Deleted, double post

Just re-reading my reply above and I’m not sure it’s hugely clear. My thoughts are do go with an accident management firm, but make sure it’s a sensible one, not a firm of mickey takers who say “German estate car, righto, Merc E320 arriving on your drive tomorrow AM”. If you can get by with a Fiesta or Focus hire car, tell them and keep the costs down…

Good advice above too from Nobby about your insurer potentially taking on all the liabilities via recommendation deals.

Oh, and one last point – don’t stick any more detail about the accident online. All sounds very clear cut in your case but it can bite people on the arse.

The best way to get that off is to use a clay bar, not a polish. A clay bar will take all of the transferred paint off very easily without abrading your paint. You’ll be left with some marks from the accident that need buffing up, but you shouldn’t need to be using anything as aggressive as G3.

Albany are Helphire. They’re a big credit hire firm and there should be plenty of info about them online. All the accident management firms are basically car hire firms that sort out accidents on your behalf. They can rack up stupid bills at above market rates and you can end up liable for them in extreme cases, as you’ve clearly not mitigated your losses.

We recently had a no fault accident, Europa Consultants from up near Bury sorted it out well for us. This is despite it being pretty obvious from the off that it was unlikely they could pick up much cash from the deal. You should be able to pick up their details off google or pistonheads.

I’ve worked in the insurance business in the past, and it’s just not worth the aggro diying a no fault claim. I certainly wouldn’t start it in your position – if the third party refuses to answer his insurers letters and calls, you could have stress and a broken car on the drive for a while. You could well be looking at a write off if the impact was at a decent speed and a lot of airbags went off. A lot of insurers will start with 70 something % of trade in value as a first offer, which is a complete joke – this would put the write off pay out around 50% of retail on an older car. I’ve posted more detail on the DIY route in the past if you want to look it up. If you want valuations, Glass’ can be had for free from Vauxhall’s trade in website, and CAP is freely available – these are the systems insurers use.

Some people will tell you that credit hire firms push up premiums, that they’re the root of all evil etc. but the other side is that they will get you the proper price for your car, and they’ll sort it with the minimum aggro for you.

Lawyer wise, if you need one, go with the solicitor provided by your insurance legal cover. If you didn’t take out legal cover, do take it out next time… Avoid solicitors with heavy success fees like the plague – if a lawyer has a 25% success fee, he needs to be 33% better than the free one from your insurance company before you even break even…

It’s been years since I’ve done anything newt related, so I’m not much help in IDing it. If it’s a GCN, they’re relatively easy to spot as they’re much bigger than the other species. The crest usually isn’t very obvious unless it’s actually in the water.

England basically has most of Europe’s greater crested newts, so whilst they’re endangered on a European scale, they’re not hugely uncommon.

Get a normal telly. I really can’t see the point in paying extra for a smart TV – give it a couple of years and they’ll stop updating it, and eventually you’ll end up with a set top box to get the functionality you want.

Then get some sort of set top box or games console. Freeview+ PVRs are alright, but if you get a nice HD one it’ll be the thick end of £150-£200. Or you can just get a cheapy on the basis that most stuff is SD anyway. Then get a games console, and you can watch Youtube, Netflix, Iplayer etc. and play games… Then when the console gets outdated, you flog it on ebay and get another.

There are two big things you need to be good at product development. The first one is coming up with an idea and making it into a working product (ie, engineering know how) and the second is making your working product into something that can be manufactured cheaply, then bringing it to market (ie, a bit of engineering know how, plus understanding of how the supply chain works and marketing nous).

I’d personally stick with the engineering for a bit – real product development where you come up with a genuinely innovative idea with big scope for £££s is tough, so a lot of companies tend to go down the route of an idea that already works in a new shape, or somehow prettified.

Last week on the radio they had a statistician on talking about the risks of cycling. The summary was that in terms of getting your head knocked off, an hour of cycling was about as risky as two hours in a car. Or five minutes on a motorbike…

And plus one for not looking at obvious small cars. Insurers look at the risk profile of people like you in that model of car. Things like Mondeos and other cars with decent engines but no cool factor of any kind are often much cheaper to insure.

