July 2007
You think the Government is lying over road Pricing intentions...Now you know it's true.. and of course we have been lied to.. again.. (change .. open and trustworthy government... cow excrement)
"A Home Office document accidentally released suggests police should be given instant access to cameras which monitor congestion and road charging. "
"But internal documents mistakenly circulated around Westminster by the Home Office contain details of a more wide-ranging plan to track journeys throughout England and Wales.
An annotated draft of Mr McNulty's statement revealed the development of the scheme over the past few months and the opposition mounted by the Department for Transport.
Petition fears
The electronic document revealed that the controversy level of the plan was rated "high" by civil servants.
One Home Office official wrote: "Civil rights groups and privacy campaigners may condemn this as further evidence of an encroaching 'big brother' approach to policing and security, particularly in the light of the recent e-petition on road-pricing.
"Conversely, there may be surprise that the data collected by the congestion charge cameras is not already used for national security purposes and may lead to criticism that the matter is yet to be resolved."
The document noted that the Department for Transport had "expressed concern about the potential for adverse publicity relating to... plans for local roads pricing". "
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6903902.stm
madf
already being discussed elsewhere.... PG Read more
Hello
I recently had the timing belt changed on my 2000 Honda accord (2.0l vtec) along with a full service. A slight issue i now have is that at around 1500 rpm when pulling away or if i just gently blip the throttle at idle i hear a slight but noticeable whirring sound which definatley was not there before. I have rung the garage who did the work and they are going to have a listen this afternoon, but i was wondering if any backroomers might have an idea what this could be? I though perhaps overtightened belt, but would that not make a whining sound at idle all the time?
The whole lot was changed, not just the belt BTW. New pulleys,tensioner and waterpump too. Could this be the cause?
TIA for any replies. Read more
Just back from another holiday in France. They really spend a load of money on their roads, and make the towns look all nice with proper granite cobbles and proper pavements with clear and distinctive curb stones marking the boundary between pavement and road. (better for blind people aswell as looking nice).
Their roads are smooth and quiet in town and out of town.
On the other hand we in UK have noisy ugly roads full of potholes, and noisy surfaces like concrete and gravel/tarmac composite.
A road near me (in UK) has just been scraped off (by one of those surface grinding machines) and they have resurfaced the whole road, they have nearly finished and the finished result is all bumpy. In France it would be very smooth. Read more
WDB - tax certainly has worked like that in the past. The thing on the
windscreen was a reciept for a contribution the "Road Fund" and it was called the
Road Fund Licence! Probably >>
There are a couple of threads elsewhere on the site with detail but essentially the Road Fund appeared just after the Great War and was abolished in the mid/late twenties by a chancellor called Winston Churchill!
The concept of reserving a tax to a particular class of spending has long been anathema to the UK Treasury
Car is 96 N VW Polo 1390cc. {Edited in by DD}
I filled my tank right to the limit yesterday before work. After finishing work I came back to my car and the tank was still showing as full or the closest thing to it (it's only a couple of miles from garage to work so I wasn't expecting any major consumption).
However, after driving home (via Pulman's) and then back to work this morning I've suddenly realised that the needle is between the 3/4 and full marks!
I always reset the trip odometer when I've filled my tank and it shows I've done 18.2 miles.
.*********
However, last time, the efficiency seemed fine between 3/4 and 1/4 tank - is there any reason a car will run very inefficient with a full tank?
Could it be the sensor in the tank reporting a false level? Would a leak behave this way? I'm wondering if there's a leak which only happens when the tank is full?
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I'll give that a try, thanks :D
Bit scared of letting it run low though - I'll have to get a petrol can in the boot in case I conk out :D
Drove down the M6 from Birmingham yesterday morning. Saw an unmarked police Impreza in silver with blue lights flashing having just pulled over a boy racer. I wonder if the boy racer has seen the Impreza and tried to race him? Nasty shock if he did!
Also (to my amusement) saw 2 nice new BMWs s on the hard shoulder, a silver one having just shunted a black one. No one else involved.
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I've also seen an unmarked Range Rover
with very dark rear windows on the M62.
Drug dealer, maybe?
Common place for the position of the road tax disc on the windscreen is at the bottom corner on the passenger side. I have seen some cars with the disc in the central top position near the rear view mirror. Is there a law that states where to position the road tax disc? I know it should be in view and not obstructed. Read more
Thought as much. How many friends scrutinise a tax disc though?
