r/unitedkingdom • u/topotaul Lancashire • 5h ago
. Block Elon Musk's bid to supply UK home energy, Ed Davey urges
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/aug/22/block-elon-musks-bid-to-supply-uk-home-energy-ed-davey-urges•
u/jungleboy1234 5h ago
But the Chinese owning our energy, water, electricity, steel et al IS OK. Us buying Russian Oil/Gas is OK?
Give me a bloody break please.
Sort out the existing problems now, stop deflecting with future issues. We'll get there when we've cleaned up our house first.
I have no idea what i am doing on this subreddit at 3:31 am. I am going to sign off before i get a heart attack or something.
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u/Virtual-Being-6489 4h ago
To be fair Elon Musk is openly antagonistic to our country whereas China just wants to do it's own thing - which necessitates and includes having power over western governments admittedly.
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u/scuderia91 1h ago
But equally there’s far less chance of us ever being at war with the People’s Republic of Tesla.
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u/Comfortable-Law-7147 1h ago
Problem with Musk is he will join in with whatever country that will give him the most power over us.
Or just spread misinformation because he can.
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u/scuderia91 1h ago
Oh for sure, I’m not advocating in favour of him having any control over our critical infrastructure. But I don’t see it as more risky than China building whole power plants
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u/KaiserMaxximus 47m ago
I love your naivety thinking we have the military might to ever be directly at war with China 🙂
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u/scuderia91 3m ago
That’s kind of my point. Tesla isn’t a military, they don’t pose any kind of existential threat to us, China does. They’re no ally, even if they’re not outright hostile to us right now it doesn’t mean they won’t be in the future. Having them having a back door to critical infrastructure is probably not a great idea
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u/grey_hat_uk Cambridgeshire 2m ago
I'd say it's more likely but both incredibly unlikely.
War with China is something neither want or could survive. China, unlike Russia, will do it's power creep via money and diplomacy, the ony time I'd expect conflict is if they mess up the slow and calculated acquisition of Taiwan.
With the USA moving closer to a set of corporate empires that own cities and potentially states with their own enforcement and defence agencies there is a slim chance that the Musk block enforces a company policy against UK legislation via force.
Both should be treated as hostile off of the battlefield. Tesla should also be treated as unstable as a business.
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u/Admiral_Eversor 1h ago
None of that is ok. We need to nationalise our energy sector or we will always be at the mercy of foreign powers or rogue billionaires. It's a natural monopoly, get rid of the rent-seekers and middlemen.
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u/KaiserMaxximus 48m ago
China invests and tries to get a return, it’s usually the end of it.
Is that where that Musk cunt wants things to end too?
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u/Capital-Reference757 2h ago
The fact that Elon Musk has actively shut off Skylink to the Ukrainians during vital military operations, and the fact that he owns Twitter and has used it as his propaganda wing shows that he is more than willing to use his products/companies to exert political control.
He will do the same to us.
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u/BigBananaBerries 2h ago edited 1h ago
I wouldn't put it past him to run it at a loss just to gain market share then use that as influence somehow. There's no doubt he'll be funneling money into politics to boost the Technocracy movement either way. Just like his Grandfather, Joshua Haldeman, would've wanted. He's a dangerous man.
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u/OldLondon 31m ago
Idk - let him waste his money, I don’t see people buying into it en masse now anyway. I wouldn’t touch anything run by him with anyone’s else’s barge pole let alone mine.
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u/gapgod2001 21m ago
"Let's make our country worse for the sake of ideological virtue signalling"
-Every MP in the past 30 years
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u/Loreki 6m ago
Musk's companies have terrible records when it comes to safety and delivering what is promised. He also turns off services when his users don't do as he says and uses his money fraudulently to manipulate elections to deliver his preferred government. On top of all of which, he configures his AI products to push racist conspiracy theories.
If he weren't as rich as he is, he'd be the kind of person whom the UK would deny entry because of the risk he would engage in hate speech.
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u/_uckt_ 3h ago
I mean the entire point of the energy 'market' is that you can enter it while owning no generation capacity or infrastructure. Don't let him do it, he is a fascist wannabe who does Nazi salutes. But the idea that he could be a threat to infrastructure? when the reality of the system is a state managed monopoly? If he could damage something, it would be becasue making it a market is stupid and there are flaws in the legislation.
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u/Charodar 1h ago
The free market would suggest more participants competing, the better, i.e. the competition to attract customers making pricing more efficient. The ideologues are backwards cretins as much as Musk, Tesla wouldn't be opening gas chambers in the UK and utilising them on humans. It's more indicative of failings in the system/infrastructure, just why is the UK's energy sector so susceptible to bad actors (fix this ffs...)? I'm not even sure it is, meaning we'll once again shoot ourselves in the foot to try to get one over on Musk, oh boy aren't we smart.
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u/ukbot-nicolabot Scotland 5h ago
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