bunch of people who aren't old enough to drink in a pub and get all their information from TikTok will be allowed to vote in the General Election. Which virtually guarantees the nightmare is here to stay.
