@idlejon well quite. I’d maybe not be delighted if my daughter turned into Dennis the menace when I popped to the shops, but neither would it be the end of the world!

@thisisnotaspoon not sure if you were serious or not, but that would be awesome.

I’d watch queens (the card game), scrabble, Olympic masterchef, and the one where they are flying around in squirrel suits through canyons.

I’d enter the Olympic make a sandwich while drinking beer event.

Age 10 for 30 mins or so if she doesn’t want to come to the shop or takeaway with me. No answering the door, don’t start any fires.

She’s too young for a phone imo. Honestly, other than being doorstepped by a Jehovah’s Witness (if she broke the first rule) I can’t really think of any dangers that would befoul her. If I’m in a non fatal accident at the chippy I can call a neighbour.

Back in the 80s I was allowed to roam the west end at that age, with a couple of quid and no phone. Pretty sure it would be safer for a 10 year old to do that now than it was back then.

@Big-Bud most folk need this stuff at some point or another:

For our health

For family

For friends

For our jobs

Despite media reports, having a connected digital world parallel to the real one has improved health, communications, creativity and productivity. Going back would be a regression.

I did it this year as my first sportive/group ride/100km and I loved it (maybe not the climb). Am local but even so the scenery was stunning, it’s an incredible route. Did help that it was a very nice morning, if a bit chilly (ok, bloody freezing).

All good points above, you will need to get there on Saturday in time to register.

Mrsbunk is rubbish at this. One journey she had two pairs of scissors confiscated. On another trip she had a large rock from a beach and some tahini taken from her. Presumably because they are crap souvenirs of a lovely holiday.

Here are the LWB weight specs from the VW Germany site

Equipment version

Pro long wheelbase

Empty weight with driver

2,636.189kg

Actual weight on front axle

1,272.318kg

Actual weight on rear axle

1,288.871kg

Perm. Total weight

3.125kg

Permissible total train weight

4.125kg

Permissible axle load front / rear

1,575kg / 1,630kg

Permissible trailer load braked at 12% / 8%

1,000kg / kg

Permissible trailer load unbraked

750kg

Support load / roof load

75kg/kg

If it helps, VW say the 86kWh battery of the LWB adds about 30km of range.

I’ve had a basic “drive by” valuation survey done that massively undervalued the property and nearly scuppered the sale because they thought it was a 2 storey and didn’t see the huge basement kitchen/diner.

Next house I spent loads more money on a proper survey. Surveyor must have been drunk because he highlighted the fact there were no radiators on the ground floor, even though his photos did in fact show radiators.

Sometimes you might be able to use it as bargaining leverage to get the original price down but I think that’s a bit off.

tl;dr, Waste of money, get the cheapest you can and if there is any specific thing you’re worried about, get a specialist to take a look.

@funkmaster I like football but I would leave that job. Sounds like a toxic environment run by man children stuck in a different era.

Do you know what, if this thread was called “football haters – assemble!”, and the OP was just “I don’t understand football and I’m sick of it”, I’d be fine with it and wouldnt have responded. But there seems to be a question here requesting an answer, and the answer is:

No, football is not pants. It’s the most accessible and most played sport globally. It requires skill and athleticism but notably doesn’t necessarily reward specific physical attributes and mostly rewards a more cohesive team over a group of individuals with higher skills or fitness that don’t know each other. At lower levels different genders and ages can play it together and have a huge amount of fun. At the highest level the speed of thought, tactical awareness and fitness come together to create a high speed game of chess, where it’s easy to forget how uncontrollable a highly pressurised pigs bladder can be when it’s pinged at you at an awkward height.

There are over 5 billion football fans in the world. Many of them are men, and history tells us most men are ****, therefore most football fans are utterly obnoxious. Due to its popularity the business of football is incredibly valuable, toxic, destructive and very interesting to those that like that sort of thing. Professional footballers get paid a lot of money, and that makes them very odd individuals that most right thinking people find distasteful. But the combination of skill, randomness (due to the high pressure pigs bladder), high stakes, weird fans, even weirder players and really very disturbing leaders of the sport makes for a compelling, highly entertaining and very often hilarious spectacle. In a world where men find it very hard to bond with other men, football can be a shortcut to important conversations, laughter, and friendship.

Many folk don’t like football, and that’s fine. It’s a bloody ridiculous kids sport, you might as well say you like bicycling.

oh wise middle aged internet warrior

@funkmasterp maybe read back through the thread and see who this most applies to. You’re so thin skinned you could be a professional footballer!

You’re joking, right? Right?

Sorry, forgot about the bit where they kick the egg between the posts but there are no defenders or goalie or anything to stop it going in. And the kicker can balance the egg on an egg cup to make it easier.

It takes too long and there are so few goals.

Like saying the Tour de France takes too long and has too many different jerseys ?

Football is weird in that people that aren’t interested feel the need to say so and demonstrate how uninsightful their opinion is. I hate the Stereophonics but I’ve realised that people who love the stereophonics and all of the people that have no opinion on them don’t really need me to tell them all of the reasons why I think they’re so terrible.

Also, nobody likes watching England play. The delta between expectation and reality makes it unbearable.