Go to an opticians and try on a set of frames if you’re going down the prescription insert route. My eyelashes rub on the inside of the insert, not something you’d want to find out after you bought a pair.

Contact lenses + cheap plano sunglasses.

The Astras look nice, but both diesels and petrols have dual mass flywheels, which rather put me off.

I’d be inclined to look at Golfs and A3s, they tend to be pretty reliable, hold their money well and sell easily when you want rid.

The Focus and Astra will probably get you more car for your money now, and fall further over time…

That’s a very nice watch. Is it an auto or a hand wind?

If I ever find myself in possession of a wedge of cash to spend on a watch, I’ll be looking for an old Omega. In the meantime, I’ve picked up a 1960s Poljot.

Cheers, bit pricey but definitely along the right lines.

If your glasses make you feel a bit odd when you wear them, that’s could be because you’ve got a bit of an astigmatism, and you don’t wear them often. The other option is that the prescription is flat out wrong.

I’ve got very little astigmastism on my prescription and so I can use normal contacts that don’t correct the astigmastism.

There’s very little in it between my glasses and contacts when I read off the chart at the opticians, but for the first 10 minutes when I put them in and walk around, I feel like the perspective on everything is slightly wonky. You may well go to the opticians, get given a set of toric contacts to correct the astigmatism and you’ll feel odd when you first put them in too.

The solution is to wear the glasses more so that you get used to it…

Would that not leave us stuck with xyzblog.wordpress.com?

Doss about on the beach at St Lunaire.

Have some lunch at St Briac – there’s a nice view.

Sit outside the tabac in St Briac and have a coffee – if you want a croissant you need to go to the baker’s across the square.

Have a wander around St Malo. The old town is lovely and there’s an old fort you can wander up to. If you’re feeling rich you can pay €5 a head to look around it.

Didn’t really get Dinard…

Don’t go to St Breiuc.

My mum bought an iPhone 3GS. It’s so slow that it’s verging on unusable if you ask me. Upgrade iOS and it gets even slower. Don’t upgrade iOS and you can’t download a lot of useful apps, as they’re built for more recent versions. I really can’t see why you’d bother – because there’s no feedback in terms of a button physically clicking, you spend half your life going “it’s loading… it’s loading… oh hang on, did that touch actually register?”.

I’d look at a second hand Android phone – maybe a HTC Desire S or Samsung Galaxy S2. Or even one of the very cheap phones like a Huawei – they’re a bit fragile but they work well enough.

Switch retailers and change roles after 12 months?

There are a lot of smaller retailers that will be keen to nick a bit of big retailer know how as they grow…

Nice bikes, the wheels and tyres aren’t amazing – the hubs need greasing when you get them, and the brakes are a bit so so.

It’ll be right. In my teenage years I’ve had cars absolutely reeking of clutch after seeing how quickly a 1.0 noddy car can get away from the lights. As other’s have said, there’ll be some extra wear to the friction material (which wears out over time anyway) but it’s unlikely to be long term shot.

There’s only one thing I know that’s guaranteed to ruin a clutch, and that’s using it as a footrest. I know someone who does that, the clutch turns into an on/off switch and lasts about 30k…

I had one of those for a while, and couldn’t recommend it any less. Drank gas and took about a fortnight to boil a cup of water. Awful.

I’ve always found the ones I’ve had to work passably well and don’t threaten to topple over like the backpacking style single burners.

For a try out, you might as well spend as little as possible on cooking gear, and find out whether you can stick sleeping in a tent whilst scranning down scampi and chips from the pub before you go and get a full cooking set.

The basics:

A tent – I like Decathlon ones, make sure you get one big enough that you can stand up in it. If there will be 4 of you camping, get a 6 man tent. Sewn in groundsheets aren’t the be-all and end all a lot would have you believe, and help keep tents stuffy in warmer weather.

Self inflating mats to sleep on. The normal blue foam ones rolls are rubbish, air beds are rubbish, self inflating mats are amazing. A 2.5cm one is pretty good, a 5cm one is really comfy. Did 2 weeks on a 5cm thick mat a couple of years ago. Vango do good doubles, everyone (Aldi, Lidl, Argos, Wilko etc.) do singles for the kids.

