ShaunW

Red engine paint works like Shelby stripes, it adds about 20bhp. Whereas green engine paint and wire wheels add about 20yrs. ? Mine's black but I do like a coloured engine if all the ancilliaies match, I always think they look cleaner and give the 'impression' that some care and thought has been involved even if it ended up being a little misguided. I'd put money on the fact that the same people who paint their engines in non standard colours are the same people who were spray painting their bike every 5 minutes when they were a kid. Come on, let's see a show of hands, you know who you are ? Confession time : I didn't like the baby blue paintwork inside the Hillman Imp I got when I was 17. So eventually I painted it gloss Oxford Blue with a brush. I basically just treated it like my best ever Airfix kit. I applied it far too thickly and some bits never did properly dry and it always smelled of turps. When I realised I couldn't change the outside colour as easily as I'd hoped, I traded up for a little white 1300 spit mk4. And I showed it a LOT more respect. Thinking back that spit was an absolute rust bucket, sills, arches, door bottoms, nose, everything.... and it had a Fred Flintstone floor. That was probably why I could afford it, but it was only about 10yrs old at the time so it was shocking really. I had to sell that one twice because the first buyer brought it back when they'd looked at it properly. Being bigger than me he got his money back. Second buyer was a scrapyard. There you go, that's a nicer on topic story than all of that boring political stuff?

.. It's always been the case that people aren't paid what they're worth (ie nurses) but get paid for what they earn their employer. If a footballer earns 250k a week it's because they earn their club 251k. Doesn't seem fair, but that's capitalism.

The general public don't seem to like the idea of banks making money. But the city firms I worked for all handled enormous pension funds. The more they make the more the country and pensioners make esp if you add in the tax which is almost 80% of all corporation tax receipts. Bankers' (actually 'fund managers' as there's no such job as 'banker') wages are fine too but most people don't understand the scale. I worked with a guy once who earned over a billion pounds one year for the old British Rail pension fund. Is it unreasonable he was on a 1% bonus when a double glazing salesman is on 20%. It's an amazingly complex job out running the index. Very very few are on wages like that, it's 14hrs day 6 days a week and he slept under his desk. The best ones are weird people, almost savants. Personally I want a premier league fund manager running my little pension pot, not some 3rd division chancer. If I lose 1% of my money to pay a guy who's made me 10% then I call it a great deal.

Not a collapse per se, but I did lose 12% of my pension when sterling took a nose dive which wasn't great. I've moved it all into dollars just to be safe. Wish I'd done that before the surprise win and made 12% instead but ho hum.

666 - number of the beast. 667 - fax number of the beast.

That's because we haven't actually left yet. And to be fair we haven't seen any of the alleged benefits either. Economics is what it is, nobody knows what's going on, it might be good and it might be bad. The jury is open. Imho the problem wasn't Europe, the problem was that we didn't have what it takes to be the Germany in the relationship. Europe was ours for the taking in the 70s and 80s but our governments and our industry just wasn't up to the job. I wasn't ready to throw the towel in just yet. However we all voted everyone needs to remember that we ALL want the best for this country, we just have different ideas about how best to do it. Nobody is a traitor for continuing to fight for what they genuinely believe is in everyone's interests. We should feel united in our love for this grey little island not divided. Maybe just maybe a little bit of both sides wishes can be accommodated? It's always the best, most democratic solution.

That IS democracy. Otherwise we'd have had one general election in 1786 and called it that. If 'the nation chose' so emphatically then why are the Brexit bunch so worried about a rerun on the consequences anyway? Are they worried people might have changed their minds... If that's so then shouldn't they have a democratic opportunity to express it? I happen to think Brexit would win again, but I'm defending our phylosophical and constitutional principals which are both 'proud' British traditions, not my own self interest. Not having a vote on the outcome is a denial of democracy not a defence of it, it's an incoherent position.

No need to worry though, Mrs May is stockpiling food apparently so that bodes well for our leap into the abyss. Very reassuring. ?

We're just getting our first. Harvesters were going all night but it's poor and most could be flattened. Time to ring Mr Putin and ask for some wheat or hastily arrange some trade deals.

Sorry to be a contrarian again Colin but if we're in trouble then it's rightly so. Conscientious disposal doesn't just mean flogging it to the highest bidder and turning a blind eye to what happens next. If I subcontract out work, the buck still stops with me if it's done shoddily. Bottom line is that it won't matter who kills the planet, but the blame will be with those who were most financially and intellectually capable of preventing it. It's a shame the new breed of multi billionaires aren't more interested, instead you get Elon Musk creating space junk with that stupid car in space advertising stunt and the Google and Facebook guys making robot trucks and delivery drones to rob ordinary people of a way of making a living. Then there's bitcoin, now using more electricity than New Zealand. Our grandchildren who'll live until about 120 will experience some truly horrific consequences of the shortsighted stupidity of our generation. Somebody else's problem? I'm a gloomy so and so sometimes

I went with foam backed foil and I couldn't be happier with it. I duck taped all the joins and edges 'in case' water gets in. It's made it quieter, cooler and much more civilised. Dare I say it, it's feels like a modern car. Only 2 issues. The extra thickness made the H support a bit of a mare to refit, (I did the underside of the tunnel but that's sat up on the foam) and the seat runners needed a hard spacer to stop them squishing in to the carpet. Third issue, I did it on two sunny days and the reflected heat and sunlight was brutal! Fourth issue, doing in the driver's footwell would have been easier when I was 20 and flexible....or taken 5mins to remove the steering wheel.

