#BrownCarGuy – News, Views & Reviews!
Tomorrow, something unusual happens. Lent begins for Christians. Ramadan begins for Muslims. Two great traditions, drawn from different scriptures, different histories, different spiritual traditions – and yet arriving on our calendars almost side by side. Both are seasons of restraint. Of discipline. Of reflection. Of giving something up. And so I want to suggest something radical.
A few days ago, headlines were dominated by Sir Jim Ratcliffe, co-owner of Manchester United. Founder and driving force behind the INEOS Grenadier, the same INEOS that is also part-owner of the Mercedes F1 team, and, oh, by the way, he is one of the richest men in Britain. His estimated net worth hovers around £17 billion, according to recent Rich Lists. This Knight of the Realm made remarks suggesting the UK was being “colonised” by immigrants. He referenced unemployment, claimed nine million people were on benefits, and linked immigration levels to economic strain.
Continue reading “Billionaires, Colonisation & the Grenadier – Shortsighted or Shenanigans?”
Whenever Lord of the Flies resurfaces, as it now has with a dramatic new television serialisation, we are invited to revisit the same bleak conclusion: scratch the surface of civilisation and out spills the savage. Remove teachers, police, governments, parents, and apparently we revert to painted faces, sharpened sticks, and ritual murder before it’s coconut milk time.
There is something deeply, almost comically broken about a system that tells you to consume less, waste less, and think about the planet, while simultaneously financially penalising you for keeping a perfectly usable car on the road. Yet that is precisely where the UK finds itself today. If you own an older car, a modern classic, or even a relatively ordinary early-2000s performance saloon, you may now be paying more in Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) than someone who has just driven out of a showroom in a brand-new supercar costing six figures. That isn’t hyperbole. It’s arithmetic. And it exposes the sheer lack of joined-up thinking in modern motoring policy.
Some motoring moments make you laugh later. Others make you stop and think, hang on… something’s not right here. In this episode of BCG Therapy Podcast, a near-disaster involving a DeLorean nearly disappearing into a trench at a luxury hotel in Dubai with actual Star Wars Stormtroopers watching, and a glamorous Aston Martin that would take on Spectre but was defeated by a British pothole spark a much bigger conversation about modern motoring – and why driving increasingly feels stacked against the very people doing it.
AI is not going to take your job. It already has.
This is not a rant against AI. Those of you who follow me know that I use the absolute heck out of it! It’s my illustrator, animator, assistant, researcher, sub-editor… hell, AI is my bitch. It helps boost my workflow and up my pace – it’s the VTEC that lets this one-man content engine rev harder, faster, longer.
Continue reading “AI Vs Authenticity and the True Cost of “Good Enough””
Remember when getting pulled over went a bit like this… You’d clock the flashing lights, feel your stomach drop, rehearse your apology, and then hope – just hope – that the officer was having a good day. Maybe you’d get a telling-off. Maybe a warning. Maybe, if the stars aligned and Mercury was in retrograde, you’d get sent on your way with a “take it easy, mate”. Yeah, about that…
The future has arrived. Not with a heroic fanfare or a cinematic fly-through of a gleaming metropolis, but more like a confused relative turning up late to Christmas dinner wearing mismatched socks and asking if anyone’s got the Wi-Fi password. Because the trouble with the future is this: it never arrives the way the sci-fi promised. There are no flying cars. No elegant solutions. No perfectly optimised utopia. Instead, we’ve been handed a series of half-finished ideas, each more complicated than the last, and told they’re all part of a journey.
For years now, motorists have been told the same soothing bedtime story: “Don’t worry. You’ve got until 2030.”
Plenty of time, apparently. Time to save. Time to decide. Time to enjoy one last glorious petrol-powered hurrah before the lights go out and the chargers take over. Except… that story is nonsense.
Somewhere between the fifth AI-generated video you didn’t trust and the third car launch you instantly forgot, it dawned on us: we might be living in the uncanny valley… and it’s a charged congestion zone!
That unsettling sense of digital déjà vu is where this latest BCG Podcast begins. I’m joined by Sy from Drivers Union, and together we tumble headfirst into a bonkers tangled conversation about AI, cars, car culture, Bond, books, events, identity and the creeping suspicion that none of us quite know what’s real anymore – including ourselves.
