coldel

Good memory there! Even I forgot I posted this post and was very confused when I saw it pop up

I thought the simple answer in economic terms is that both the UK minus Scotland and Scotland would be taking big steps backwards economically if they split up. The UK government knows that, Alex Salmond knows that but wants to be a guy who goes down in Scottish history - I have no doubt there are quite selfish personal reasons at heart for what he is campaigning for. Personally it is a massive gamble and if I were going to stick my money in there I would vote No. A lot has been said of oil but take that out of the equation and Scotland in terms of revenue generation per head is on par with the UK average. Oil prices and sales are hugely volatile accounting for anything between 10 and 30 percent of revenues for Scotland year on year. AS cannot possibly create a future fiscal policy which contains oil revenues and be confident that he can control taxation. So the numbers argument is really a mute point, the argument is I think are you willing to inherit an unknown number of years of additional financial hardship so you can say that when a politician makes a decision you don't like its from Scotland and not in England, if you think that is worth it then you vote Yes.

If we can rack up 9 pages about the fact that a TTRS is faster than a Zed then 20 pages on these idiots should be a doddle then post it on their facebook page.

If you look on the national statistics site its all on there mate in terms of public spending, you can even download the spread sheet. Trust me, it is not 1%, the spread of spend is about on average £8k per head with variations around that down to £6k per head in some areas and £10k per head in others. As for backbone, have you lived in many other countries to experience their governments and make a view? I have only lived in two countries outside the UK but its no different. I for one would prefer to live here with tolerance than somewhere like France with its every increasing racist views.

which country isnt Economic report this morning actually states that the UK is ninth in the world out of 144 countries surveyed - relatively speaking we are very far from a mess.

It affects all nationalities that live in Scotland, so really that's the only ones that should have a say. My neighbour owns a house in Scotland, is MD of a £2bn business based in Scotland employing over a 1000 people but lives in England because most of his meetings are southern based - should he get a vote?

100% agreed and 100% the point. Absolutely the point - although how many voting Yes genuinely believe the financial forecasts that the Yes campaign are putting forwards? How many are voting Yes for independence and how many because they think they are going the be getting something better in economic terms?

I'm proposing Independence, so that you don't have to worry about my tax, and concentrate on your own. If you think what you pay is enough for all the major Infra projects in that corner of England, crack on. Yeah I saw that about infrastructure, my point was back to your reasoning around the south east paying more tax due to spending. A quick Google and the spend per head on people living in the south east is one of the lowest in the country (I live in Surrey not London) so would love to see my tax go down, Scotland as we know is the highest so by that rationale they should be taxed higher. In terms of infrastructure, yes highlighting the HS2 is fair enough, you are not alone and most people see it as a waste of money north and south of the border. However, personal views aside it is built using UK taxes and situated in the UK with the intention of stimulating the UK economy and therefore UK revenues. The fact is is not in Scotland is really not the issue in terms of the very top level aims of the project (whether you agree with it or not) - it should ultimately drive the UK economy so creating more wealth for the UK including Scotland. In terms of being run by 'Westminster' - trust me, I live 20 miles away from the building and work within spitting distance of it - do I feel any better when crap decisions are made than someone living 700 miles away, not really.

You would propose paying tax proportionate to spending per head?

I also got nominated, but as I look at facepack about once a week sometimes less I only noticed it yesterday and in the intervening 5 days since nomination I have had messages giving me grief for not doing it. A. I give to charity because I want to and to the charity I want to and I do it when I want - this is not dictated to me by someone else who only gives 5 quid once every decade to a charity they know bugger all or care one jot about B. Why is it that every person who goes on facebook ten times a day assumes everyone else does and also think that everyone else is so bound by its unwritten peer pressure rules

Tut huhhh why copy a GTR when its not a GTR

Haha you boys should cut down on the fried food and lager and make the most of your pension then In terms of the south east, yes there is a big sway in total spending, but there are something like 12m people living in London, Kent and Essex, more than double Scotland and about a fifth of the total UK so in terms of perception, it will appear like lots of money is spent there in total vs rest of UK. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head so could be wildly wrong, but suspect in terms of tax paid per head it is also likely to be higher in the south east than the rest of the country so why shouldn't it receive more as per AS argument - but like I say could be completely wrong on that front.

