www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2003572922,00.html

{please note, this link to the Sun newspaper will probably be obsolete within a week of the posting date of this thread. DD}


\"FURY erupted in court when a failed asylum seeker and banned driver who ran down and killed a girl of 12 was jailed for just four months.

Amy Houston?s father Paul had to be restrained by cops on hearing the sentence of Iraqi Kurd Aso Mohammed Ibrahim.

Paul, 34, said he faced a ?life sentence? ? yet Ibrahim would be free in two months. \"

Forget the asylum seeker facts.

A banned driver kills a girl and runs away.. and will spend 2 months in jail..


NEW LAWS? Forget it. ENFORCE current ones properly..



madf


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I am very embarrassed about sharing this but Miss Philippines has dared me (she's still laughing, the little minx). Since it is the holiday season, emboldened by a glass of Oxford Landing's best, here goes.

I have a 6 week old Ford Lynx, a very neat little car locally assembled in the Philippines and exported across Asia-Pacific, based on a Mazda derived engine. My partner, the lissom Growlette, also has one, bought last year. Both cars are Honda Civic value but at local prices and Ford service here is excellent.

Mine went in for its 1000km checkup. Can you look at the passenger front door? Got a rattle in there. Yes sir. Please take advantage of our coffee machine and surround sound theater in our showroom and we should have your car ready in about 40 minutes. So far so pleasant.

Car is returned. What was the problem? Oh nothing sir, we simply checked some of the fasteners inside the door trim. Sir we will text you when your 3 month service is due, my name is Jo-Anne I am your designated service advisor this is my cellphone number and please contact me if I can be of any help.

The next day car is emitting a terrible rattle. Every speed bump, every inadequately repaired pot-hole, even on idle at the lights, there is this infuriating noise, far worse than the original. It resembles some sort of small animal flailing about in an attempt to get out from somewhere.

Jo-Anne I owe you flowers and dinner for what follows, or I would if I thought I could get away with it. The lambasting I gave you over the phone and the references to your employer's quality control are simply the ravings of a latent erstwhile colonial master long gone "troppo" coming out in me. As ever, my karma will do the job of equilibrium adjusting for both of us, as we shall see.

Next day. J-A sweetly greets me and says she regrets I am dissatisfied with my purchase and Ford's service and she is here to see if this can be put right. Well, OK, it's straight out of the Ford Customer Service Training Manual but when it's delivered by a 20 something year old 5 foot tall in her socks 95 pound Oriental beauty with perfect teeth, great legs and hair straight out of a shampoo commercial, what's a feller to do?

She says would I mind if I drove her round the block so she can identify the rattle I'm talking about. Well of course not. So I do and the rattle is there. Jo-Anne politely asks me to stop for a moment. I do. She says do I mind if she opens the center console storage box. Well I suppose so but the rattle isn't coming from there. It's you people who made it worse.

Sir, may I? She wants to remove 3 cassette tapes and a bottle of cologne. Yes I suppose so. Sir (sweetly), may we just try the car again to see if the rattle is still there? We may and we do and it isn't........

One Brit pub in Manila has been offering a special "Australian Menu". On it is a dish called Humble Pie (no one who has been anything other than clinically dead these last weeks should need to ask about the significance of this). Well, it's better than eating crow, as the Septics would have it.......
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I observed a boy of about eight years of age trashing the magazine display in the local Tesco. This was in view of an assistant who, sensible lad, did nothing. The boy would climb up the display, drag down a magazine, 'look at it' and then 'accidently' drop it behind the footrail. I had a quiet word with him, hoping that he would desist. Later, when we left the store - trolley full - I saw that he had returned with gusto. Oddly, all of the magazines but one were motoring mags. How I long for the days...! Read more

any one know how easy it is to change a alternater on a mondeo diesel?
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I have recently bought a Mk3 Golf 1.8CL complete with dented door but almost complete VW service history and 100K on the clock which seems to have a rattle thats either developed or i've just noticed. There also now seems to be more vibration on the accelerator pedal at motorway speeds now than there was. On startup from cold there's a brief rattly / knocky noise that's reminiscent of an old Triumph Vitesse i had with a shot bottom end. This settles down to a bit of a rattly clatter (which you can't hear in the car). It only seems to make the knocky noise on startup (but still rattles when warm), from cold which seems strange (if it was the bottom end), as i would have thought it would be more pronounced when warm (thin oil). I'm thinking of taking the sump off if it's accessable and seeing if there is a big end with more movement than the others. Am i barking up the wrong tree, if not is there any mileage in just changing the bearing shells rather than having the crank reground etc?

Any ideas? Read more