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Post by Big Blue on Mar 8, 2024 22:34:42 GMT
Even better news: that miserable fucker Marko might get suspended by RBR.
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Cardle
Mar 6, 2024 14:42:39 GMT
Post by Big Blue on Mar 6, 2024 14:42:39 GMT
First Time playing for ages today. Just a game of guess the number
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Post by Big Blue on Mar 5, 2024 18:30:07 GMT
Red Bull’s motorsport funding has been phenomenal but the F1 team seemed to be more about being Red Bull owned than the fact it was a garagiste set up bought by Red Bull. Horner’s position is such that Red Bull Racing without him would be seen as a new project, much like when Ron Dennis started making road cars and Project 4 was just a thing that happened once upon a time. To juxtapose that, the most successful and coveted seats in Moto2 are in the Red Bull KTM team run by Ake Ajo. However make no mistake: if Red Bull go it’s still Team Ajo but I don’t see RBR like that.
There is the rub for not liking RBR. The set up makes it look like the sponsor, which is in fact an owner, pulls the strings of the racing team whereas other teams need to commercially sell their product (success) for sponsorship revenue. When Philip Morris were throwing the red and white money around you never got the impression that John Hogan or his successor could push Ron or Ross / Jean about or shout the odds like Red Bull seem to be able to. As for the Max / Jos bollocks: Frank Williams would be spinning in his grave to hear of a driver calling the shots and Ron always said the two things that cost him the most sleep in 1988 were Senna’s contract and his baby daughter in equal measure.
So Red Bull are unloved by me for their set up, in the same way the Bundesliga hate Red Bull Leipzig: it’s not the way to get to the top.
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Post by Big Blue on Mar 4, 2024 9:29:07 GMT
But isn't that always the way? The longer you are at the top the more people who want to knock you off your perch. Precisely what Ron Dennis said. I like Ed’s comment: he’s no Romeo is he? More likely to take the poison to avoid him than because she lost his affections!
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Post by Big Blue on Mar 3, 2024 20:34:15 GMT
I reckon it's been blown up so much because that first race was Mogadon on wheels. Nothing else for the media to put in the news about F1.
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Post by Big Blue on Mar 1, 2024 12:55:26 GMT
Yes I received the full deck of “evidence” this morning. Having met both my wives at work I’m in no position to comment on workplace affairs / romances but I could make a fair few comments about discretion. I’ve also met Horner’s first wife. She was very pleasant.
I suppose if an individual is driven in one aspect of life they are in others.
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Post by Big Blue on Feb 23, 2024 1:44:09 GMT
A few years ago we had Martin Whitmarsh as the motoring dinner guest. He was great: good speaker and lots of knowledge. At the time my friends and I discussed what it would be like to have had Ron Dennis instead. We all agreed it would be far less interesting and Ron would bore us. Tonight Sir Ron, as he is now, proved us utterly wrong. What a fantastic bloke and a brilliant sense of humour, fun and drive. I had a chat with him, told him he was far better than I imagined and thanked him as one Surrey boy to another. I don’t do selfies (I’m 55 for fuck’s sake!) so make do with this. I also had a chat with Hammond and told him Ron didn’t get a selfie and neither would he. But I snuck a shot in earlier. Ron was accompanied by Dave Richards and there was a decent bit of banter between them. And of course their cars came along. Ron even made it down to the bar. Overall it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening. I was lucky: the dinner was balloted with two tickets each. I got in and drinking with a member of the Motoring Committee I could see how lucky: he had had to bend a few ears to get a seat!
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Post by Big Blue on Feb 18, 2024 11:10:21 GMT
Is that Alicante or Murcia airport?
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Post by Big Blue on Feb 18, 2024 11:08:46 GMT
Renewal on the Mini. £90 increase from John Lewis which is 25% up. The Meerkats were queried, including the claim I had for a car park bump last spring.
The RAC were not the cheapest response but the one I’d actually want to be insured by. Same price as JLP’s last year.
Insurers are morons.
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Post by Big Blue on Feb 14, 2024 22:46:24 GMT
We’re watching a movie. They arrive in Bali. W2.1 looks at the scenery and says “I need to get back to browsing again: I’ve got 63 windows open on my phone of different holidays.”
Going to be a stressful couple of months as she makes up our mind….
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Post by Big Blue on Feb 13, 2024 22:53:10 GMT
Can’t recommend this enough. Very fluidly written and covering a series of events that are very clear in recent history and very close to home for someone with parents in the US and a wife growing up in Czechoslovakia at the time. You’ll suddenly remember events and how they were in the media at the time. Then there’s Able Archer 83 which is really only fully outlined in this book so I won’t spoil it. I’m pretty much only reading mid-late 20th Century history at present. I’m likening it to my late stepfather’s huge collection of early-mid 20th Century history books - we grew up with knowledge and experience of what was going on but it’s only later in life that we have the inclination and opportunity to read the details that have come to light. My real dad was a naval history reader with unfathomable knowledge of the Peninsula Wars.
