Graham Butcher

Well, I always did think that in reality the 2030 date was way too ambitious, but then it was just like the blonde buffoon to make these grand gestures before the world stage without actually thinking things through, or perhaps it never really was his intention, maybe he thought it was yet another stick he could use later to pass the blame onto others, who knows.....

Hmm, somehow I cannot believe that is the case, but be that as it may, I have thought that we are not being told the truth about the air quality being bad and these two articles do seem to back this up. PM2.5 on the London Underground - ScienceDirect Whistleblowers-Press-Release.pdf (fairfueluk.com)

I heard tonight on the news that it's reported that the PM is seriously considering delaying the ban on sales of ICE cars till 2035.

I wouldn't bet my house on it if I were you.

Considering the engine capacity and the car's weight, size and carrying capacity etc, it's not that impressive, given my car was doing over 71 on the journey home from doing a photoshoot at a local airfield on Saturday.

May be so, or there again, maybe not, time will tell. We have had decades of ICE powered cars, so it is not going to disappear just like that, as long are loads of people around who have been used to them and have grown with them will not make the transition to electric as willingly as the younger generation many of whom are used to both types of power plant. I'd give at least another 30 to 40 years for the world to begin to get around to resembling how you describe it. Who knows, the world may be nothing like how either us thinks it will be then, maybe everybody will begin the actual true harm that the raw materials for EV cars will be doing to the world and may have reduced or ceased production as they discover EVs are another diesel blunder after all and the world has rapidly moved on to a completely new ideology and propulsion system. On another topic you mentioned cars, namely your diesel powered Fabia doing 70mpg and is nowhere as cheap as your Zoe EV to run, which currently is true for city driving, but may not be so in say 20 years time, when with correct servicing, the Fabia could well still on it same engine and same pistons etc but the Zoe will more than likely be on new batteries (if they are still available) etc. and the whole situation could be reversed. EV's are still a relative unknown when to their longevity status. The bearings in the electric motor will begin to wear and allow the rotor to collide with the stator and destroy itself etc, the reduction gears may have issues. All of these are possible and then the real world costs of having those issues put right may well exceed the costs of the thermostat and water pump replacement replacements cost on the Fabia, who knows? Bottom line is, until these cars have been around as long as ICE cars, we don't really know just what the future holds both for the cars or the true environmental impact they will have on the world, i.e., are we actually just moving the environmental negative impact away from populated areas to vary sparsely populated area's that may yet prove to have a nasty sting in the tail for everyone, we don't honestly yet know.

What, a Porsche ICE giving 45mpg, is that even remotely possible?

I think that trucks will take a lot longer to switch over because of the incremental costs incurred. The obvious choice would be to use the rail network to move goods to their final distribution depot and then transferring them to the likes of DPD etc for the so-called final mile. This will not happen in many places because of the cuts made by Richard Beeching in the 1960s which saw many railway lines dismantled, and goods yards closed and redeveloped, and the goods transferred to ICD powered lorries, even the mail took up large fleets of trucks carrying the mail which used to be done by trains.

Yep, if it were my car being recalled, I'd take it to the garage now, not later or when it suited 👍

I thought we were being very civil, no?

Just noticed this piece of information which Porsche Taycan man will not like. Battery Leakage Prompts Recall of Porsche Taycan, Audi E-Tron (autoweek.com)

Well you might be right, but I don't care, I still stand by my earlier claim that it was not just an Essex thing, it was UK wide.

LAMO here, yes indeed, Chelmsford is in Essex, never implied otherwise, I only asked about France because of the way you phrased your reply "where I live be it here or in Picardie" and when I looked at your details you simply say "Location: Bergerac France, sometimes Picardie." and I was just seeking to clarify if Picardie was in France or if it was some small English village, that was all, sorry if you took it to mean something else. 🙄

Thanks for this, the only one in that list that is still in Essex, is Southend-on-Sea, Romford and Ilford became part of London way back in 1965.

It won't be long before Skoda's will on the desirable list, for years they used to be the joke of car industry, then they became on the best kept secrets as they improved their image massively, now they are very common on the UK roads and the superb has had its profile raised considerably by the police forces using them, sometimes as undercover cars, but I have seen them also being used as traffic cars.

Oh my gosh, that is so terrible, I feel for your friend, but what you describe does not sound like joyriding to me, it was a thing that teenagers did through boredom, never used to break into houses, they just used screwdrivers etc to break door locks etc on cars and race around in the middle of the night in the cars, often crashing them, but always torching them before disappearing into the night. As to the roads being fire damaged there, is testament to the torching of cars. Both the locations you have shown as your location are both in France, aren't they?

Parkway House, used to be Customs, but is now, like so many office blocks, been converted into flats. Yes, the marshes will certainly be permanently flooded if sea level rises, there is a lot of cliff erosion happening in Suffolk and Norfolk with some houses that used to be well away from the cliff edge, now crashing into the sea.

What? I'm surprised that you had any brakes at all with the nipple not being nipped up tight.

When I was working, which is also when the massive joyriding craze at its peak, I used to have to cover an area that covered the following counties for the record, Kent, East and West Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Greater London and much as you might try to pretend otherwise, it was just as widespread in those areas as well. That's one of the great advantages of being a mobile engineer and not being stuck in offices, or factory, you get to see other parts of the country on a pretty regular basis

As to floods coming, much of London will flood first, I live up on a large hill well away from flood plains🤣. What and you don't even mention the large customs office in Chelmsford?

Nope, I disagree, at one time it was almost impossible to go to any car park, country lane, or remote country location, woods etc without seeing loads of burnt car shells, I have not seen any for over a decade, nor do you see any residue left over tell-tale signs like badly burned scorched ground/road/concrete.

Why are you going to tell me that this joyriding is still a big thing up in Scotland then?

The more professional thief agreed, but I was purely talking about the craze that started in the 1980s of youngsters stealing a car, driving it around for an hour or two before dumping and cremating it so any evidence left behind such as fingerprints etc was totally destroyed so they could not be linked to the crime other than being caught on CCTV (not so popular back then) or eyewitness reports.

I had cooled front seats on my 2013 L&K, and they blew air out of the pinholes in the squab and back rest.

Well a lot of the ICE fires were of course the results of the infamous joyriders trying to destroy anything that could link them to the theft of the cars for pleasure (no pleasure for their owners though). Joyriding was a problem in the 1980s though to the 2000s which was primarily when the car manufacturers improved their security and started to fit alarms and immobilisers making it more difficult for the casual thief to gain entry and hot-wire the ignition.