buctootim

Occasionally, rarely, Dune get interested in discussing on threads and forgets to troll and bait. That happened a few days ago. I see he's back to type now.

Totally. I once didnt shortlist somebody because she'd written "I have an excellent eye for detial". Sounds petty but when you have a lot of applications from qualified people these things count.

Around 2,200 people died in the UK yesterday. They are all tragic but dont all get equal space in the newspaper for obvious reasons, including those already mentioned. Its got nothing to do with "we have our priorities all wrong in this country".

Does he live near Hyde Park?

He says you can have this http://www.williamswarn.com/Shop/Brewing-Accessories/Sponge

Its easy if you're a large company or a wealthy individual to arrange your affairs to avoid paying tax totally. Shell companies registered in the Virgin Islands or Caymans and overseas bank accounts make liability impossible to trace. Other UK companies like Boots who earn most of their profits supplying the NHS have their HQ rergistered in Geneva to benefit from artificially low tax rates. Google and Dell do the same in Ireland. I know there are all kinds of apologists here who think its alright to avoid the tax (even though they end up paying more because it) - but to see the majority of owners of multi million pound apartments in a flagship Hyde park block not paying, just seems really cheap and small time to me. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/26/one-hyde-park-council-tax

I dont know anything about /Modeos and Im no mechanic, but yeah, weirdly looks like you could be. http://balev.eu/blog/index.php/2010/12/maf-sensor-what-is-that/

Mass Air Flow sensor

Pretty insensitive imo. 10 years ago the BBC would have cut the clip at the point Savage got upset. Now they think its just a ratings winner.

Agree totally. There are many technical options for generating electricity, its just a question of getting them price competitive. One of the benenfits of Thorium is that has a much shorter half life. You only have to store the waste for a 100 years or so, as opposed to thousands. Uranium has got so expensive recently, up 20 fold in a few years, that new fuels like thorium become viable. As mentioned earlier, transport fuels, especially aviation, remain a real problem.

I know its unintentional, but thats hilarious - if we want to save the planet we need to industrialise the countryside. I dont oppose onshore windfarms, but the place where you get the most wind and the most reliable wind is offshore, which is where most of it will be situated sensibly enough. This is just one site http://www.forewind.co.uk/

In think most of the planned wind capacity will be offshore of the West of Scotland

Basically you need a code reader to find out what the problem is, could be dozens of things. You might find somebody local on a Ford forum who has got one, or beg at the dealers. Possibly the most likely, assuming you didnt hear any nasty noises before it stopped running properly is the fuel or air sensors. You can try this but not how much it will tell you. Good luck http://www.fordwiki.co.uk/index.php?title=Instrument_Cluster_Self-Diagnostic_Mode

Good luck running your car on that.

The arm from the comedy Ted Bates statue grafted onto Markus is what upsets the family.

10 years for stealing £1.3 billion, probably serve between 4 and 6 years. Hmm, quite tempting imo.

At the moment electric and hydrogen are the only post oil transport games in town - and both have their own problems. BMW are betting quite gig on making hydrogen work.

Apparently available in Japan and Hong Kong so far. Bit of a crazy one really because whilst Bentley, Rolls Royce, Ferrari etc can all artificially offset their emissions against small cars in their parents other companies Aston Martin as a standalone cant so have to produce this. http://www.astonmartin.com/cars/cygnet

Hydrogen is potentially the successor to oil as a transport fuel. Basically you can create hydrogen simply by splitting water by passing a current through it. Its not my area but I do know there are a lot of problems with it though - including high cost of hydrogen fuel cells, high cost of splitting water, emissions of methane from process and storage of the hydrogen on a vehicle - it needs to be super cold and compressed - unlike lpg.

No, didn't know about Aston Martin. Is that the very small car they have to produce so that their overall range doesnt exceed a certain level of emissions?

Maybe 'lacking sufficient infiormation' would be a kinder way to describe it

True I'd forgotten about several companies. I think the point stands though, because although they were big names in the news a lot, as a percentage of British manufacturing there were quite small. Much of the capacity we have lost has been the smaller sized companies. Of the three manufacturers I worked for in and around Southampton, all of therm have now gone (after I left I hasten to add). Much of the rest of nationalised companies were service oriented or utilities. Interesting league table here on car manufacturing. I had no idea how far down the US has fallen compared to the size of its domestic market. http://www.worldometers.info/cars/

Interesting that the UK is the only country surveyed where support for nuclear powert is greater now than in 2005. I dont think lack of support for nuclear equates with lack of intelligence though. Basically it is hugely expensive (much more so that stated when you take into account decommissioning costs including storing radioactive waste) and very inflexible in that it is hard to switch off once you've got it going. Its the least worst option as part of the overall package with renewables imo.

Thats the problem of using growth as the only important metric. Its perfectly possible to have a declining population with gently rising incomes, less overcrowding and cheaper housing. A labour shortage is a good thing as it drives up wages. Increase the pension age by a couple of years and bingo you've got a balanced budget.

Very little of UK manufacturing industry was in state control. I can only think of British Leyland and Rolls Royce, both of whom were nationalised to save them from bankruptcy. Our problem was we tried to compete on price instead of quality, unlike the Germans. Huge tactical mistake because there will always be a developing nation who can make stuff cheaper than a relatively high wage economy.