I’m sure you can work it out.

Another object to add to the KI list, alongside Audi badges and hands-free ear pieces.

It good that folks choose to buy items that make it easy to spot and avoid them.

…..more of whom will vote for the BNP than the Northeners!

Not as a percentage of the population entitled to vote.

I live in the glorious midlands, land of good looking women, great beer and devoid of the chips on shoulders so frequently displayed by knuckle dragging northerners and shandy-drinking southerners. We also seem to have far-less idiots residing around these parts, or BNP voters as they are also known.

Anywhoo, if you two are going to be at it all day can you at least do the honourable thing and get a room so us residents of areas other than ‘the north’ and ‘the south’ can enjoy the forum free from your tosh?

Gobbing off to a copper, at her age you’d think she’d know better.

I bet she doesn’t do it again, so perhaps you can teach old dogs new tricks.

Would you pay tax on something that old?

Yes. Only vehicles registered before 1 January 1973 get free VED.

None of the lightweights I’ve ever driven have had power steering.

Remember to keep those thumbs outside the wheel when driving off road, less the wheel flick back and crack one.

Ooo, an old Land Rover with a petrol engine, just what you need as the price of petrol rises.

😉

‘Puddle jumpers’ (Lightweight LRs) are great fun to drive off-road though.

TJ – I fully agree.

Unfortunately ownership of instantly bottled sunshine , on tap and via a pretty much unstoppable means is probably the only reason this increasingly irrelevant country of ours remains a world player and permanent member of the UN security council. I can’t see any government ever giving that up.

Go digging, I’ve mentioned them before.

They do lovely ready meals though.

Who do you work for BTW?

If we’re spending twice a much as some European countries, yet the front line soldiers are running out of bullets and boots, doesn’t that suggest that the armed forces aren’t as efficient as you’re making out?

If you could just point out those other European nations that are operating at anywhere near the intensity of British forces in places such as Afghanistan I could draw my own conclusion…

because they aren’t a charity, they are a business.

I was awarded a full-scholarship (foundationer) to attend the school I went to and many others who come from less-than-privileged backgrounds have so benefitted too. Most of the funding for scholarships is provided through donations to the school from old scholars (I myself give a donation yearly, which gift aid is claimed on) and any shortfall (though I can’t ever recall there being one) is made-up from school funds (as laid down in the school foundation articles).

Sounds a bit charity like to me.

Oooo, I can almost taste the slight under-current of (misdirected) class hatred.

mk1fan – Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh as to the quality of the underwear the company I work for sells but I don’t particularly like most of their stuff and wouldn’t (and don’t) choose to buy it for my wife.

I’ve never met Cheesyfeet BTW and (sorry CF) have no love for them, unless of course its actually the name my wife uses on here without my knowledge, but if it is I’m intrigued as to why ‘Cheesyfeet’, as I’ve never noticed any particularly bad smell.

…are mostly undertaken for reasons that are frankly indefensible.

And that is a matter for the politicians who send the military off on these various operations, not the military itself. Of course seeing as its a political decision, politicians who are put into power by the likes of you and I, would you then wish to deny the forces of the crown appropriate equipment to carry out their tasks?

Sooty – my understanding is that it was intended to be an interceptor for Soviet fighters so needed to climb fast but did not need endurance which actually does not meet current requirements?

Your understanding (and that of the rag you quote) are wrong.

The Typhoon was always designed as a multi-role fighter for the British with roles as both an air superiority aircraft ( such a role requires endurance in order to stay on station and ‘dominate’ the air as well as speed and thus it has bags of both) and a ground attack aircraft.

It was ordered to replace the Tornado F3 (which was always a stop-gap aircraft that had little of the attributes required for a useful air superiority aircraft) and also the Jaguar GR1 (later GR4) in the CAS and GA roles.

Where yourself (and the press constantly) have made the mistake is mixing up the intended role of the RAF for the aircraft (multi role) with that of the Spanish, German and Italian air forces (purely air defence). Of course perhaps its more economical to do as the other main participant countries have chosen to do and have separate aircraft fleets with their own support, training and logistical infrastructures for each of the roles the RAF have planned for the Typhoon, although seeing as a few of them have now changed their minds and have asked for at least austere GA capability it seems not.

But wasn’t £20 billion the amount that it got to before the MoD stopped giving any more information about the costs?

And the £20billion I quoted for the NHS computer system was the 2006 price. Any idea where it is now?

Seems the costs of most government projects spiral upwards, mainly due to political wangling.

Isn’t every arms job basically subsidised to the tune of a couple of thousand pounds by the tax payer anyway?

You could say pretty much the same about any private sector industry that supports a branch of the British public sector.

Huge government subsidies via the NHS for British pharmaceutical companies that refuse to sell HIV/Aids treatment drugs at affordable prices in Africa anyone?

A single project that was designed for a role that no longer exists and is not needed now.

So you’ve added oracle to the list of things you claim an expertise in, alongside plastic-jockness, an inability to ever admit to being wrong or not actually knowing what you are talking about?

Of course when those defence assumptions were made in 1997 they just knew we were going to end up in Afghanistan one day and the woeful lack of preparation and funding for such an operation was all part of the big plan was it?

S&J, can you point to a public sector body that’s spent £200 billion on a single project?

