I’ve used a Pure Highway for 5 years in my works van.
As above, use a magnetic mount aerial on the roof – the stick on windscreen ones are hopeless.
The highway has an aux out connection so you can plug it directly into your car radio or, if your car stereo doesn’t have an aux in, it broadcasts on a spare fm frequency so you can tune your car radio into that. This works surprisingly well, but obviously the direct connection is better.
The highway is a simple unit with only three preset stations and it can be a bit fiddly to tune into others.
I’d recommend it though – TMS in crystal clear sound is brilliant.

I’ve just dipped back into this thread and I have to say- WTF?

The Queen is orchestrating the cover-up of paedophile rings?

Keep taking the tablets…

They get good reviews?!
Had one as a hire car – it wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t very good either. Seemed to be built with Vauxhall’s “that’ll do” policy.
Try to get an extended weekend test drive (or hire one) – some annoyances are not immediately obvious – for example I found the seats were very uncomfortable after an hour or so, despite feeling lovely initially.

I was sat at a viewpoint carpark the other day, having breather.
A small hatchback containing 4 young girls (late teens I guess, I wasn’t looking too closely*) parks up and they chat away about how pretty it is up here while eating their McDonalds.
When they finish, the car starts up, four bags of McDonalds rubbish are chucked out of the windows and they drive off.
I caught them at the carpark exit and pointed out what they had done, and was met with four bemused faces – they genuinely didn’t see that they had done anything wrong. “That’s why the council have cleaners, innit” said one of them.
I ended up putting it in the bin myself (no more than 10 feet from where they had parked).

*I had swmbo with me…

To the OP – An oxymoron surely?

Noticeable improvement over the terrible pirelli p6000 the car came with

Ah, the fabled p6000 ‘Ditchfinders’. Vaguely competent on hot, dry roads but a liability in any other conditions.

Eyelashes for car headlights.
I mean, really?

Our constituency was a new one at the last election.
It’s a rural area in Hampshire…
Yep, Conservative all the way.
To be fair, our MP has been very visible and genuinely seems to help the local area.

Mmm, flat slide throttle as well.
Gorgeous.
And driven as god intended.

Sorry, couldn’t resist…

Some great stuff on that site.
I liked this one:-
http://awkwardmessages.com/dating-problems-2/

My windows phone suits me fine.
I use my phone for voice calls (yes, really!), texts, browsing the internet, taking pictures and videos and as a sat nav.
It does all these things brilliantly (especially the sat nav, which works offline). As usual for a Nokia, the camera is superb.
It doesn’t have some of the bells and whistles of the latest android phones, but I had a Samsung and found I didn’t use 90% of it- it just slowed the phone down and flattened the battery.
Think carefully about what you actually use your phone for, rather than how many fancy gizmos it has.

I make sure he has a well balanced diet, with a fairly large portion

Ah yes, I forgot to mention this bit.
My lad eats like a horse, genuinely more than my wife or me, yet doesn’t have an once of fat on him. Costs us a fortune!

Perfectly normal, and can be highly entertaining, or highly embarrassing, depending on your situation.

God, what an awful position to find yourself in.
I can offer no helpful advice, but I hope you are able to sort this out without affecting your life too much.

My lad (9) is very keen on sport. His school does f all so it is up to us to sort it out.
His after school schedule is currently –
Monday – 1 hour football followed by 1 hr swimming.
Tuesday – no sport! But goes to Cubs
Wednesday – 2 hr athletics
Thursday – 90 min swimming
Friday – 1 hr swimming
Saturday 1 hr swimming followed by 2 hr football
Sunday – 2k cross country followed by 90 min Cricket.

This is just training, any matches or races need to be fitted in somewhere!

Getting homework done can be an issue and he is nine years old so he still wants to have friends round, play on the xbox and all the other things nine year olds do.

He loves it all and if we suggest cutting it down a bit he doesn’t want to. It keeps my wife very busy running him from one sporting location to the next.

That is just astonishing.
Just when you thought the Lib Dems couldn’t get any worse, they prove you wrong.

Disappointed.
I thought this was going to be another thread about the lass from Liverpool…

*Keeps head down*

Thailand?
Only one piece of advice – don’t take the wife 😉

I once worked with a girl who genuinely thought that the sun and the moon were the same thing, just dimmer at night.

A load of hassle over less than £20?

Let it go, life is too short.

