What game are we playing again?

Well, believe it or not, I didn’t start this thread as a troll against van owners (or estate owners…)

Current estate car is too small, and goes back to the lease company within the next 6 months. Company has pulled the plug on company car scheme, so I am genuinely looking at my options…

Well, had a look at a couple of large estates and a couple of vans today…

Mondeo – old model seems like it’s larger (or at least, boot aperture looks larger…) but rare as RHS 2nd hand around here
– new model looks nice, but all fittings felt plasticky and it didn’t look as big as I expected

Audi A6 – As huge as I had expected, nicely built, but pricey and high CQ.

VW vans – boot much larger than I’d previously thought and second row seating area similarly spacious. Impressed, but need to get my head around running costs vs purchase costs vs depreciation

Also need to understand the various spec options. TD130 Highline looked nice

As in nothing explains it as well as seeing / tinkering first hand – bunch of axles, different sized cogs / sprockets and time to play…

Lego

njee20 – exactly that 🙁

Yes, try finding anything decent around Chippenham less than £150-£200k; my ex-council house, a three-bed semi, would be approx £180k.
Get out of town, and there’s little difference between prices in North Wiltshire and South Devon.
Thanks for the lecture, rkk01, those of us who live in rural areas are perfectly aware of it, thank you.

The lecture is borne out of bitter experience…

You might live in / near rural Chippenham, I live in semi-rural S Wales – both have easy access to areas with well paying jobs & that makes a huge difference. Our income is enough for a 4-bed detached and an interest in this unashamedly “middle class” mtb forum 🙄

HOWEVER, neither the parents or the inlaws can understand why we don’t move back to coastal Cornwall, the childhood and spiritual home of Mr & Mrs rkk01. We both have good jobs, but our earning potential / mortgage capacity is irrelevant in Cornwall because the property prices are way higher than we could afford if we lived AND EARNED locally.

Don’t get me wrong, I “get” the style and the “kit” concepts…

They do look good for bikes & camping, but family kayaking requires length and or roof space, and it that respect something like a Mondeo estate looks like a hard act to beat???

Out of interest, for those who own / have owned – how many are self employed?

Many of the kit van owners around here appear to be small business owners, and I suspect their “lifestyle choices” get offset against tax 😡

Exactly – we aren’t talking about people having second or third homes by the sea, we are talking about people who want to retire somewhere and live there. They aren’t necessarily just people with shit-loads of money to spend.

If you’re planning on spending more than £45-50k*, then you are spending shitloads of money. If you can’t see that then you are deluding yourself about rural poverty

*= 3x local salary multiple

Just about survived yesterday. Got around in just under 12hrs.
Climbs were a sufferfest thanks to additional ballast since I last did it in 2013

Selfish consumerism – Prices everyone else out of the market.

Well the folk selling the houses don’t have to sell to the highest bidder. They could get all altruistic and sell to other locals. So who is pricing whop out of the market?

Well, that depends on who owns – not young adults from our rural areas, that’s for sure

Finally, last I checked we weren’t feudal serfs and were free to live where we want.

That is a benefit that comes with economic strength – something not available to those on the receiving end, who are denied the very choice you celebrate 🙁

Why does retiring to the seaside screw life chances for someone else?

Selfish consumerism – Prices everyone else out of the market. Fine if you want to be regarded as a selfish twunt by all the locals…

Fair enough on the motorbike 😉

Looks like style (and massive cost) over substance otherwise, especially as they don’t actually look very big…?

Surely the crew cab / second row of seats robs most of the advantage of a large load area – and its a hell of a lift to get anything on the roof (eg kayaks)

How about retiring where YOU GREW UP (or lived your adult life)

Instead of royally screwing the life chances of folks who come from certain parts of the UK 😡

Full strip down, clean and rebuild suggests that the PS3 cooling fan motor is dead. No idea if it’s worth trying a replacement

Really want to be able to recover my saves… So would like to at least get a last gasp out of the PS3

But yes, PS4 beckons 🙂

Is this their little 3cyl Ecoboost? If so I know someone with that unit in a focus – and he moans about the poor economy…

I’m very dubious about this small engine tech. Mrs rkk01 chopped in a 500 Abarth for a 500Fat with the 900cc twinair.
The Abarth did more mpg 🙁

My own 2litre diesel does 55mpg under almost all conditions. Engine’s rarely stressed. Will churn out the torque with barely a Rev on the tacho

We use an Apple Airport Express, works a treat.