£200billion. Oh come now, feeling generous with the noughts? Try £20billion, with a large amount of tax (on profits earned by private companies involved) generated from that spend being returned to the Treasury. A similar amount to the £20billion spent on an NHS computer system that still doesn’t work properly. At least the Typhoon can do its job.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for reducing the defence budget (and the overall public sector budget), as long as its task-linked. We currently have a budget based on 1997 assumptions funding operations well beyond that which it was projected to fund. Equipment is getting knackered, rapidly and one day, unless taskings are seriously cutback, it will all need replacing at even larger cost to the tax-payer.

Don’t spend now and it’ll cost a seriously eye-watering amount later.

I’m all in favour of public schools but they definitely shouldn’t have charitable status.

Why?

Sootyandjim

What can you get hold of?

Nowt.

Of course I wouldn’t give if I got for nowt let alone buy someone I actually love the underwear the company I work for sell. Quality has slipped somewhat since production went completely off-shore in my humble opinion.

You’d have to go back to the days of British Leyland wouldnt you to see a parallel

Why, are the employees of this theoretical private sector company also going out on strike over the type of biscuits sold in the canteen on top of all the other stuff?

Perhaps it could be taken as a cut from the budget of one of the less over-stretched and more wasteful departments first.

binners – Like RB?

He’s not real you know. ‘He’ is a shared login used by a commune of anarcho-syndical peasants.

He should develop a fetish for womens underwear

Please no. Thats all I need, an over-stimulated Hora pestering me to get him freebies from where I work.

alpin – For Hora the hobby needs a possibility of ‘bling’ in its required equipment with an attached sense that a higher degree of bling inherent in said equipment will make up for any shortfall in ability to actually partake in said hobby.

Now I’m not all that knowledgeable on lawn bowling so I submit to your experience over whether its elements/equipment can fulfill the above criteria.

Well in the not too distant future I’m sure they and many others within the public sector will have a genuine reason to gripe and perhaps strike, when (as shown historically) the painful cuts that invariably follow a period of Labour government mismanagement and over-spend have to be made in order to try and reduce excessive national debt.

Failed to end ‘boom and bust’, failed to reform public services to bring them inline with private sector efficiencies, failed to make hay whilst the weather was fine, and sold off the rainy day money (and boy is it pouring now) when the gold market was at a low, quite a record.

Who decides which line of work is ‘socially valuable’?

The more ‘financially viable’ private schools at the moment are considered either those with a really well-known name (as they’ll always attract pupils), those that are well-used by military families (usually boarding schools as the MoD grants allowances to military personnel to send their children to boarding school to allow a continuous education) or those that are co-educational (use state and private funding for the schooling), such as my old school.

Oh and RB, comprehensives are for chumps who wish one day to get their 5 stars at McDonalds.

See, crass generalisations are fun.

They get 40k? Why the hell did i bother going to uni?

Unfortunately its basically a union controlled closed shop so you’d have to work your way up from the low-paid platform staff type jobs to earn the ‘right’ to train as a driver. Of course being a card-carrying Bob Crow supporter doesn’t hurt upwards progression.

The fees for the public school I went to included everything you’ve mentioned other than tuck money and day/weekend trips.

It still has the same policy as my wife and I have recently been looking into sending my daughter to the same school.

As a full-scholarship pupil my parents didn’t need to pay the standard school fees and I chose to work at the stables after-school to cover my other outgoings as well as make use of the perk that was free riding lessons.

I used ghetto tubeless last year at Les Arcs (Maxxis Ignitor 2.35) with no problem.

Not if you believe everything spouted by certain ‘left-wing’ folk on here.

Indeed. Centre-Left parties, parties that generally rely on support from those with Socialist ideals and who care about society as a whole, have done particularly badly.

I think perhaps it illustrates that many who consider themselves Socialist when they have a few quid in their own pocket soon change their tune when times are hard.

Can’t wait to Silverstone

Neither can I.

My darling wife brought us a weekend at a very nice hotel near Silverstone (with a shuttle service to the race course that avoids the queues apparently), reserved grandstand seats and pit passes for Saturday and Sunday of this year’s GP.

No idea how much it cost but I’m guessing it wasn’t cheap.

Hmm, the best car I’ve driven isn’t based on the driving experience (as I’ve only driven it all of perhaps 40ft since I’ve owned it) but is based on the fact its a classic, its mine and one day it’ll be on the road again. A ’67 Shelby Mustang GT350.

If I’m going to be honest though and rate cars I’ve properly driven then my friend David’s Audi RS6 Avant that we used to get down to the French Alps last year takes some beating, if only due to that fantastic noise it makes in those alpine tunnels. Seats are a little hard though.

The worst car (or perhaps most disappointing would be a better description) would be my brothers old Dodge Viper GT2. The heaviest clutch in the world, hot as hell, noisy, extremely poor external views and some of the cheapest looking plastics are used for the dash etc. In a straight line off the lights though a complete hoot, until you have to change gear.

{As one who wouldn’t vote for racist cretins this is extremely ‘Devil’s Advocate’}

They may have many members who don’t like the English but they don’t put it in the manifesto, unlike the BNP.

So the SNP is better because whilst some of its members may be anti-English they aren’t open about it?

Curious.

For cars that use the CANbus electrical system its usually pretty easy to install a compatible after-market cruise control, nigh on ‘plug and play’.

I believe the 406 had CANbus fitted after the update in 2001.

Apparently Diana’s Merc was fitted with SS bottom brackets. Its true, bloke in the pub told me.

The Nottingham election officer gave me a call back earlier on, wanted to know what exactly was said. Seems I spoke to one of his flunkies earlier, no doubt he is a little busy today.

Hmmm, I see the old “I can’t do it so it can’t be done” arguement has raised its ugly head.