Well, this one’s awkward. To put it mildly. The Daily Telegraph headline hollers “MoD tells staff not to discuss secrets in cars amid China spying fears”. The issue with China spying is presumably clear to all but those babes in the woods so naïve they consider the PRC a “strategic partner”, which alas includes Canada’s foreign affairs minister. But why cars? Well, see, the babes in the British Ministry of Defence went and leased a bunch of Chinese EVs and nobody told them they might have embedded spy hardware. Which makes one wonder just how silly the people in charge in Western countries actually are. Especially since, the Telegraph story adds, along with images of warning stickers allegedly affixed to the cars, “The MoD has already banned some electric vehicles (EVs) with Chinese components from being parked near sensitive military bases.” Someone remind us just how much benefit we’re getting from cars that don’t work very well in return for the astonishing harm to our economy, the environment and our national security.

On the subject of not parking the things near sensitive military bases, of which Canada really has none these days, we suggest keeping them at least one country distant. Because clearly the concern isn’t just microphones hidden in the chairbacks. It’s all sorts of electronic sensors embedded in what are, like most other things today, computers or even robots at heart. Or, in a warning to the previous British administration of the hapless Rishi Sunak, “basically mobile spying platforms” and that even ones made in the West were dangerous if they contained Chinese components.

As British journalist Michael Murphy wrote scornfully in Canada’s National Post of this “farcical situation”, including the parking ban:

“That short walk to the gate should give officials time to consider the obvious question: how did the U.K. end up buying equipment that is both a security hazard and a daily inconvenience?”

The MoD replied defensively that its rules against what appear to be “conversations above OFFICIAL” apply to all rental cars not just EVs, and staff are told not to attach official devices to any of them. As if someone would charge their phone while in a car, or play tunes via Bluetooth. And it blathered some classic bureaucratese: “As the public would expect, we have security advice in place to protect our systems and information.”

What the public expects nowadays from the clown show that is government, and Britain’s has been especially absurd for quite some time, is hard to say. But if they expect that it would include military people in fright wigs not helmets who think “security advice” is good enough protection, they will and won’t be disappointed.

As for the economic advisors in red putty noses who think importing EVs is a great substitute for domestic manufacturing since heavy industry has fled the high energy prices that come with the supposedly cheaper and more reliable alternatives, once again, it’s great comedy but no bargain.