So. the P.M. is backing down on his promises due to pressure from those whose support he wants/needs.

Siobhan Baillie wants us to believe that Rishi Sunak cares about ordinary families. ( SNJ 27 September ) I mean, he once let slip that he had working class friends until he realised how ridiculous it was for him to make such a claim.

The Stroud M.P. said, that his "pragmatic tweaks" were so that families wouldn't feel forced to make thousands of pounds of changes they can't afford. She forgot to say that some of them can't even afford to eat, never mind anything else, because they have had to endure 13 years of her and her colleagues running the country; (into the ground). Still, apart from little details like that, why would people think they would be forced to do anything? The limitation is on the manufacture of petrol and diesel cars; nothing to do with when you have to buy a car. Is it ever compulsory to buy a car? If public transport hadn't been decimated by the Tories a lot of people wouldn't need a car at all. Anyway there will still be plenty of second hand cars around for decades after 2035. The same is the case for gas boilers. Manufacture of them will stop in 2035. There will be no compulsion to change anything.

One thing she does say that's true, and that in itself is amazing, is that "people will now have more time to find better ways to heat their homes than to use gas and oil". She doesn't have any suggestions as to what those better ways might be of course, but I believe a good start would be to save any Tory election propaganda that drops through their doors over the next few months, and there will probably be a lot, then burn it when the weather gets colder. Readers of the Daily Telegraph, Mail and Express will have a ready supply of rubbish to create a bit of heat so they will be better off than most.

She finishes with the usual nonsense about the pandemic and the war in Ukraine causing inflation and cost of living pressures, but forgets the £40 billion cost of Brexit, the £37 billion wasted on test and trace, the £30 billion flushed down the toilet by her friend Liz Truss and who knows how many billions spent on a railway line.

Howard Price.

Nailsworth