Sleeping bags. Nice and cheap from decathlon again.

A table and chairs. Decathlon do decent tables, Ikea’s folding chairs are bob on.

A cooker – get a one of those £10 single ring briefcase jobbies to brew up with if you’re just trying it out. Spend £80-£100 on gas bottles and a proper two ring stove and grill if you like it.

Torches. Lots of torches.

If you’re going for longer, try and lay your hands on a camp kitchen to stand your cooker on, makes producing food a far more pleasant experience.

You should be able to get completely kitted out for £200-£300 at the likes of Decathlon / Go Outdoors etc.

Voda Sure Signal is basically a mini phone mast in your house.

Orange Signal Boost routes calls via your wifi connection rather than over the standard mobile phone network – imagine a seamless version of Skype that works. Signal Boost is just a brand name for UMA.

I’ve got a phone with Orange Signal Boost. It works great when you live somewhere with a ropey mobile signal, and so long as you can access wifi, you can access a phone signal. You do tend to drop calls when you move out of wifi areas regardless of local Orange signal (ie, if I’m connected to wifi and have signal boost on, and then wander out of range of the wifi, the call will drop even if the Orange signal is strong locally).

The cons are that there’s a very limited range of SignalBoost phones about compared with 18 months ago when I got my Galaxy S2 – to be honest, it looks like Orange are phasing it out to me.

To be honest, I’d be inclined to use a land line – it seems most broadband providers are working hard to force you to have one…

It really depends on what they look like and the circumstances. If they’re Alan Partridge string back specials or they make you think you’re a racing driver then they’re not OK.

If they’re relatively normal gloves, then fine, so long as one of the following conditions is met:
Your car has a lot of metal controls that either get red hot or freezing. I know a bloke who drives a Civic type r with a sock on the gearstick for this reason. Gloves would be preferable…
The heater in your car doesn’t work, or the car doesn’t have a roof.

For everyone going “what’s the worst that can happen?”…

I genuinely suspect the chances of getting blown up or zapped are pretty damn slight.

The chances of cocking your car up are very high on some models – I had a Peugeot with multiplexed electrics, and the proper procedure for changing the battery runs something along these lines:

Get in the car, wind down the driver’s window.
Take the keys out.
Get out and lock the car.
Wait a minute.
Pull the bonnet release through the open window.
Disconnect the battery

Reconnecting the battery involves more faffing through the drivers window turning things on and off before and after you reconnect.

Not doing the above causes a computer somewhere to FUBAR itself. The computer is a) expensive and b) frenchist dealer only, and therefore takes weeks to come into stock.

Obviously such unusual and complex procedures with expensive consequences don’t make it worthwhile sticking a warning label next to the battery.

So that’s probably the worst that can happen. :evil:

If someone else fits it, at least that kind of aggro is their problem. I found out about the above due a garage disconnecting the battery during mechanical work and putting the car off the road for several weeks of headscratching and waiting for parts…

I picked up a Triban 3 a fortnight ago. It’s a proper working road bike with STIs and a decent spread of gears.

The wheels and brakes could be a bit better, but any £300 bike will be compromised somewhere.

Those Vikings got a shocking write up in one of the comics recently FWIW.

Bit of a thread from the dead but I’ve just got forza out of the drawer.

I’ve set up SurfMattRacing in honour of one of most awesome forum members, club tag STW0. With a zero not an O.

If there’s already an stw club then I’m RetiredGenie2. Never bothered changing the default gamertag…

Check your email.

Has she had treatment for the ME / CFS? Sounds like it could all be wrapped up together…

What you need for reliability are three things: fuel injection, a good basic level of quality and simplicity.

Fuel injection is an absolute must. The amount of faff that’s removed from running the car is unreal.

A decent level of quality. Seperate fuses for everything, in a place where you can get at them. A body that doesn’t rust, and an interior that can take some wear. Then add real basics: a decent engine with no tendency for oil leaks, and because you will forget to top up eventually, no dual mass flywheel, no need to do anything other than spark plugs and the cam belt every 60k. Just those things massively improve the chances of the car being serviced something like properly.

