Originally Posted by
Pain
Was said actor being sincerely truthful and honest, or did he really think (naively) it would be good publicity? I saw some of the reportage on this and the BBC, in their wholly predictable fashion, went for the vox pop angle. Strangely, those folks who were asked only represented one particular section of the general public (I was going to use the word ‘ironically’ instead of ‘strangely’, but realised there was nothing ironic about something deliberately set up).
Anyway… back to Nissan. I caught a bit of the BBC’s House of Lords coverage (I didn’t have any fresh paint to watch drying) and, by chance, my lords and ladies happened to be discussing this very subject. It turns out there will be no jobs lost over Nissan’s decision not to proceed with their new diesel SUV, but there won’t now be the [notional] 740 jobs created which supposedly were on their way to the factory. However, back in 2016, to secure Nissan’s commitment to this development & manufacture, the Government had to offer the company not only at least sixty-million quid as an ‘incentive’ but also an assurance it would not allow Brexit to create ‘difficulties’. Now hang on a minute! Our Government (yes, the one that reposes in Westminster) had already decided that diesel cars were a bad thing and needed to be got off our roads, but still they wanted to invest our money in them…. Double standards! Then, because other UK-based motor manufacturers would almost certainly have felt a distinct unfairness in the nature of this hand-out, the whole matter had to be kept secret…. One bloke (sorry, lord) then said he could reveal this arrangement now (on the 5th Feb) because it was no longer “sensitive”. Too right it wasn’t! It had already been leaked a few days earlier. Our lords and ladies then continued, without any apparent awareness of their own ridiculousness, to say that this matter highlighted the perils of getting Brexit wrong…!
Mr Rees-Mogg (amongst others) succinctly picked out the bones of this, mentioning that Nissan’s decision was “…nothing to do with Brexit” but has everything to do with diesel-engined cars, Japan’s economy and its very recently-completed trade deal with the EU.
Apparently, Nissan will continue to develop/make a hybrid version of its popular ‘Cashcow’ (well that’s what it sounded like in posh bloke-speak) at Sunderland, so we can all breathe a sigh of relief…. until Nissan decides it no longer needs to be in the UK at all .