It was designed in the 1940’s, so it drives like a 1940’s car.
They are slow, noisy and uncomfortable. They struggle to keep up with modern traffic, and if by some chance they do catch up, the brakes are woeful so pray the ABS equipped car in front doesn’t stop in a hurry – you really don’t want to have an accident in one.
They are also pretty unreliable and spares are now expensive and scarce.
BUT, they do have great charm. Hilarious fun to hoon along a winding country road, cornering on the door handles, thrashing the engine to within an inch of it’s life, yet never once exceeding 50mph.
Try hiring one for a weekend from one of the classic rental people, not cheap but it might save you buying something that is not quite as you expected once the rose tinted glasses come off.

It’ll be fairly awful to drive, but a big useful car.
The sports suspension turns an ill-handling people mover into an ill-handling people mover with a poor ride 😉
They are not known to be particularly reliable so the warranty may come in handy. They do come with lots of toys, if that is the sort of thing that floats your boat.

There was another thread about this Here and the Dell clearance website was recommended.
http://outlet.euro.dell.com/Online/InventorySearch.aspx?brandId=7&c=uk&cs=ukdfh1

I went for a “Scratched and Dented” one at a greatly reduced price. When it arrived there wasn’t a mark on it. Very happy.

There are two identical bungalows next to each other up the road from us – one is called “Simla” and the other “Nexdor”
As a Yorkshireman might say “There’s nowt as queer as folk”.

I got 12 out of 13. Not sure if that is something I should be proud of…

bearnecessities

😆 😆

Many thanks for all the replies, you’ve given me plenty to think about. Appointment made with local prep school about a sports scholarship, I’m also going to speak to the headmaster of his current school to see if I can get any reassurances about the future there.
I’m sure I’ll be back with more questions soon, sorry!

GOT TO BE THE MOST PATHETIC POINTLESS ANSWER EVER POSTED, us tradesmen have done a 4 year or longer apprenticeship, studied at college, and gained further educational skills,along with trade skills,etc.

No need to shout. I’m a mechanic myself and don’t see “being on the tools” as a bad career choice .I’m not trying to put down anybody else’s job. But I do think that a better education will give him more choices as to what career he has.

If you’re relying on teachers to stretch a 9 year old, then you’re probably not best placed to assess his chances in an entrance exam. Know what I’m saying Mike?

I’m guessing this isn’t a compliment 😀

Our motives are these – We only have one kid and we want to set him up for life to the best of our ability. We consider a good education to be essential for this. He is a bright kid (if he wasn’t, I’d encourage him to learn a trade) and his current school is failing him, with no reasonable free alternative. We can afford (just) to get him to a private school where he might better be able to reach his potential. Is that such a bad thing?

cheekyboy – Member
Not wishing to appear callous, I would put my childs education/future before elderly parents, I would expect my parents to understand.

No offence taken, it’s a fair point.
There are other, more selfish, reasons for not moving – we love the house and village we live in and our jobs mean moving is not that simple.

I think he would pass an entrance exam, he is a pretty bright kid.
In fact one of our major complaints about his current school is how they treat more able kids – they cancelled the “gifted and talented” scheme and also stopped all streaming – all kids are taught together, regardless of ability. He just isn’t being stretched, and it isn’t helped by having different supply teachers all the time.

Unfortunately moving house isn’t an option – need to stay near elderly parents.
The School will eventually implode, but he’s only got another 2 years there and schools take time to turn around.

I had one of these.

Brilliant fun, sideways everywhere. Remarkably competent in snow.
Broke down constantly though 🙁

a hybrid powered model of an existing car

Ford are introducing a hybrid mondeo soon. They say it will be priced at the same level as the equivalent diesel model – could be very interesting.

Scottish Tory Party? I wasn’t aware there was such a thing…

A Tesla has a 250 mile range – you must be an amazing cyclist to ride that far on a Sunday afternoon…

It depends enormously on where, and how, you drive.
In town, with lots of stop start driving, hybrids are very efficient.
Thrashing down a motorway – extremely inefficient.
As for diesel hybrids – as molgrips pointed out there are very few. They are also either pretty poor (Volvo and Peugeot – read the reviews) or large diesel cars with a small hybrid system purely to make co2 figures look better (Mercedes and land rover).

I have to take issue with the “there’s more stuff on a hybrid to go wrong” idea.
Hybrids are actually considerably less complex than a modern diesel. They generally use a simple petrol engine so no turbo, dmf, dpf, egr etc to go wrong. The electric parts are very simple and virtually maintenance free. Despite all the scare stories the batteries are very long lasting, both Toyota and Nissan (the biggest sellers of electric and hybrid cars) report extremely low failure rates.
If you want reliability, I would trust hybrid over diesel any day of the week.