January 2002
Martyn,
Did you walk in, see the edit thread and fall for the fact that we had somehow either added, or persuaded someone to add, an edit button to your forum ??
We need to know.
My bet is you walked straight into it.
Mark.
p.s. David - mean-old Martyn deleted around 50 replies which now you'll never see !! Read more
Hi all.
I am just going to buy a car and want to avoid a Japanese import (I'm just too much a novice buyer to buy foreign!!).
Given that it will be either an old VTEC Prelude or a 300ZX, are there any guaranteed ways to tell if it is a UK/Japanese car?
Also - just interested in which of these any of you petrolheads may choose over the other and why!! (So far it seems the Prelude is reliable and cheap, 300ZX rather less so!)
Thanks in advance
Ox Read more
The ZX might be lacking a pair of turbos.
HJ
Today's local press announces Philippines Govt has launched a project based on using coco oil blended in with diesel fuel. Since the country has millions of hectares of coconuts it will be interesting to see how this works if it gets off the ground.
The exhaust smell might even please Eleanor and some of the greenies.
I know some clever person is going to write and say this has been done somewhere already, but it seems to me like A Good Idea, Since the country has millions of hectares of coconuts.
Tomorrow I shall be offering the project my own meagre contribution: the eleven ripe coconuts hanging from my own plantation of precisely 3 trees. Read more
A nods as good as a wink.........I'm off to pump me coconuts.
This was in our local paper today:
Question: Are Westminster parking wardens council employees, or are they independent contractors?
BTW, Notice Rocky's profession... :)
London - In the urban jungle, it pays to be armed with a camera when parking your car.
On Thursday, after 10 months of legal action, Londoner Rocky Fernandez finally won his battle to have a prematurely issued £80 parking ticket cancelled.
But despite his victory, Fernandez, who caught an overeager parking warden's actions on film, called his long fight against Westminster Council for justice "a disgrace".
The 38-year-old management consultant was given a ticket after putting two pounds in a meter in central London for 30 minutes of parking.
He returned to his vehicle 17 minutes later to find a parking attendant putting a ticket on his windscreen. In a burst of quick-thinking, Fernandez took photographs of the meter showing the remaining time, and the warden issuing the ticket.
An independent parking adjudicator ruled the fine should not stand.
Fernandez said the council had tried to "intimidate" him into paying up.
"It's been a huge hassle for me to get justice," he said.
But now Fernandez faces another fight against the council's tight purse strings: a refund of the £240 in legal costs he spent on defending himself. - Sapa-AP Read more
I don't know about Westminster but in Camden, which is next door, they are independent contractors.
And, unlike traffic wardens, they are solely concerned with parking enforcement, so if traffic lights fail or there is an accident they turn the other cheek.
Mark (Brazil) wrote:
> mmm, I'm not sure, but I don't think Martyn wrote that.
In fact I did write it. All the while the forum runs reasonably smoothly, it's easy to manage. Once people mess it up, it becomes impossible. So far only a few people have seen this loophole whereby one person can represent themselves as another. Think what could happen if the wrong person got hold of it and proceeded to use it maliciously. I won't be responsible for that.
Those who diagnosed an absence of sense of humour on my part clearly don't know me. (I thought you, at least, did, Mark.) I can take the piss with the best of you, and I can receive it too. But I do take The Back Room very seriously indeed (if for no other reason than that it helps pay my un-viirtual wages). So please respect that, will you? Read more
Brian,
I was somewhat amused to see Dave ( not unkindly meant Dave!) quote South Park as his justification for the popular culture phrase.
I find South Park inventive/hilarious/crude/disrespectful/non-pc. All those things but would never say "it's OK because it's on South Park".
If I had Dave's mail address I'd mail him an even more positive note of support but It's not going here!
David
Bit in today's Telegraph quoting Harriet Harman, the Solicitor General, saying that 700 cyclists were prosecuted last year, 600 convicted and 500 fined.
She said "The C P S is well aware that the law applies to cyclists in the same way that it applies to everybody else".
Oh, goody!. Read more
Plod is often dishing out tickets to cyclists hooning around oxford pedestrian areas, doesn't it just make you feel warm inside!!
I read that 300 traffic officers in the Met are to be moved to fight street crime.
Wow, they must really be concerned about us killer drivers being left to our own devices.
Or perhaps they know that our roads are already the safest in the world according to our own goverments reports Read more
normally see quite a lot of motorcycle cops driving on the wrong side of the road up kensington high street, driving through red lights to important events (like buying sandwiches - sorry but ive seen it) and sitting in the sun in hyde park
oh and they pop out and hit people with speed tickets when they are only marginally over
great use of public money
dont think so
> Mark, is this another wind up?
Yes.
Sorry, but I have found the whole thing desperately amusing. I promise to behave more maturely in the future.
If its any consolation, we fooled Martyn as well, and its *HIS* forum.
Regards,
Deeply amused of Brazil.
Just spotted this picture from the Detroit motor show on a news article regarding the loss of Ford jobs.
news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1754000/...m
Is that a beautiful car or what? I wonder if Ford will actually make it.
Dan Read more
You need to understand show cars.
These are vehicles that nearly always look better than anything the manufacturer has ever made.
They are usually well within the state of the art and contain little that could not have been put into production 3 years ago.
They frequently embody very good ideas long overdue for adoption.
Many are clearly capable of production and sale at feasible cost/price ratios.
They are nearly never actually put into production because they would be so popular that the manufacturer would be unable to keep up with demand and thus be forced into the embarassment of either raising their prices or coping with the administrative hassle of long waiting lists.
Naturally,no volume manufacturer could entertain such nonsense.
British Leyland were the past masters of producing wonderful concepts you couldnt buy and appalling dogs that you could.But the Italians must not go without a mention.
I dont want to say this really,because the lads with the armbands may,in the new united europe which,for reasons that elude me,we dont control,come and get me,but............
Even The Fatherland (that OK,meinherr?) has produced the odd little raver,and I refer not to the lovely Gretchen who I met in Majorca in 1971(Hi Gretchen,boyfriend still a bore....?)
Where was I?
Ah yes,Tucker.
Tucker was beaten not by his entirely feasible and technically conservative ideas,but by engineers who couldnt think beyond motor manufacturing norms and ,of course,gross commercial larceny from the whole of Detroit.
I always wonder what would happen if you got together a team of engineers used to very fast lead times and very lightweight construction and asked them to design you a motor car......
What I think would happen is that in 6 months you would have a world beating mondeo sized vehicle weighing 900kgs,capable of 50mpg on petrol,with the agility of a cat and very,very low maintenace costs.
For certain sure the fleet managers would take one look at the contract prices and user chooser would be a concept but not a reality.
My very good chum doctor x,who is a prominant marketing man in the oil industry,in spite of Kevlar y-fronts,has for 20 years accused the motor industry of cynical marketing,and I guess he'd know.
Can any one advise me how to access the rear of the nearside light cluster to change a brake light bulb on the 5 door New Punto?. I can find one release nut at the top, but not one lower down. (On the offside I can find two nuts)
Thanks
John Read more
Don't do what I did on our Pug:- didn't put the replacement bulb in the holder correctly and when I put it back in the housing the da*n thing dropped out.
I now have a spare bulb rolling round the back light which is totally impossible to get out without removing the entire rear light fitting!
Browse
Something like this is planned, SB.