Ekona

Return pink, buy blue instead. Surely the easiest way to do things, and it means everything stays consistent.

Ironically the car isn't going to LM this year, but it is going to a car show tomorrow. Allegedly.

If you look at the three manifestos, the Tory one looks boring as hell. That said, it also looks the most realistic.

For those that don't know, the Bummer suffered a bit of an issue at the weekend. Drove for a couple of hours, fine. Moved car 10 mins down the road, fine. Blipped throttle a couple of times in a tunnel whilst static, heard a massive squeal like a slipping belt and it began pouring smoke out of the bonnet Thankfully my mate Mark was stood in front of the car at the time and told me to turn it off quick sharp. Upon RAC inspection, couldn't find a damn thing wrong. All belts fine, all pulleys free. Drove home fine. Upon second inspection (i.e. it happened again later that evening) it looked like the A/C pulley was stalling a tad. Belt and compressor was smothered in oil. Took it to my local guys yesterday who had a look at it today. A/C compressor is fine (thankfully, it's a £1K part) but the oil is coming from one of three places: The cam cover, the chain cover, or the oil pressure sensor. Given I had issues with the oil pressure sensor not a month ago, I know where my money is going. Going to drop the part off to them in the morning, they'll change it and see. If the oil disappears then great, if it still carries on p*ssing out of the covers then we're looking at a significantly larger bill. Fingers crossed and all that. Funnily enough it was just before Le Mans last year that the car started chucking fluids everywhere, it's like it knows or something...

If a dealer has carried out a HPI check which later then turns out to be false, you have recourse against the dealer.

Be careful when turning left, all that extra weight over the rear right of the car might make it really snappy.

Tory manifesto out. Key tax pledges: Personal allowance up to £12500 Higher rate up to £50K by 2020 Corp tax down to 17% by 2020 Seems reasonable enough to me.

Apart from the steering, it's the one other part of the car you have direct interaction with. Shifter weight is absolutely vital to get right, and the more heft you can put there when the basic shift is anything other than perfect (i.e. not an MX5) then the better. However, this is in danger of becoming a Five Minuter so I'll make that my final words on the matter.

The shifter is the one place on the car you want to add as much weight as possible, for a more positive action.

Carpet stains? Oh yeah they're real. The magic fanny button, less so.

If you like making your shift vague and about 10x longer, they're brilliant I quite like the design of the bamboo ones, just a shame they're going to be so light as otherwise they'd be great.

That was exactly what happened when we had the 50% rate previously: Tax incomes actually reduced, so having it at 45% for the top rate gave the best balance for maximum income. A couple of questions for people in general, and actually you don't always get the answers you think you might... 1. If the government suddenly decided to tax you an extra 5%, regardless of your income, would you be happy with that on the basis the country needs the extra cash? 2. If there was a perfectly legal and approved way to reduce your tax, like Jimmy Carr but not illegal, would you take that?

Politics of jealousy. If I can't have it, why should anyone else?

I don't think anyone who isn't a die-hard Corbynista trusts Labour with money any more. The public in general are much more clued up on this now, even if it's only on a very basic level that you can't borrow your way out of trouble.

And I know this is childish, but...

Good article here on the Labour spending plans - http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2017/05/labour-s-economic-programme I like the last paragraph here, especially the use of the word popular; I know we've all been told lately that Brexit and Trump and Le Pen et al is the rise of populism, but tbh I'm in agreement with the author here and really what teh Labour manifesto appears to be is a Left version of populism. It's the abuse of facts to make your point based on beliefs, when ultimately none of it is realistic to achieve and it's blaming the wrong people for your own failures. It's headline grabbing, like £350M to the NHS or Build A Wall or Tax The Filthy Rich, and none of it actually solves the core issues.

Big business I'm not worried about. SME I am, desperately.

Nationalisation of the railways would cost an absolute fortune. I suspect the banks wouldn't exactly be interested in cutting the government any deal after they'd stripped them of millions of pounds under the new tax rules, so you can bet costs for the hire of the rolling stock would be astronomical.

I like trolling the Corbyn fan clubs

I have one. He's one of my best mates even though we live half a country apart, such a lovely guy but he's a fruit loop over Labour. Or rather, anti-Tory. I also have another couple who are proper champagne socialists, but you can have a perfectly reasoned debate with them and everything is discussed amicably. It's all very odd.

Why bother scrapping tuition fees? You already have the student vote, so appealing to them is a waste of time and money. Trying to be non-biased on this one, I'd say it's a manifesto of thirds. A third I agree wholeheartedly with (deliver superfast broadband, pay ratio cap in the public sector), a third I totally disagree with (any privatisation, scrapping NHS pay cap, extending HS2, levy on salaries above £330K), and a third I think is just utterly nonsensical and wonder where on earth they expect to find all the money trees required (more free childcare, more police, actually delivering superfast broadband!) 45p rate for over £80K, hey? Sounds like a winner, doesn't it? Oh wait, doesn't that just happen to be fractionally above the basic amount an MP earns? Why yes it is! Isn't that surprising? It's pie in the sky wishful thinking, and there's no way the sums add up. Like I said, some of it I think is a wonderful idea in a perfect world where we're all rich, but hammering f*ck out of the wealth creators of the country isn't the way to do it.

Agreed, you have no contract with Yodel, only with the seller. That's totally down to them to sort. Bit surprised that eBay have sided with the seller, even if at face value it may seem to be the right thing to do.

You don't have to prove really, they do. I'd be pushing the seller like crazy, it's the principle. If they don't learn they can't get away with using cheap crap delivery services, then they'll carry on doing it. Yodel should have some kind of paperwork proving it, if they can't supply that to their customer then that's their problem.

Maybe, but ultimately the seller is still liable and will have to either refund or replace as you say: If not, it's small claims time. I always either pay extra for people to use a proper delivery company (DPD, RM SD) or I just don't use that person/company any more. Anyone who uses Yodel or MyHerpes to deliver things should be banned from selling anything.

Erm well this is embarrassing, but they've both sold. Thanks for all the interest though!