Thanks for that.

I had a look on that list to see what my spit6 might be worth. I see there's a GT6 convertable listed, RT and ST (whatever those are). What car is that? And would a spit 1500 (6'ed with a 2500 from a TR5 ) carry a premium or reduce the value?

There's a raft of plastic twice the size of Texas floating in the Pacific. Do you get the feeling that we're just fiddling while Rome burns with these eco projects saving a fraction here and there. Thing is with this plastic.... I've always put stuff in the bin. How the heck is it all ending up in the sea. What baffles me even more is that when the stuff was invented and everyone in the 50s 60s 70s were making and buying everything in plastic, where did they think it would go? Utter madness to market a product that was so indestructible and destructive. I give it 200 yrs and it's goodbye civilisation hello dead rock.

Complex reasons Colin. Not everyone is blessed with the same reasoning, mental capacity, and role models we have. Do you know any people doing it with a triple digit IQ? The numbers are small despite the Daily Mail's attempt to tell us it's an epidemic. Far far more people evade tax than claim a few quid so they're well down the list of villains in my book. With jobs being scarce, do we need them in the work force anyway? Probably not. There's always background employment even in booming economies so thankfully they take up that role.

To those that think benefits is a lifestyle choice full of perks it isn't. Payments are below subsistence levels by all measures and housing benefits don't cover private rents as they're based on theoretical council rents. It's OK for a month or two but it's not a life, when the fridge breaks or the kids need shoes there's simply no extra. It's miserable, and having had to do it once for a year due to illness (ie me looking after my ancient mother and an ill missus at same time!) I can assure you they're not living the life of Riley. Me and the missus used to get £105 for us and the boy and we had to top up the rent by 100/month. So £75 a week for ALL bills (water gas electric tvlicence car(?) life insurance you can't cancel easily, house insurance phone etc) and most weeks we had £30 to provide 3x7x3 meals... That's 63 with no snacks or drinks. Bills were bigger too because the house was heated all day. All especially sickening as I'd paid a tax and ni for over 30yrs nonstop. I also don't recognise the idea that kids are idle and have a sense of entitlement either. The ones I know work rubbish jobs with no contracts for minimum wage and are desperate to have even half the chances we did.

I know that feeling. I saw a guy on TV the other day who's job was as a masseuse for a squad of cheerleaders. What the heck was that on the list!

Thanks Pete. Even pushing a broom round is a start. I don't remember it being this hard years ago. So much of what we thought were normal career options seem like fantasy land these days.

Hello all, Being from the school of if you don't ask you don't know (much to the slight embarrassment of my family most of the time) here goes.... My son who's 25 has been made redundant...again. Poor lad everytime he gets something the firm goes belly up after a year. We're trying to find him an apprenticeship in the motor trade but they're like hens' teeth. He's hard working and keen and if I say so myself he's a nice guy to have around. He lives in the Luton /Hitchen area (I'm nr Lincoln so can't help him much) and I wondered if anyone had heard of the slightest whiff of any work in the motor industry in that area? He's not proud and will do anything. Good basic qualifications but nothing especially related to engineering. That's it really. 1000/1 shots do come off so I'm trying everything and anyone I can think of. ... Shaun

It's 'greener' to drive a 2nd hand range rover than it is to drive a brand new fiat 500 especially if like us you only do about 5000 miles a year. It's the whole manufacturing process that's the problem. Everything from the mining and refining of materials for the vehicle to turning a tree in Canada into a leaflet to sit in the dealers showroom.

The greenest thing you can do is to drive an old car. The environmental cost of producing even the 'greenest' new car is vast compared to the ongoing inefficiency of running the old one. EV and hybrid drivers need to look at the amount of rare earth metals they're sat on and energy it took to make it, let alone the acres of fish strangling plastic. Without doubt we, ladies and gentlemen, are a shining example of environmental mindfulness and recycling. Make do and mend eh? Come and visit any of our garages.

I thought that. Ditto.

I had to stop somewhere but yes, purple, green and rainbow too. I'm a simple political creature really, one rule, treat everyone like they were family... the ones you like obviously ?

My exhaust adds about 1.25" beyond the rear bumper too. It might be time to get the block cutter out and make a Spit-flap in the style of a cat flap. Where there's a will?

It's 3.5. Looked more because the lights come forward so far