I like a Ford too. When I learnt to drive about 7 years ago, I really wanted to get a Ford Fiesta for my first car. It would have had to be on finance so I very sensibly bought my mum's old Peugeot instead. I think you've got it wrong about practicality and reliability for EVs though, at least with Teslas. I can't speak to other brands as much, as many use different battery chemistry but moreover I haven't seen as many reviews from former owners as I have with Teslas. The only issue with practicality really is if you wouldn't be able to set up a home charger, in which case yeh I wouldn't consider an EV personally. But if your car is starting every day with in the region of 300 miles after a cheap night time recharge, it's not often you'd need a public charger unless you forgot to plug it in. I think in the 7 years I've been driving, I'd have only needed to use a public charger twice if I had one of those. As for reliability, less moving parts means less things to go wrong and less maintenance. I see you allude to cold weather, which was certainly an issue in older battery chemistries and designs, but the current batteries are far more resistant, and thermal management systems have improved it further. Not really an issue in newer Teslas from the last few years. If I was to consider a different brand I'd have to do my research on them first, some of them are playing catch up.

Depends what you look for in your car really. I agree, I'm not a fan of how Teslas look for the most part, although the Roadster is quite nice, and the Highland is a decent aesthetic improvement for the Model 3. When I drive behind Teslas, I hate how they look with that wide bottom and slimmer top section. That said, I'm probably the opposite to you in that they're potentially the only EV I'd consider. I'm more interested in a car that lasts well, drives well, gets me from A to B best, etc. The looks are less important for me, though nice to have. They also get cheaper access to the super chargers, although that's less of a concern when you're minted. Tesla batteries seem to have the best track record for low degradation though, and for safety, and I get the impression most legacy car makers haven't mastered this yet, or at least not been on the road long enough to be sure. If looks are more your thing, there are plenty of quite nice looking EVs. I thought the Xiaomi (yes the phone company) SU7 recently released in China is very slick, if a slightly derivative design, and with good specs. But apparently they keep crashing! I think the Lucid Air is a lovely, more mature car than the Teslas, with similar or even better specs, but again not out in the UK yet. I like how some of the BYD cars look. Reckon the new Renault 5 will be popular with those who like small hatchbacks. Like you say, money is a huge concern unless you're rich enough that it isn't, but there are some great deals to be had on the used market. In time, it will all improve - looks, affordability, the used market etc. Reckon I'm a good 3-5 years from being able to replace my banger with one!

'Of course, we wanted to keep Sammie, and we offered him a 1% pay rise to stay, but at the end of the day, Luton are a massive club. Sammie wanted to play in the Premiership, and that's just not on the agenda here, so we sold him for £2 million to keep the lights on.' (I'm exaggerating, I think he'll go for about 8 million same as you, and probably could go for around 10 mill if we held out a bit, which we won't)

Little update on this, since the post is over 4 years old. China is now the largest domestic producer of solar energy in the world. Hell, just in 2023 China added more solar capacity (216 GW) than the US had in total (175 GW). It brought them to 609 GW of solar generation. The US was in second place globally with their 175 GW, and after that it drops to 94 GW (India) and beyond. They're streets ahead for this. They also accounted for about 60% of global wind installations, and the belief is their emissions have peaked (ahead of government targets) and will decrease from now on. Furthermore, they build the majority of the world's renewables and are at the forefront of many technological improvements in renewables and battery technology. It shouldn't be forgotten either that a lot of their pollution historically and now is in service of producing goods for the rest of the world, ie us. Russia on the other hand would seem to be a problem, using oil and gas money to fund wars of aggression and conquest.

Labour aren't left wing anymore, if what you were implying is that 'even socialists are promoting growth'.

Well predicted! Starts April 2025. Ridiculously, it seems even EVs that are only two years old will have to pay the standard rate (£190). Not the best way to encourage further EV adoption. Think they should have put it off a bit longer, or at least made it far cheaper. Weirdly though, 'Zero and low emission cars first registered between 1 March 2001 and 30 March 2017 currently in Band A will move to the Band B rate, currently £20 a year'. Bizarre for it to be considerably cheaper tax than a nearly new EV, I guess the thinking is that drivers of EVs that age will be poorer, but somehow the same courtesy isn't given to me for driving my old Peugeot from 2008!

Those are awful numbers, I wouldn't get the electric one either. Honestly, the minivans etc haven't developed to the numbers 'normal' EVs can do yet, due to the weights they carry. That said, the Tesla semi trucks look to have impressive numbers pulling far greater weights. The ridiculous-looking cybertruck can shift too. Toyota haven't really committed to EVs properly yet tbh, despite some good hybrids. There are definitely minivan EVs with much better range than that though, if you're not so partial to the brand you won't shift. In fact I just did a lil google for you and got this list: https://www.fleetalliance.co.uk/business-ev/the-10-electric-vans-with-the-best-range/ Which happens to mention a Toyota Proace Electric that has a 205 mile range (looking at their website, sounds like that drops to 177 miles if you're driving like a maniac in bad weather). Think you were looking at the 50kw battery rather than the 75kw battery. Looks like it has the same crappy top speed though. Personally, I'd probably keep your existing vehicle for another 3 years or so and then re-evaluate what's on the market as I bet EV minivans will have improved markedly by then.

