Advertising At The Olympics
The Olympics is not an advert-free zone.
Advertising At The Olympics
Surely these little cars, used to pick up the shots, discuses and hammers are nothing but blatant advertising for Minis.
Jeremy Clarkson Was Right
I’m not slways struck on Jeremy’s taste in cars. But he does know his dogs. Not the four-legged variety, but those cars, those of us who understand them, wouldn’t be seen dead in.
Two seasons ago, he gave the worst review to any car, that I’ve ever seen, with the exception of this one.
So imagine my delight to see the object of this review, outside my house, being given a fuel transfusion by a specialist recovery company. As the car appeared to be a petrol model, it would appear that the pratt not only was stupid enough to buy a BMW X6, but was stupid enough to put diesel in it.
Now We Know What Freemasons Get Up To
In both The Times and the Metro this morning, there is a similar article about the sale of a rather extreme convertible Rolls-Royce nicknamed the Honeymoon Express. Here’s the piece from the Metro. I particularly like this paragraph.
It was originally delivered as a chassis to the coachbuilders who adapted it for a high-ranking Manchester freemason.
Now we know what freemasons get up to in their spare time!
The car is coming up for auction next month! I shall not be going!
L’ve Got Petrol
My son has parked his car in my garage, so if I needed some petrol, L suspect I could syphon some out.
But as I don’t, the petrol in his car is safe.
And as it’s only one of the last proper Minis, I would probably only get a couple of mouthfuls!
I’ll just walk to the bus as normal.
A Car Registration of BF.
Parked dubiously and possibly illegally at Upper Street tonight was a rather flash car with the number plate BF followed by a few digits.
To my father, this would have been appropriate as BF were used as a term of abuse by his generation.
Cutting Debts
I was listening yesterday to the BBC’s morning phone-in and they were talking about debts and especially how people have got into trouble over Christmas.
If I look at my finances over the last year, they have improved somewhat and I felt that although I’m living on my savings until my house is sold, I’ve probably got almost a year more before my avings run out, than when I moved here in December 2010.
So what major savings have I made.
The first is the the television, phones and broadband. I like Sky Sports, and the big saving is that I can’t have an obvious dish here, as it’s a Conservation Area. Although, I could probably hide one on the roof! I did try Virgin by cable to get Sky Sports 1 and 2. Now I’ve switched to BT Vision with of course Freeview. I now pay about £50 a month to get phone calls, broadband and Sky Sports 1 and 2.
I don’t seem to miss out on watching anything I want to, but the saving is a thousand on Virgin Media and a couple of thousand compared to Sky.
Note that I only rarely watch films on television and generally stick to the four BBC channels, the two Sky Sports channels and radio.
The biggest saving is not having a car. I don’t miss it one bit, although perhaps it would have helped on Christmas Day to get to my son’s. But with the amount of money I save, I can afford the occasional black cab or mini-cab.
Getting rid of the car has other benefits too in addition to the obvious financial and logistical ones.
You walk a lot more, which is obviously good for you. I always walk with my eyes open too and I see things in shop windows that I might like to buy to improve my lifestyle or things that are just interesting in the street.
Walking is a real joy in a city and in no way inferior to walking in the country. In fact, I think it is more thought-provoking.
So how many people with serious debt problems have still got the expensive television, the full Sky and an expensive car?
Is This The Real North-South Divide?
Sathnam Sanghera is one of my favourite columnists. He wrote a piece called, Not on the right track to get the UK moving, saying that it was training that the West Midlands needed and not trains.
In some ways I agree with him, but we actually need both. This bit from his piece stood out.
Nothing, not even the fact that some London bars charge £18 for a cocktail, shocks my fellow Midlanders more than the fact that I have never owned a car. Most families in my parents’ suburb seem to have two or three vehicles per household. Getting them to use a train instead is going to be more difficult than weaning them off pork scratchings.
I’ve come across this attitude before. I have even been accused of being a loser because I travel everywhere by public transport, by an idiot from Middlesborough.
I’m afraid that some parts of the rest of the country are going to have to do a lot of readjustment, when the oil runs out.
The £1,000,000 Junction
I like this. It gives motorists more of their favourite pastime to enjoy; moaning about the cost of motoring.
Sunday Parking Protests
There seems to be a lot of protests about charging for parking in Westminster on Sundays.
Why not? After all quite a few UK cities charge.
Anyway, one of the reasons people buy a car seems to be so that they can moan about fuel prices, parking charges, Congestion Charges, insurance and tax. I don’t have to worry about any of these things now!
According to the AA, if I had a £20,000 diesel car doing 10,000 miles a year that would cost me £6081 or thereabouts. In addition, if I invested the money on Zopa at six percent, that would give me another £1200. That gives me £140 a week to spend on black cabs and trains to take me outside of London.
Top Gear on the New Lamborghini
Don’t shout it, but they felt it was rather boring.
Years ago we had a Porsche 911. At the time I tried out one of the new 911 Turbos. That was so good it was boring.
In those days Porsche 911 Turbos only had four gears, as Porsche decreed the engine was so good, it didn’t need the fifth one.
Unfortunatelty marketing takes precedence over engineering!
The Anonymous Widower 