sasha@lazytrips

Insurance companies can indeed be a nightmare. I had a very protracted case of somebody claiming I had hit their car and did damage to both wings, etc which I did not. I offered to bring my car to whichever garage they chose to inspect it (as I obviously had NO damage on any part whatsoever) but they refused as in their eyes paying out £2k was easier. I ended up giving up after 8 months of battling because I really did not want to lose my entire nervous system in the process. My next insurance company conversation was a lot better. I went and talked directly to the 3rd party's insurance which has so far worked a treat. Fingers crossed for the finishing touches.

Lemme guess... Is it that they don't want to do any and prefer to sit on the dole?

Hurrah! Graham Allen MP!

She works for the MP. ie. quite literally. If he is not reelected, she is unemployed.

If anyone is voting in Nottingham North and have no particular preference, feel free to cast a Labour vote. That way my wife has a job tomorrow as opposed to being unemployed

The easiest visual way to tell a GT model imho is to look at the steering wheel. A GT pack zed will have buttons on both sides of the wheel. This, together with a UK rear bumper is a pretty sure way of telling them apart when half the ads don't know what they're talking about.

I'd check all the airways. Have seen a number of cheapo diesels smoke and sound horrendous and each time a hairline crack in something like the intercooler hose.

I know of two separate people who have owned Boxters. If we're talking in terms of £problems per mile driven, your 'problems' are nothing compared to what both of them experienced. The fact of the matter is that there is a good reason why garages exist. They happen to earn their money from doing things other than servicing and MOTs. Whatever car you buy, you will experience issues of some kind if you drive it the best part of 100k miles. As for dealerships, I've recently been to a Porsche dealer and a Maserati/Ferrari dealer who very openly ignored and dismissed me and were extremely unhelpful with any questions I had. Especially the latter. Go figure.

Did you do the full 100k yourself?

Why anyone ever wants to take off a perfectly decent stock exhaust and put on a K1 is still beyond me.

Well you know what the answer is then... Get her a Skyline.

You could probably pick up a JDM zed with a few miles for £8k

Can I come work for your family business? A few people have said that as he also has a brand new Repsol fireblade, but then he has had the sense not to get married or have kids! Where do I send my CV?

Can I come work for your family business?

1. Don't go to the dealer 2. Go fit some uprated parts 3. Point out to me a car in that price range or even that price * 2 or actually any car whatsoever which will have nothing at all go wrong with it in 6 years and 70,000 miles. eg. My neighbour spent a little fortune on a decent beemer and has since had to replace the steering column as well as a load of other more minor bits including a window motor.

Cheers guys! I've now found a place through a member on here. Never expected any replies and was astounded by the amount of help, contacts and offers I received!

I've noticed a very interesting limitation on the MPG calc by the Zed. I reset the trip when I first bought the car and haven't touched it since. What I've found out is that the calculation process converts miles to kilometres at some point. Reason being: at approximately 6,500 miles my MPG reset to 0. It did that again @ 13k-ish and again at 18k or so. So as it does the calc in km, it also only reads 4 digits of the number so when you clock over 10k km, it suddenly thinks that you've burnt a whole massive load of petrol, but gone zero miles. So my trip computer, having not been reset for 22k-ish miles currently reads around 2mpg! Result.

My current thinking is stop in different places on the way there & on the way back, but bomb it down to the tunnel, through France & Germany and take it easy through the other bits. Planning a one-night stop on the way there and one or two stops on the way back. But the way there is waaaaay longer as I'll have to go through the mountains up north. now how long are you planning for the actual trip? Took me 2.5 days to get from Ireland/Dublin to Sweden/Varberg... and I was doing WAY to long on the bike... had to stop every 125miles to fill petrol up and had some smallish incidents on the way but 2.5 days each way in travel to get to Varberg...you'd have a good bit longer to go, the bridge accross Denmark / Sweden is pretty cool though. Eh dont speed if you can help it in Sweden either they are pretty strict on the speeding issue, and as you read Norway are way worse. I'd stay somewhere in Denmark & Sweden for a day or two if I went, you going yourself in the car? (can get boring...)

£1.60 per litre for unleaded. God knows how much they charge for the extra octanes

I am indeed planning to drive there. As I said earlier, can't see any boats going to Norway and it'll probably take forever anyway. Was planning to go down to the tunnel, through france, belgium, holland, germany, denmark, sweden & then norway. Once in Norway, cross all the way up to Alesund, go down along the fjords, etc to Bergen & Stavanger and onto Oslo. Then back through Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Belgium, (Luxembourg?), France and back through the hole in the ground into the engerland... hmmm.... What's the issue with speeding in Norway?

Everywhere I've read claims that ferries from Scotland/Newcastle to Norway have stopped as the firms couldn't compete with low cost airlines There is a ferry service between Newcastle, Shetland and Bergen. The trip from Bergen to Oslo would make it worthwhile, I suspect. Edit - sorry, I just checked and this service has been withdrawn.

Temptation!

why would you want to talk to front splitters?

I would hate it too (in fact I would be furious), but it would a fair system. Don't know how you would classify cars, but something along the lines of insurance group + emissions/engine size + price could do. I hate the whole "he will cut this, he will cut that" talk and people being unhappy about higher taxes, etc. Would you prefer a little more tax or doing a Greece (or possibly quite a lot worse than Greece) in a year or two?

There is a huge amount that can be done which will sort out a whole load of problems in one go. 1. Set minimum wage to £8.30 an hour. This gives somebody working 35 hours a week on minimum wage an annual salary of 10k. 2. Transform the tax system to something with more tiers, grossing more money in a fairer way. Stop calling different components of tax different names and effectively giving the rich a tax discount through the national insurance calculation and set one single payment tax to: 0% - £0 - £5000 15% - £5,000 - £10,000 20% - £10,000 - £15,000 25% - £15,000 - £20,000 30% - £25,000 - £30,000 35% - £30,000 - £35,000 40% - £35,000 - £40,000 45% - £40,000 - £45,000 50% - £45,000 - £50,000 55% - £50,000 - £55,000 60% - £55,000 - £250,000 62% - £250,000+ No NI, No Employer contribution. All raw wages will go up, but the system will be transparent. Build a straight-forward online portal with people-friendly ways of explaining the tax system, submit their tax and calculate how much tax they should be paying. 3. Transform VAT to make it price and item-dependent. Item-dependency should be limited. ie. cheap goods should have no to very little VAT. Expensive and luxury items should have high VAT (eg. cars, yachts, whatever else). Replace the current taxes on property with a sliding scale VAT tax where cheaper houses have very little tax and more expensive ones have higher amounts. Have lots of gradients with small increases to prevent the current way of agreeing a price £1 below the threshold. 4. Transform the benefits system. Make payments lower and do not allow factors like children provide additional benefits. This will stop the drain of finances, stop immigrants coming for the welfare, immediately educate those 16-yr olds who get kids to get a council house, etc. It's tough, but life is tough and money is tough. etc etc. Just a load of sensible measures akin to the above would generate a lot more money, immediately halt immigration, sort out a lot of underlying problems. Vote Sasha!