Wow those are long journeys! Am I right in remembering you live in Australia? Full EVs definitely won't meet the case needs of everyone just yet. Although you won't need three hours to recharge a good, modern EV. A Model S for example can charge up to 200 miles in 15 minutes at a supercharger, which you could easily fill with a piss and grabbing a bite to eat. And you could have up to 394 miles to begin with on a full starting charge. It still does mean more recharging time than you'd spend with a petrol or diesel car, but nowhere near the times you're thinking. Of course, the issues then come in two forms: affordability for normal people, who mostly can't come close to affording a brand new Tesla (some very good options on the used market though, with more battery life left than you'd think, but still generally far in excess of many can afford for now - that said, I saw a video where a guy got about 260 miles out of a Tesla he bought for less than £9k, haggled down from £13k, and it had done 450k miles in its life!). And the supercharger network. I've no idea what that's like in somewhere like Australia, with colossal distances between cities, but I bet it's not always great. A normal charger might take you hours, and I agree that's just not practical. The supercharger networks are only going to improve though, and hopefully within a few years you'll be in a position to change your mind. Personally, with everything I've seen about the technological advancements, I'm predicting there'll be commercially available EVs with 1,000 miles of range by the end of 2030. It'll be interesting to come back to this comment in 6 years to see if I was right! Honestly I think it could be as early as 2028.

I would guess it's because they're less efficient. They certainly have their advantages, but like you say they're a bit of a compromise. So it's kind of like, best of both worlds, worst of both worlds. Thing is, if you're filling up your petrol tank, the EV then has to lug that extra weight around, so they're often less efficient than an EV with a similar size battery. If you almost always do short trips before you recharge, it's a bit of a waste. If you do a lot of long range driving, your fossil fuels are lugging that extra battery weight around, as it weighs almost the same when fully discharged. Also, fully discharging your battery isn't great for longevity in most battery chemistries (though not as lethal for them as some make out). I think that compromise made more sense when the EV industry and infrastructure was developing, and range anxiety was more of a thing. Now, chargers and superchargers are far more common, satnavs have them well mapped, and the best EVs can almost get you from Edinburgh to London on a full starting charge (actually the best ranged, one of the Lucid Air models, could get you that distance with about 100 miles to spare, but it's not available in the UK yet). In the UK, unless you drive freakishly long journeys regularly, range anxiety is very unlikely to amount to anything real with much regularity. I think hybrids are still a good introduction for people trying to dip their toe in the EV market though. They're cheaper and let you experiment with electric without being completely reliant on it if you're still worried about them. But honestly, I don't think you'll really see new ones made anymore within 10 years, probably less. At least for over here.

It's not that much of an elephant in the room, although it may have been more of one when you posted this 2 years ago. The price of lithium has recently been shooting down, as more reserves are found, and the processes and infrastructure improve. But most crucially, these batteries can be recycled pretty much entirely and these methods will improve too. In fact even a dead battery can fetch a nice chunk of change for this use. Once there are enough in circulation, you won't need to extract much lithium anymore, as you'll have almost a closed loop system. There is more than enough lithium in the world to provide for this loop. You'll find different figures of course as it depends how they're measured etc, but a quick google suggests there are between 14-22 million tons of known lithium that can be mined with current methods, and '(depending on who you ask) the amount of lithium needed to meet current goals is somewhere between 0.5 and 1.3 million tons'. There are environmental issues with the mining, yes, but there are environmental issues with mining the materials for combustion engines too, and far greater environmental issues with mining fossil fuels. From memory (I could have the number wrong) you will make up the production emissions of an EV in the first 10,000 miles or so typically, as you're not using fossil fuels. Of course this depends partially on the source of the electricity you're using, but we're getting increasingly green with our grid energy and you can use providers like Octopus who source their electricity renewably (granted I imagine you probably just receive the same electricity anyway, but Ocotupus will buy more green energy as a result and it will balance out in some complex offsetting that encourages more renewables to be built). Even if you use entirely fossil fuel sourced electricity, you'll still end up producing less emissions than you would have with fossil fuels, recouping the production difference in about 30k or 40k miles I think it was (a little while since I read it, sorry). There are also nascent battery technologies developing. Sodium ion batteries are already in some Chinese production EVs. These are much cheaper as they don't use lithium but basically use salt. They're less efficient as they're heavier, but they're very well suited for city driving (ie people who don't really do long trips anyway but primarily commute relatively short distances in cities). Their price will also attract people, and techs like this and other non-lithium batteries will reduce the strain on lithium demands, keeping prices and resource extraction down. Other technological improvements can have this effect on reducing lithium demands and other rare earth metals. More efficient motors that are constantly developing, along with all the other tech and efficiency improvements in these cars. Semi solid state and solid state batteries are a big one too. Nobody has quite mastered the latter yet in terms of making it production-ready, but semi solid state batteries are coming now. They are safer (already an overstated issue in the better batteries) and much more efficient. This means a semi solid state lithium battery can be a lot lighter. So you can either keep the same weight of battery and get much more range out of it, or as some will do, make the battery far lighter and get the same range, meaning less lithium used. Apologies, sort of, looking into all these technologies has become a bit of an obsession for me in the last few months. Not sure why, I certainly can't afford an EV yet!