Can see your point regarding HS2, however you can't look at it like that in isolation. There is so much that is not in the public eye that is public money spent north of the border also. Government subsidies for Scottish power companies R&D dwarf the HS2 project for instance. Average public spending per head for people living in Scotland is something like £1k more than the rest of the UK, although you could argue that is offset as tax revenues per head in Scotland are higher on average than the rest of the UK. All swings and roundabouts. I find it hard to believe as well that Scots would by voting Yes effectively be laying at their door tax increases, historically anything which involves more tax has not sat well north of the border, Poll Tax for instance and rate rises have all been badly received, moreso than south of the border, although thats just my perception of it.

Had a quick dig through on Facepack and found some old photos Golden Temple Some statues in Nara Getting ready to tackle Nagano ski slopes! Also we climbed Fuji, I think it was August, there is literally an 8 week window you can do this an amateur. Walked up and stopped at a base camp halfway up from 10pm till midnight, then set off again and was at the top for sunrise - awesome! And one fearless dude trying to get a signal!

Steve, it was about Ekona and SMD saying they wish they had a 370ZN ... honestly Nooooooooooooo My £35k will be going on a 3/4 year old XKR next year, 5.0l V8 Supercharged 510bhp Jolly good show old boy!

Drive it all the time carefully/winter tyres or stick it in the garage with a trickle charger and forget about it for a few months. Not sure what else to suggest?

TTRS looks 90% like a bottom of the range TT - the Zed is designed to look like just what it is, a sports car with decent performance. I could argue if there was only the TTRS available and no other variants you wouldn't be seeing it driven around by girls and it would be uber rare and probably a lot more desirable and we would all be drooling over its unique design

Yes the mileage is a bit of a red herring. So in 12 years its done 2500 miles per year on average, so spent plenty of time sat around not moving. How has it been stored? Sat out on the road or garaged? When was the import and was it under-sealed? All these can combine to create rust problems etc. As Kyle said, for the sake of 20k extra miles you could have had the car with a new clutch etc. There are people in the US who have Zeds on 250k miles so its not anywhere near the end of its life at 60k miles.

TTRS is faster in a sprint than the Zed, did the original post need anymore than that These threads do have a tendency to pop up - we should have a standard templated one "I raced an [insert car brand here] the other day etc..." Then have standard responses of "The Zed is a GT car not a sprinter" or "Its a ten year old car vs what is a more expensive/newer/higher tech/lighter/[insert other reason here] car so it wont be quicker"

Not making any sweeping assumptions on your financial status also - but if you are buying the whole car on CC I would have in your back pocket about £1k in cash to sort out any faults that may come along. New clutch and flywheel for instance is around £650-£700 to buy before labour costs etc. If you don't want to be paying out immediately I would not be focusing on miles and instead be looking at the service history, clutch replacement, and so on and so forth.

UK spec was just GT or Non GT - JDM had multiple levels of each so you will find some things missing from a JDM GT which you would have on a UK GT.

Yeah took a few photos of that golden temple - something like 1 tonne of gold leaf covering it or something? Also when doing that tour you can stop and have green tea - they will show you how to drink it in traditional fashion as well (so quarter turns of the cup etc)

Kyoto! Anagram of Tokyo and the old capital city I went there for a weekend with some Japanese friends - they surprised me and my wife with a make over session. Kyoto is famous for the Geisha and Rebecca got done up in that kind of outfit and me as a Samurai. You are then allowed to walk around atop the hill in your outfits for the day. So you will see 'geisha' being photographed but mostly they are tourists done up! Bullet train is awesome - Japanese friends paid (they ran the biggest law firm in Tokyo) so we went first class. I also saw whilst there a 300 strong Santa Claus charity run (we went on the 24th Dec) which was a strange sight! Nara is awesome for temples, loads of them and a very famous red bridge there. Book yourself into the B&B style places for a great unique expereince. There is also a famous little bar in Nara where all the visitors pin their business cards to the wall. tens of thousands of cards, so remember to take one if you have one. We also did skiing in Nagano - about 2 1/2 hours from Tokyo by train and bus - I did onsen there on a mountain side outside in a rock pool which was fantastic. Loads of great skiing, very expensive though.

Your money , Your choice. This Plenty of reasons not to buy - biggest one probably is that you don't have to buy straight away - always plenty on the market.

For £6k you could buy privately and get a non write off, original colour, UK spec, later year, service history but with more miles? Probably wouldn't lose much cash selling this on (private sale £5k?) but would would take you some time as there are a lot of zeds out there at the moment. PS, nothing against tradelink in any of the above, just answering the guys question in terms of why wouldnt he.