Yes I am really in Germany Dresden to be precise looking out of my window at the moment at all the snow.Came to the east to work after the wall came down travelled most of the world for work since now retired. I have a lovely German frau and have no wish to live back in the UK although I will be in the UK next week to see my mother driving there 2k mile round trip.

have found the site helpful at times but also some of the unresearched replies bizarre."

Are you able to enlighten the forum on the bizarre replies? Or the connections to Lucy or HJ? Should stimulate some interesting threads.

Happy to update you as far as I can, bearing in mind that we don't have any personal knowledge of our contributors beyond what you tell us.

Honest John (HJ) owns and operates the whole website, and he has a small number of staff who help him run his wide-ranging business as a motoring expert and consultant (I presume you are aware of and read his advice column in the Telegraph motoring section each Saturday). This forum, as you can see from the site headings, is a part of the service provided by the website, the adverts being as you might imagine a financial necessity. Do look at those headings if you are new to us: there is a wealth of information there (e.g. car reviews, road tests and FAQs).

I am one of the moderators, as are my colleagues Boris the Spider and Well-Known Sid. We are reasonably easy-going and want to encourage discussion, but we have to censor bad language by means of a swear filter, and we edit or delete posts which we think are offensive, rude or unhelpful (thanks to your good judgement this is rare). We also censor unsolicited advertising.

Lucy Bonham-Carter is a highly experienced lawyer specialising in motoring and insurance issues who has an arrangement with HJ to provide legal advice free of charge to members of the forum.

As far as your contributions go, for obvious reasons the forum can't be responsible for what you say, and we are simply very grateful to those who offer advice to others in difficulty, whether or not they are qualified or experienced.

I hope that's helpful.

Edited by Avant on 01/01/2011 at 23:06