I don’t like rugby, compared to the subtle skill and speed of football it’s  just a bunch of meatheads chucking an egg sideways and giving each other brain damage before doing making each other drink their own body weight in something unmentionable.

So I don’t watch it. But maybe I should start a thread about how shit I think rugby is ?

Edit: what Tom said

Labour has won 410 seats with a 33.9% share of the vote.”  what an indictment of our crap pseudo democracy.

Be careful for what you wish for. Those Reform numbers have put me right off PR

LWB version listed as being £500 more than SWB so not too bad. 250mm longer, be interesting to see how that translates on the interior. Slight range increase too due to bigger battery.

SWB gets a 6 seat option for £250.

No price difference for 5,6 or 7 seats on LWB.

Panoramic roof with smart dimming is £2200, and there’s also the £1050 option of a heat pump now (which I can’t quite get my head around the cost/benefit of).

The Style trim also now has black interior options which is good though think it’s still a white headliner.

GoPro can do it. My ex-boss used one to show us his house being built. Your brag is better than that though 💪

I’d request they didn’t let punters in before the advertised opening time. And it can’t be beyond them to stop the sale of counterfeit perfume and vapes can it?

My research showed the Faro ones all had terrible reviews so I just went with the cheapest, a company called LC rent via the Zest car rental site. £180 for the week including the transponder. A late evening pick up from the shed in the car park wasn’t a nice start to the holiday but reasonably efficient.

Was a very beaten up Corsa automatic that sounded a bit ropy but ran ok. Our flight was crazy early and the out of hours drop off consisted of leaving it in the car park with the keys in the glovebox. Took videos of everything but never heard anything from them again.

I would maybe pay a bit extra next time to pick up from the airport desks, and hopefully a newer car, but not loads more.

Definitely get excess insurance, saves loads of money and they do pay out even against total crooks like the Alicante OK Mobility lot.

Moray coast. Beautiful empty coastline, but there’s a good local quiet pride and buzz about the place. Check out the average rainfall maps too.

Cycle through the woods (for erm…45 miles) and you’re in the Cairngorm mountains.

Plenty of civilisation and services, 20mins from Inverness and there’s an airport. Scotland is great.

As a species we have lost our way – slave to the phone and our rather sad need to be able to generate evidence that we were there for social media gratification and a dollop of dopamine. We’ve collectively turned ourselves into shallow fried turds.

Be honest, most of us were off our faces and have very little recall of the gigs we saw when we were younger. I don’t know if that’s better or worse than social media and permanently frozen memories on screens, but the kids are alright.

I can kick a ball, climb and code but electricity more advanced than very basic wiring baffles me. Two/three way lighting diagrams make sense until I unscrew the light switch or rose and look at it, then it just becomes lethal spaghetti.

Also possessive apostrophes, as well as verbs and adjectives. I must have missed that bit of school and now I have to look them up every time I need to know them.

Tricky word that, missed the first one on the spellcheck 🤦

Just need to get my head round not owing the car outright and effectively moving to a never ending subscription lease model.

Sure, but in about 5 years time car owners will be looked down upon much like wood burning stove owners, and we’ll be hailing on demand self driving flying taxi cars anyway right?

I guess you mean they are on the phone or something so agree that’s a shame. But I often leave my AirPods in and on transparency mode when outside or in busy environments (even at the Tesco checkout), as I’m far more likely to hear what’s being said. Like bionic ears they are.

At £60k, I can assure you I most definitely will not be.

Honestly I was going to ignore the comments about the costs, but maybe posting this will help someone else, so here goes.

It shouldn’t make sense to go from a ~£3k 10 year old Zafira to a ~£60K brand new car, and as an owner of 3 Zafiras in a row hopefully you can believe me when I say I am not into cars for the status or whatever. For me family cars are an appliance, a bike transporter and mobile skip, and any money spent on one I view as money I can’t spend on bikes, holidays or even my retirement. I’m as surprised as anyone that a Buzz seems like the sensible choice, and it’s only due to the place I work introducing an EV salary sacrifice scheme.

With salary sacrifice schemes, there’s no initial payment, and the monthly costs include insurance, servicing, tyres, road tax, breakdown cover etc. Basically the monthly payment includes all motoring costs other than electricity.

Depending on your personal tax circumstances (salary, where in the UK you live etc) the amount you end up paying for a lease can be reduced through salary sacrifice by up to (or maybe even more than) 60%. So an ID.Buzz monthly lease with decent annual mileage of around 12K can be had for £300-£500* per month after tax. Again, that’s for everything, other than electricity and the initial purchase of a charger if you don’t have one. Oh, another benefit of this over leasing privately, is if I get made redundant or leave my job I can give the car back early with no penalty charges. Lastly, do your own sums, the website of the scheme I’m on underestimates how much I can save by £100s a month.

@thebunk, if you’d have listened in the first place and just bought an Octavia, we wouldn’t be having this conversation anyway!

You jest, but comparing to a 4 year old petrol auto estate Octavia, it’s close, but the man maths on the STW approved car doesn’t quite make sense. I tried but they cost around £13k and then you need to pay for everything else on top.