Do you need to be an “Apple” house? We have an existing wifi network etc

Poldark?

I’ll be leaving this ere then…

All sorted. Seems I was trying to use a very old spline set from the bottom of th toolbox. All good when I found the right one 😯

Hhhm. Madone 4.5. Wanted to swap back wheel, from the flimsy Bonty Race to a Campag Zonda… Couldn’t get the cassette off using my mtb tools.

Looks like our company car scheme is going to be phased out as existing leases expire – will be on the lookout for a bike / kid / dog / kayak friendly estate / people carrier / van at some point in 2015…

Mondeo or SMax both on the possibles list

Ok, and who routinely obeys the equivalent UK give way to the left rule???

😉

Impressed with Wood – sounds much more natural, no histrionics. Cameron, Miliband, Clegg just sound like pointless nerds 🙁

Well, on Saturday I had a test drive in an absolutely brilliant little car…

The BMW i3.

Very strong acceleration – and recuperative braking…!!! Lift off the throttle and your almost on your belts :-0
Only used the brakes once for the whole drive.

£2.50 for a full charge

I have seen the future 😉

Yes, cost… New m/b and system build beckons, so don’t want to splash Christmas cash on expensive old format (DDR2) memory when I’ll be getting up to date hardware sometime in 2015…

Will give it a whizz on the 2x(2+1)

Absolutely **** outstanding…!

Used to watch the SBS training near Plymouth when we were kids – lead up to the Falklands 🙂

Any thoughts on SSDs…?

HD is my current lowest windows score at 5.8. Does OS on an SSD, with other stuff on spinning discs work well, or to get the benefit would I be better with OS & game software on the SSD?

Many Local Authorities are shockingly bad 🙁

Not convinced by EVFEL, TBH…

It’s a simple soundbite for the politicos and media to peddle, and for populist support to latch onto – but belies a complexity that nobody seems to want to deal with.

EVFEL has to be implemented through some form of federalism – but then, at 50M people we aren’t talking about an “English Parliament”. We’d need to skip that level and underpin the UK administration with a series of regional bodies.

“England” doesn’t work / fit, whichever way you look at it.

Kernow bys vyken!

Most cheap printers = £££s in print cartridges 😡

Night driving with no lights.

Actually very calming by the silvery light of a full moon

I see OCUK has an Asus Z97 / i5 / RAM bundle on for just over 300

(Enough to get in big trouble…)

Ta…!

Always impressed by the answers you can get on here.
Your views pretty much tally with what else I’ve heard.

I get the impression that they are fairly hard wearing?

Brainflex – Member
No one read the Magna Carta then?
POSTED 2 MINUTES AGO # REPORT-POST

I thought it was just the Yanks that banged on about Magna Carter… We moved on from that? Added and changed stuff…

Hmmm lets think of things that have been written down…
the Bible, the Quran, the US Constitution (e.g. the right to arm bears)

Then let’s think how well that has gone Maybe NOT having things written down allows a bit of wiggle room and stops the pedants from being revolting.

Good point, but makes things difficult to fix if the problems aren’t clearly defined? or do you just muddle along from one compromise to another?

See if your shop, or another near you does demo days. A lot of them do, haul their stock down to local lake/loch and you get to paddle them all and get a feeling for them.

Pretty sure they do, but IIRC it’s April ish…

Local shop alway seem helpful (and willing to chat / help). They seem to have a lot of high end touring sea kayaks at £1500-2000+ but also some plastic boats from Venture Kayaks. Might have to drop in and have a chat 😉

There will be no devolved powers to the regions, because defining the regions (except for Wales and NI) is almost impossible).

A quarter million Cornish might disagree with that 😉

Being even further embedded within “England”, would be increasingly waring… The SW (as defined by GOSW) is often touted as one of the more likely candidates for a devolved “English Regional Assembly”, but would be deeply unpopular in Cornwall