MarkyMarkD

The US number doesn't agree to the one you originally posted! I think it's the UK 0800 number that DaveI suggested ... which happens to be the (blatantly in India) call centre for "UK Phones Network". Nothing ventured ... nothing gained. I suspect it was a marketing call?

Caller ID is not free with BT. But BT Privacy IS free, and it includes free caller ID. Stupid BT logic to avoid giving Caller ID for free to all those who are already paying for it, methinks.

Shouldn't it say "Bristolian" rather than "Briskodian" under you name, eh, DJT?MarkyMarkD (ex-Bristolian)

Hey marc - welcome! Hope you enjoy your time here.

We had the diesel pump replaced on our old 1.5D Citroen AX and it cost £550 :'( - not a nice repair to suffer.

The Lymm services just off the M6 at junction 20 are good (immediately south of Thelwall viaduct) - advertised as a truckstop with not very obvious signposting on the motorway, but consequently cheaper and bigger portions than the normal services and fine for cars as well as trucks.

If the hire company operates the "full to empty" scam (and they probably do) then the pump prices won't be the entire story - we had to pay a fair bit over the odds for our compulsory full tank. :(

It's definitely a combination of the first two. But, to be clear, the volatility in prices and the day-to-day increases are obviously nothing to do with the government. What IS the government's choice is the level of tax they set each budget and that level is too high.

That's ridiculous! I should have thought police pursuit cars should have sump guards as standard in case they need to cross any dodgy ground whilst chasing scallies.

I didn't realise semi was so popular ... you still seem to see lots of full fat milk in the supermarkets. I was brought up on full fat, but haven't used it since I started buying milk for myself probably as a student ... it seems horribly rich now. But I also find skimmed AWFUL!

Beautiful car and nice pics! Well done.

There's a picture here of a dodgy ATM next to a genuine one. http://img.thisismoney.co.uk/i/pix/2006/03/cashpointSWNS140306_450x350.jpg Link is from an article here: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/saving-and-banking/article.html?in_article_id=407612&in_page_id=7

I have only recently noticed how variable the state of roads is. Here in Leicestershire, they are actually quite good on the whole. I was in Cheshire over Easter and theirs are AWFUL; I was in Warwickshire on a course last week and they are pretty ropy too. It's a bit unreasonable that the quality is so inconsistent - and the reality is that it's cheaper to maintain roads properly than to let them fall apart and then have to completely rebuild them.

Poor old Vlad. Our L reg Fav (bought for £1,000 and written off 2 years later for £1,200 ) was always pretty reliable actually - not very fast, maybe, but it did everything reasonably well for the couple of years we had it. And it survived the 70 mph writing-off accident without any significant body deformation and not a scratch on me, which can't be bad. Hope you can get Vlad back to behaving properly!

Hmm ... as I'm half high-tech and half low-tech here, I actually ended up videoing it instead of DVD recording it. Could copy video->video if you are desperate but haven't got the leads to get it onto the PC!

Not watching, but recording it on the DVD recorder ... a treat for later!

More stuff on the official Skoda website about it too (but still in Czech I'm afraid): http://www.skoda-auto.com/cze/model/octaviars/rest/ Hmm actually on further investigation I don't think that's about the TDI vRS but just the normal petrol vRS - d'oh! My Czech is clearly a bit too pants.

I'm not sure why, but More Than were great value for the Mrs on the Laguna at last renewal but completely rubbish for me on the Fab vRS. Both drivers the same, both cars garaged, etc.

They are all being sent out by the same phishers at the moment, as you can see by both the underlying URLs they go to (which end in the same format) and the underlying wording on them (the bit you don't see in HTML format). I've had about 15 of the A&L ones and at least 10 of the Barclays ones during April. The sites have been disabled for the A&L ones now but they are genuinely quite convincing if you are a trusting type like Emily-Elizabeth. Just never, ever, believe any e-mail asking you to provide log-in information. If you want to use your bank's site, type in the internet banking address yourself or go via your bank's normal home page. Then you are unlikely to go wrong. Using an aggregation service like First Direct's or Egg's is a good idea as well - as they obviously won't take you to phishing sites. With FD's you apparently don't even need to have any sort of account with FD (according to today's Telegraph); I use Egg's and it saves remembering lots of password info.

Glad you are OK, Walkie, and managed to keep it together under extreme provocation. Not sure I would have managed the same.

The Telegraph had a travel section article about Chernobyl this weekend. There are organised tours from Kiev and Minsk IIRC for between £25 and £50 per person, depending on the size of the party, including lunch. It's apparently not dangerous to be there for short times as long as you don't handle stuff. And there are people who've moved back there because they don't care about the radiation and don't want to leave their hometown, as well as people working at the site on a daily basis (but with radiation monitoring and compulsory periods away from the area as well). I'd be very interested to go ... I was working in the nuclear industry when it happened, and we had a huge staff meeting for the whole site to tell us about it.

Funnily enough, coincidentally I received a survey from JD Power regarding our 6 month old Fab yesterday. The ONLY bad thing I could say about ours was ... the seat base creaking. Must get around to getting it fixed I suppose ... at the 12 month service 'cos I'm too lazy to get it done sooner.

Profiterole??? :confused: I used to give blood regularly but then I started feeling VERY faint every time I did it, so gave up. :( Part of the problem was always going to give blood straight after work, after a small lunch and no other food, I think.

If you haven't already booked the car, I swear by www.carjet.com for anywhere in Spain (we just used them on the Costa Blanca and have done in Majorca before now). BUT the rental companies are now forcing "full - empty" which is a rip-off as they charge OTT for the initial tank of fuel and (obviously) it's very difficult to return a car empty especially when you don't know how much a reading on the gauge actually means.

I'm not being picky here, but don't you mean "Some sensible driver was legitimately in the middle of the road whilst overtaking a bus whilst I was in the middle of the road just to avoid a speed bump and wasn't observant enough to observe the fact they would likely overtake the slowing bus"?