Just because a handful of high profile players insisted on release clauses in their contracts doesn't mean it was standard policy at the club. There might be other players who had clauses, I guess we'll never know, but I never got the impression it was standard policy from us. That would be a weird thing to do, as being a selling/trading club is one thing, but restricting your bargaining power isn't a wise way to go about that model. And Williams was a very shrewd operator. Much more likely, these particular high profile players (maybe one or two others) insisted, or rather their agents insisted, on the clauses in order to sign their deals. Santa Cruz didn't go via a release clause, which further suggests it wasn't standard policy as he was very high profile. Neither did Bentley. The Bellamy clause is the only one that was really low (barely above what we paid for him) but it would seem he wasn't coming in the first place without it as frankly he saw himself as better than us (backed up by quotes in Robbie Savage's autobiography). Duff and Jones, theirs were lower than we could have got, as nearly every minimum fee release clause ever triggered is (that's pretty much the point of them), but probably only by a few million in each case. In Duff's case, the contract was signed before Abramovich upturned the established order for what players cost.

Duff had a release clause, Bellamy had a release clause, Jones had a release clause. Santa Cruz was a terrific deal for us, it was fairly clear at the time he had gone back off the boil and was a crock. Bentley dragged on for most of the summer, culminating in the player drunkenly interviewing with Sky Sports on holiday to say he wanted out. Don't think there was much chance of keeping him without him becoming hugely disruptive. I'm not a fan of putting in release clauses, kinda think they should be banned, but Bellamy wasn't signing in the first place without it. Possible the other players weren't signing their contract extensions without them either.

In fairness, if we had been in the second tier at the time, and that was the only opposition Duff had gotten to show his class against, that's probably about as good as we could have expected back then. I'd say it's more like selling Duff for £4-5 million from the second tier.

I take it you mean a loan? I was thinking the same.

Nobody will ever convince me he didn't do that shit on purpose. I've always suspected someone threw him a bribe, telling him it would also speed up his move away.

It does, but not in the mens game. Has to be a record at our sort of level and above. Certainly in England, if not globally.

Not as thick as he thinks we are... imagine expecting fans to believe that a 5-0 defeat to an average side won't have any effect on our confidence leading up to playing one of the best sides in the league! 🤣

Has to be a world record, that.

Whoah whoah, steady on! Hyam was very very poor tonight, but he wasn't two own goals and a red card poor! Which was on the back of another own goal in the previous game, which I believe made for 3 own goals in less than 90 minutes of football across both games. At least, I assume you're talking about the Cardiff game, as he actually scored a goal for us in his very last game (in the cup).

People assume that logically, an owner would cut their losses at 200 million in debt, unable to fund the club and playing in the third tier, with clearly none of the debt to ever be repaid. The mistake is assuming logic from Venkys.

Christ tonight was dire. Especially the second half. We're very fortunate we have this points cushion and everyone around us is in poor form instead of fighting for their lives like usually starts to happen at this point. I suspect we'll stay up, potentially we won't even need any more points, but I expect 2 more will suffice. Then I expect us to go down next season.

Totally bizarre decision. Can't think of any justification for it at all. Eustace must have been watching a totally different game.

You seem to struggle with nuance. I never said anything about a policy, nor have I implied it. I simply believe that in this current situation, we should attempt to renew the players with expiring contracts, at the right terms. I never mentioned their ages, that was all you - in fact Gally is older than the age range you said. Nor did I say it should have been a full-on policy 3/4 years ago, I was talking about a single player. It's all situational, not policy, and that's why you're putting words in my mouth by saying what you said. But what we did 3/4 years ago, not renewing the contracts of BBD, Lenihan, Rothwell, cost us an absolute fuckton in lost revenue, so even if it had been a general policy I espoused, which it wasn't and isn't, we'd still have made a lot more money on it than we'd have lost in extra contracts. Though I should probably clarify this summer on reflection - I wouldn't renew the broken Fleck, and although after his first few games I'd potentially have been ok with a cheap further year from MacFadzean if he maintained his form, I wouldn't now. Forgot about those two when answering your question. I was essentially just thinking about Dolan and Gally, who both have 1 year extension options that I'd exercise. If Gally won't commit to a further contract at reduced terms, I'd be open to offers for him. Same for Dolan, with a bit more leeway on his contract. Hyam, Siggy and Markanday are out of contract next summer and don't have extension options. I'd see what they want this summer, and if it's too much, again consider any offers or actively attempt to sell them. If I were to put words in your mouth like you have with me, I'd say that 'your policy' of letting everyone's contracts expire has fucked us over repeatedly, a lot more than it's benefitted us, and we have no money to replace them.

I thought it was pretty obvious, but: "You're basically advocating that every player under 26/27 should be offered a new deal to protect our investment. That will work out some of the time, but it will lead to some awful contracts." I never said this. Nor do I believe in that as an absolute policy.

None from the first team squad.