* Range is vague to try and make it harder for someone to reverse engineer my salary. Even if you can, I’d prefer it if you didn’t post about it on here 🙏

Yeah, the GTX and LWB versions are going to be mad expensive. Lease schemes do some magic due to high residuals so even though book price on these are more than a lot of other cars, they are cheaper to lease.

Either way, it would be nice if some of the new stuff trickles down to the other levels on release.

The SWB GTX looks to have the option of 6 seats, so my theory on NCAP is wrong and the rear two are removable.

Dark interior, massive window in the roof so more height for bikes, and glass is tougher than roof liner. 4 wheel drive & bigger battery too. Nice.

edit: I’d be intrigued to see how the bike fits upright. What size is it?

it’s a medium 29er, but there was bags of room. It was a demo car (again, not a van!), had to give it back the other day sadly. I think it would fit upright but my default is to put them in upside down!

Did look at Tourneos as per my OP but the (man) maths doesn’t work. Electric salary sacrifice lease deals seem incredibly good value atm. Oddly those Tourneos don’t seem to have seats that fold into the floor either. I wonder if there’s a modern safety standard that prevents 3 rows of seats passing NCAP unless they are longer?

TBH for my needs Berlingos, Tourneos and Maxi Caddy are more van than I need for a couple of bikes, an air tent and stuff. The slight bit of additional refinement an mpv has works well for me too but as with this whole topic ymmv.

btw, in case it helps anyone else only the base spec ID Buzz can have a dark interior, and has smaller 19” wheels as standard atm 🤷

fail for people who want to lug things and sit up front

Fail is harsh. As per my OP I’m not sure if there is anything new/newish on the market in petrol or (>200 mile range) electric car with comparable capacity. ICYMI it’s massive inside 

😍🤩 This place needs more pictures of bikes in cars

I guess the battery being in the chassis would mean the floor would need to be higher?

The lwb 7 seater is due imminently, be interesting to see how they do it, but afaik the seats will be removable rather than hide away.

@5lab on my 3rd Zafira atm but they stopped making them 10 years ago and I do fancy something different now!

Wasn’t even my car so double yikes! Can spec it in black though.

It’s not a van though, it’s an MPV. Be interesting to see if the LWB variants meet the #vanlife need, but suspect that crowd will need to wait another few years in reality.

I like camping luckily, and would prefer something smaller and more carlike.

I would have looked at the Berlingo variants but the electric ones are more expensive on my company scheme, and have lower range than the Buzz. And, as it turns out the Buzz has plenty of room for bikes, kayaks, boards, tents and all of the other stuff we cart about 😊

In the end it was surprisingly simple to borrow one overnight from VW. Coming from a 10 year old Zafira designed 20 years ago, it was like driving a spaceship. A very easy to drive spaceship though. Felt like a much smaller car, and the visibility was amazing.

We very very carefully put my bike into it, and perhaps because it is a short travel low stack Transition Spur, it absolutely swallowed it up. Back seat up, it can fit in the boot with the front wheel off, with space for another bike (with a bit of jiggling). Back seat down it will take it with both wheels on, and have space for loads more bikes.

I now manage managers of devs. Not for everyone but I love it. You do have to like people, and figuring out what makes teams tick. I mostly just try and stop folk being too “managery” and instead encourage them to do stuff that keeps things fun and interesting for devs, which (shock!) is great for productivity.

Not quite so keen on having to deal with the non-tech aspects of the job, but hey ho, it’s just another thing to learn and get good at. I love and miss coding but really when I say that I mean I love hacking a web app together for fun, rather than professional full time software development, which IMO is under appreciated as a Hard Job.

Looking at events like RB Rampage, where there’s similar features and arguably bigger coverage, and with previous life changing accidents at rampage,  I’m sure RB and the Atherton’s are far from amateur….

Feel the same way about Rampage so this isn’t the compelling argument you might think it is. Look, if Matt and Gee and the gang want to chuck themselves off ridiculous stuff for the laughs and the views, I wouldn’t watch it, but I wouldn’t have a problem with it. But because it is an organised event with an insanely wealthy and well known brand backing it and publicising it, it should be subject to a higher level of scrutiny and safety. Baffled as to how anyone thinks otherwise.

Where are the kids going to get a job in the lakes that will let them buy a place in the lakes? London? Remote from the start of work?

It was a conscious choice to step off the treadmill of house prices, schools in expensive areas, higher paid jobs, longer hours, retirement a long way away. So moving to the Lakes, or Cornwall or other areas that are beautiful but have high housing costs seems pointless to me.

In terms of work for my daughter – well, it’s hard to know what work looks like 10-15 years from now, but it’s not something that overly worries me. For us and our daughter, we felt it was important that she has happy parents that aren’t thinking “what if”, and we felt that for her personally the move would be good for her, which it has been. More than ever learning that there are options and choices and no predefined paths seems like an important lesson for us to teach, and this has been a big lesson for all of us (but a lovely one).

Basically, YMMV, but if you can get past worrying about the uncontrollables and focus on what actually matters to you, you’ll be able to figure it out.