Chesterfield

One thing thats Pi**ing me off is the inclusion of stability control/esp in the test. I have an Altea with the ESP light permanently on. It will be 5 years old in April and will have covered just over 33K. Apparently it is a costly item, and it is also a very common fault with the VAG cars of that age/era. If Im told its an MOT failure Ill happily spen £1600 suing the dealer for selling goods not fit for purpose. There is no way in hell a component that critical should be failing that early in a cars life/mileage. Just google - ESP light on permanently, look how many VW/Audi/Seat refferences come up on the first page. Its a MASSIVE problem and VW know about it. They just havent been brought to book on it. Im surprised its not been on the news/watchdog and the like, given the massive uproar about other manufacturers recalls earlier last year.

G35 or 37 Sorry to see this, but as above its only plastic and metal. You can fix or buy another lump of that. Skin and bone not so easy. Everyone being alright is the most important thing.

The problem is, you would then have console players having to put up with all the hacking/aimbot/cheating/glitching that plagues all fps games on PC. At least with xbox or PS3 its a case of getting beaten fairly.

I assume your router is giving out the ip addresses. Try setting the printer to obtain an ip address automatically (dhcp). When it gets an address, you should have a function on the router to reserve that address (so the printer always has the same address). You can then do the same for all windows PC's. They should all then have an address in the same range i.e. 192.168.1.X You can then add the printer as above by making it a local printer and creating a tcp/ip port to print to. For windows 7 tcp/ip port setup: Click the windows icon (Start), Device and Printers > Add A Printer > Add A Local Printer > Create A New Port > Standard TCP/IP Port Click Next. Type in the IP Address. GIve the port a name, Click Next. That should be all done.

The reason it was dropped is that in order to do it, the page has to read a lot more information from the database when rendering each page. Not only does it have to fetch the title of each thread for the page you are viewing, it will have to fetch the first XX words/characters of each of those threads, and render this into the page. It would increase the load on the database by a huge ammount, and could/would slow down the site considerably. In terms of stats, an average month is 0.75 Million pages per month, or one page every 3 seconds 24 hours a day. Given peak time usage, we can sometimes see several pages per second being demanded from the server, so unfortunately a modification like this which requires a lot more info from the database per page will not be possible for now.

You not been a good boy this year? Oh Ive been good, but after buying this three years early, I thought Id better not ask santa for anything extravagant.

Its where soil/solids are shaken in such a way they act like liquids for s period of time. liquid doesn't have to come to the surface etc. imagine placing a 50p coin on a tray of sand. its going nowhere. but if you vibrate the tray, the sand acts like a liquid and the coin sinks. now scale that up and imagine the coin is a building and the sand is the ground it is built on. Glad to hear things are not as bad as last time.

Coupe in white, black roof, black wheels please - or a solid white aventador. Mmmmmmm - Sadly santa says no on both

go down there yourself, covertly record it, no doubt you will get abuse too. Send the film to Tesco head office and a copy to the general manager at store. Deman thay be removed from the tesco site with immediate effect, otherwise another copy wil be sent to watchdog/sky/bbc etc showing what sort of business tesco allow on their premises. Dole for Christmas. Job jobbed.

When I ordered the bodykit for my car, it was shiped from the mid USA to the UK in less than 48 hours. It then took two weeks to make it about 80 miles up the M1.

RRL & RMP are now showing as massive losses for me. Well, they are only a loss if you sell I suppose, so they will have to go into the long term hold/average down as and when folder now. Have been trading the likes of RBS for 15% here and there as it to's and fro's from 19-23 etc. Just small fry £200 here and £150 there, but it all adds up and lets me average down my RRL or RMP for free.

I was thinking more like feeding them slowly feet first through a chipper. But Ive probably seen too many sick films.

I read about that incident too where they microwaved the kitten/cat. I don't know what goes through someone's mind to do that. I do know if they did that to ours and they were caught, I honestly dont know whether id be able to control myself.

Dont even get me started on switching off lights to save energy. They are unmetered supplies. Without renegotiating the unmetered supply contracts it wont save a penny. Like most contracts you cant just decide to change things half way through in most cases, so they need to be renegotiated at specific times. In my experience councils dont have clue about energy purchasing, so I wouldnt put it past them to switch of the lights and then scratch their head when the same size bill drops on the desk.

Id happily use my range rover to mow them down. The watch does have some distinctive markings, so if by some miracle it is found in one of the hundreds of pawn shops/buy your gold type places in his local area then we may get it back, but again its a needle in a haystack task.

Just as a warning to others as much as a rant really. Just been called by my brother-in-law, he has returned home to find him and his partner have been burgled. Smashed the back door off its hinges (it was a 7 point locking pvc jobbie). Taken two TV's, a netbook we bought them, some other items (probably presents) and also his/Tracys grandads watch which was/is a very sentimental item. It absolutely makes my p**s boil that there are scum out there that think nothing of doing this. Tracy is out at the moment and she will be gutted when she finds out when she gets back. Hopefully the police will be able to do something and maybe get at least some prints or maybe find the culprits, but I dont hold out much hope. If they do however, then Ill be making sure that its the last house they burgle, (and yes mr policeman reading this I do mean it, I will have their hands smashed with a sledgehammer). So - to others, be cautious, secure your irreplaceable items and take any other measures you can to protect your house from scum like this. On a side note, if anyone has any tips on what to do immediatley after an event like this, i.e. how to you get the door fixed at this time of night etc please let me know.