The last thing is simplicity. An interior held together with screws or clips that can be reused, an engine bay that’s got some room etc.

I’d say old petrol Golfs fit the bill very well. 10k oil and filter services, cheap parts and you can get the diagnostic gear for them cheaply if you want to. The things that tend to break are easy diy jobs and there are no DMFs to worry about. Stuff like old Landys can be made to go forever, but knowing people who run them, I’d be sick of fixing it within a fortnight

I’d be looking for a 1.6 Petrol at that sort of money. The £ per year for fuelling one isn’t dramatically higher than the equivalent diesel (a bit of mental maths suggested there was about 3p per mile in it between my 40mpg petrol and the MK6 Bluemotion Golf I’d bottowed), but they’re generally much cheaper to buy, or much newer / lower mileage for the same money.

As for models of car, the Leon / MK4 Golf is a decent bet, both come with a nice economical 16V 1.6. Same goes for the MK1 and MK2 Focus.

It will also get you into a nice BMW 318i – either the saloon or the compact, but the insurance is generally pricey on these, and the fuel consumption is a bit higher. But they are reasonably nippy – 9 seconds or so to 60.

Also, bear in mind that coming from a Ka, even a 1.6 will feel quick. The 0-60 might only be a couple of seconds quicker, but the performance above 50mph will be very different. On the other hand, you may be disappointed by how other cars handle if your Ka is in decent nick!

I’d give the Mini a miss as the ride is pretty horrendous. They’re described as “go karts” by all and sundry, but they’re not as go karty as a Ka…

Use DMX Dimension (Google it to find the Web address) as they list all the current Dell deals. Any of the Vostro line is basically designed for small businesses and they do decent support packages.

Dell prices are usually very good when they’re on sale, and you should get a set of parts that all work nicely together. Building your own PC is all physically quite simple but making sure every part is compatible with every other and making sure everything is running at optimum speed is much more of a pain.

The 250 is up for £144.99 in Sainsbury’s at the moment.

I probably am very late to the party – I think the next gen machines are due in 2014. But to be fair, when these things are new and £400 a pop, I’m not at all interested. £150-£250 with a few games bundled in, and it suddenly seems halfway reasonable.

Check the thermostat and temperature sensors. If the car isn’t getting warm / thinks it isn’t, then it will run a bit rich and this will put your fuel consumption up.

I managed to get through to them at 7 this morning, and was repeatedly told that I’d need to ring back at 8 to get hold of a different team. Eventually they said they’d cancel the order for me.

It’s now 11 and the order’s still showing on my account. Contemplating wasting more £s on the phone and ringing them again…

Avoid getting a residents parking scheme if at all possible.

My Mum lives on a street near the centre of town, and 20 years or so ago, there was a residents parking scheme introduced. It was pretty handy as the street was 2 or 3 minutes walk from the centre of town, so if you went out at all during the day on Saturday, you’d come back to find that you couldn’t park anywhere due to shoppers.

20 years on, there’s still a residents parking scheme, but thanks to council rather than police parking enforcement, they’re now checking it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and it’s a royal pain as you only get a permit + a visitors permit. Very difficult if you have more than one vehicle you need to park on the stret. And if you have a few guests around on a weekend evening, you’re constantly worrying if some bod on a moped will turn up to give someone a ticket for parking in a half empty street.

I also lived in an area with a different residents parking scheme, where you bought books of visitor permits. You were still limited to one car per address, so as we had two cars we were constantly having to park in another area or pay to park on our own street.

It’s basically volunteering to be taxed for parking and to be stressed out whenever you have visitors or trades in. I’d never go for it unless you live slap bang on top of a shopping area.

You want some bio brisk, it’s a valeting detergent specifically for getting biological stains out – blood, wee and puke. It’s also pretty amazing on all other kinds of dirt.

However, if you’ve not got a wet vacuum, just lob the car at valeting man. Not worth the time and cash to get the kit together.

When I was younger and drove everywhere flat out, it was impossible to hit more than a 35mph average on a stretch of b road I knew very well. A standing start from a t junction and one tight bend were the only bits where you were under 50…