The combination of watching James May's programme on telly tonight and reading Aprilia's recent seminal treatise on the subtleties of Subaru Suspension has set me thinking.
James May was talking about the instability of the Eurofighter, saying that without computer control the plane is unflyable, but also making the link between the plane's instability and its agility.
The instability of the plane is because the centre of lift is ahead of the centre of gravity - in a way, it's a bit like trying to throw a dart flight end first, the natural tendency is for the dart to flip over, and land in the board point first.
Perhaps car suspensions could be controlled in the same way. A car could be set up both to have fundamental oversteer, and to have a low critical speed (where the car becomes fundamentally unstable and will swap ends at the slightest provocation).
This would give rapid yaw response - with four whel steering to also give rapid sideslip response, the vehicle would respond really quickly. With the currently available array of sensors and actuators, could the vehicle then be stabilised?
Of course, this would need aerospace levels of quality control, as a system failure would not be at all fail safe, and would be highly unlikely ever to be seen on mass produced cars.
I wonder what it would feel like to drive such a car though? I would jump at the chance!
Number_Cruncher
p.s. I found Mr May's programme to be rather good - I think that despite making what is clearly a populist show, he managed to get a few more complex points across. Perhaps he should take more of a role in Top Gear?
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Yes, all the cases we are discussing are those of an unstable equilibrium.
If you imagine the motorcycle instead of riding along on top of tarmac riding along a tightrope to which its wheels had some magic grip, the motorcycle would have two positions of equilibrium - the unstable one above the rope, and a stable one, hanging from beneath the rope.
If it could fly backwards, Eurofighter would then be in a stable configuration with regard to its pitch dynamics.
If an oversteering car could roll backwards - well it would be stable from and under/over steer point of view, but probably unstable because of rear wheel steering, as mentioned by TR7V8 above.
Number_Cruncher
Hi all - recently bought a mk4 2002 1.4 E golf . The car is great albeit that it has little in the way of extras and i really want to fit central locking. The VW dealers said it would cost a massive amount to fit and so i've been looking around but all the systems i have seen on the net look to be a bit cheap? Can anyone help me in finding the closest system to a standard one, which won't pull my pants down in cost, and is good quality? or indeed any other suggestions, advice,etc...
all the best
Si
Duplicate post binned - PU Read more
You'll find wiring diagrams for the Golf IV here:
volkswagen.msk.ru/index.php?p=page09_g4
and door diagrams here:
volkswagen.msk.ru/index.php?p=page10_g4
Andy
It was 'all down to human error'. But do you get what you pay for, not for what you need? I'm pouring over years of receipts as I write this.
Identical posts merged, identical link deleted from this post - PU Read more
Toyota main dealer Charles Hurst (owned by Lookers PLC) fined for charging for work not carried out
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/6903310.stm
If the customer had not marked the filters etc. the rip off would not have been apparent.
I assume this is a lazy mechanic at his work rather than fraud?
Thanks to the territoriality of neighbours, I now have to pay £30 for a yearly permit to park outisde my house. So does my next door neighbour. But the space between the two permit bays is large enough for a car and has no lines, as it is across my entrance. Since there are no lines there, can I use it to park free of charge? Read more
westpig,
i live very close to a station just outside london which goes straight through to kings x. Before the introduction of permits, people would commute to my road (a queit cul de sac) and park up for the day while going into london. Problem was, they took up too much space and the cars were often there when the residents came home- so no where for residents to park. Given the layout of the roads, there is no viable alternative without walking a VERY long way.
So it became an unfortunate necessity. Funny thing is the permits are only enforced between 2 and 3 monday to friday. Cuts down the cost of sending out the parking attendant i suppose(who often seems top catch the same cars over and over).
To be fair, the first permit is free and the second permit is relatively cheap.
I do agree with your point about the parking, but in order for people to use it rather than park other roads, it would have to be free. And we know how much land costs now!
I dont think anyone really wants people to use public transport as the revenue from privately owned vehicles is so high. But need to be seen to be encouraging it.
Browse
Hi
Thanks for the reply, the noise is still there but mine does not seem to vary at all with weather or electrical load like yours norman. Makes me wonder if it isn't the auxilliary belts at all and that it definately is the timing belt "bedding in" as mentioned above. Going to keep an ear on it over the next few days and see what happens.
Car is actually slightly quieter at idle now than before the work was done, so i suspect the old belt was slightly stretched and ready to come off. It was 6.5 years/73K old.