Tell the police you wish to take up a private prosectution case and you demand the details be passed to your solicitor. You will get them then. What you do with them is entirely up to you.

I dont see how that justifies it Free refils? Wow. For £2100 I could only get 35 tubs of Supernatural (at retail prices). Assuming I only got 25 applications per tub, that would only enable me to wax the car once a month for 72 years. As for prestige, that will only come if you actually tell people you spent £2100 on a tub of car wax. Quite how you squeeze that into a conversation without the other party thinking "what a c*ck", I dont know. I may be more impressed by the car that they have put the wax on, because I would assume that a £2100 wax would be used on ridiculously rare or expensive cars. If not then the "what a c*ck" thought would probably be quite accurate I think.

The shine on Martins car at the last summer Wales run using dodo supernatural was fantastic. How anyone could ever justify a wax costing several K after seeing results like that is beyond me. Results with £60 wax:

The chris that it is has lost a bit of weight since then More to go though.

Just lift the rods. Its easy enough to "turn down" a nuclear plant. France has to do it all the time in summer when there isnt enough river water to cool the stations. Without going into too much detail. A business park, if it's sizeable will have a COP 5 electricity meter, which means minimum 100KVA availability, and the distribution company will charge for this availability. If there is the requirement for a 100KVA meter, then the turbine would need to be a 100KVA which could be a 25-30m (75-90 ft) turbine with blade span of 20m (60ft). A business park with the likes of frankie & bennys, nandos and maybe an office building with a few floors of PC's could use maybe 500,000 or more Kwh per year. Which means the turbine would need to be running with windspeed of 20mph for 13 hours a day, every day. An awful lot of these wind installations on land will NEVER pay back their installation cost, never mind save money - but nobody dare admit it. They just put them in so the green fans think the company is "doing their bit". They are all advertising gimmicks and not real money saving devices. Offshore they are better, but still the most expensive way of generating electricity known to man. The only way of actually making money is (or should I say was) the governments Feed In Tarrif scheme, but thats been cut dramatically now.

I dont want to make light of the deaths of people, but there was recently a story that network rail are to be charged over the deaths of two teenage girls who got run over and killed by a train, even though they walked onto the tracks at a level crossing while the lights were flashing and the sirens going. Seriously? Wtf? The lights were flashing, the sirens going, and they waited while one train passed. The sirens and lights continued to go as another train was coming in the other direction - but they opened the gate and walked onto the lines even though these alarms were still going and got hit by the train going in the opposite direction. And thats network rails fault!?! How utterly stupid has this country managed to become when being hit by a train while there is big bloody flashing warning lights and sirens telling you not to cross is someone elses fault? Unbelieveable. EDIT: found the article here - http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16117387 Can anyone explain to me how the frig this is someone elses fault?!

Thats the same for any electricity generation, it cant be stored. Wind turbines are one of the biggest white elephants to ever grace our country. They are one reason why everyones energy bills are a lot higher than they should be. Tidal would be a lot more efficient, and predictable. Nuclear or, if we really must follow this green path at ridiculous expense, carbon capture. Our council spent £86,000 on a 20KVA turbine in our business park. It generates £500 per year in electricity (or maybe now £700 at todays rates) but is on a £1500 per year maintenance contract. But didn't they blow their trumpet in the local rag some years ago when they were being "green". Driving into work each day seeing that complete waste of public money really cheers me up, especially on corporation tax return day..

Just because credit became easier to get does not mean people had to use it. Those taking out 100% mortgages, buying all their worldly goods on credit and generally living beyond their means cannot simply hold their hands up and say "Its not my fault. They made it so easy I just had to" when the debts are called in. When Tracy and myself applied for a mortgage at the height of this credit fuelled world, the sums they would lend were ridiculous to say the least. The payments at the top end of what they would lend us were "manageable", but they would have stretched us a bit. It didn't take a genius to quickly work out what the repayments would be if we returned back to 3% or 4% base rates during the lifetime of a mortgage, or indeed if our income took a dive and could see instantly that the repayments would bankrupt us. I also dont buy that those at the top end have not been hit as much as those at the bottom. If the expenditure of those earning £1m salaries was the same as those earning £20k, then yes they have a lot more disposeable income. However, if they do as many do, and live within their means, or at least up to them, is their disposeable income enough to swallow some of the higher rate taxes and cuts introduced? The introduction of a new 50% tax on those earners of £1m, added an extra £85,000 to their tax bill overnight. What if that £85,000 was their disposeable income? What if it was their mortgage repayments? I suppose its ok, as they are rich, they can afford it, they will just have to come down a peg or two. Those at the bottom have no wriggle room so they struggle. While its a popular line and one the unions seem to spout ad nauseam, stating that those who are better off should be taxed more and pay their fair share is, for the most part I would assume, starting to wear a bit thin on those people. Since tax year 09/10 to tax year 11/12, An earner of £115k has seen an increase of over £3800 on their PAYE (3.3%). An earner of £25k has seen a reduction in their PAYE of around £180 (0.7%) The fingers can be waved at the bankers, or the MP's or the rich all day long, but the sooner we realise we are all in this together the sooner we can try and move forward. Unfortunately this attitude we have in Britain that its "always someone elses fault" will not get us out of this one.

I hope none of those on strike are teaching economics, at any level.