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Post by Big Blue on Feb 12, 2024 22:48:46 GMT
No rear glass opening? That'll tick owners off - it's such a handy feature that one wonders why all estate cars don't have it. Yep. This is especially important on long trips. When we pack the car we use every square millimetre of the boot, from storing things under the floor with the cover to closing the boot and then OPENING THE REAR GLASS to fill it up. This also means we can have an overnight case and the case with technology items ready to take out on stop overs. You can’t fill it as much if you’re trying to balance stuff to allow the boot to close. Lots of Europeans use their Kombi cars for long European breaks (ours are 5/6 weeks) and it’s why Europe is the biggest market for them. When you’ve had a usp for generations how the f__k you can justify the latest generation not having it is beyond my wit. Not only that: in multi-storey car parks I’m forever panic stricken that the electric boot will just mash itself into the underside of the floor above whereas the opening rear glass cover means that will not happen. I don’t need to do any counting or thought: I use the opening rear glass more than the full boot opening.
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Post by Big Blue on Feb 12, 2024 19:52:37 GMT
Well I am now fully of the opinion that the G31 is peak 5er Touring. Here's why:
No massage seats available on G61 No rear glass opening on G61 G61 530e slower than G31 G61 Front end irredeemably horrible, even though G31 is not Claudia Schiffer Rear parcel shelf of G61 does not automatically move out of the way G61 is even bigger than the G31, which is pretty enormous anyway.
There are lots of other reasons but these ones have jumped out at me on looking through the configurators in three countries (BMW UK is exceptionally restrictive, with that "iconic" chav grille only available on the M Sport Pro-chav version when Europe allows it to be added as an individual option). The interior colour ways and material offerings aren't exactly a choice either.
Basically the new model is theft-spec by the manufacturer and the idea of "customer options" seems to have become "we can sell it used easier" options even more as each model moves on.
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Post by Big Blue on Feb 12, 2024 9:10:56 GMT
Well with their 15 minute city bollocks, some elements of society don’t want your journey to require private propelled movement of any kind. They don’t care about country life because to them it’s almost an alien landscape. They don’t want you to do a touring holiday with multiple stays because that’s a bit bourgeois. They don’t want you to move about freely without being tracked on public transport.
However what’s more telling is that in France you can now on-line build the new 5er Touring. The full electric ones.
Or the diesel ones……
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Post by Big Blue on Feb 9, 2024 12:40:36 GMT
It could do with spacers on the rear I read that initially as “it could do with spats on rear”, which would be an equally valid observation.
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Post by Big Blue on Feb 9, 2024 10:31:31 GMT
I’m in France for a brief maternal visit and Europcar offered me a Tesla as an upgrade. I wasn’t brave enough knowing what charging is like here in our town but probably should have. I got a Kuga hybrid which is showing around 55mpg. The cost of a new electric car runaround is pretty prohibitive for the job you want it to do.
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Post by Big Blue on Feb 7, 2024 14:28:18 GMT
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Post by Big Blue on Feb 2, 2024 22:11:38 GMT
Nice.
I’ve always liked the 500 and it was touch and go between one and the Mini.
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Post by Big Blue on Feb 1, 2024 16:41:07 GMT
I’ll bin any streaming service that brings in ads. Hard with Amazon Prime as it's wrapped into the delivery package. We pay for Apple TV+ (no ads) and Now TV (no ads). Never paid for Netflix. The other streaming services for OTA channels (so C4, ITVX and My5) offer an ad free subscription service but on the basis that if we watched them OTA we'd watch ads anyway we put up with it. Re: Prime, we've found ourselves watching far less on Prime than Apple, who have content only available on Apple TV+, and Now, who have the most up to date films as Sky have the purchasing power based on their long term subscription model. If Apple TV or Now bought in ads I'd probably just put up with it but watch a lot less streaming TV. I also pay for MotoGP. There are no ads apart from the ones plastered all over the bikes and riders.
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Post by Big Blue on Jan 27, 2024 21:26:46 GMT
Cat S is written off for uneconomic repair costs but no structural damage. So if lots of panels and the windows are smashed with airbags deployed likely a Cat S. That's not right... the "S" is for Structural damage. Cat N is Non-structural damage Oops. Wrong way round from me. Thanks for the correction.
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Post by Big Blue on Jan 26, 2024 12:53:30 GMT
Nice car and same running gear as Eva. I charge about once a week for all our weekend pootling about and don’t bother on long trips except before departure. Basically I’ve never paid more than the domestic rate - the Club has outsourced EV charging and their prices mean we’ve just lost a handful of parking spaces as no one is paying that amount! so the spaces are often vacant. I use them for parking in very occasionally but don’t set the charger off.
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Post by Big Blue on Jan 26, 2024 12:48:05 GMT
Cat S is written off for uneconomic repair costs but no structural damage. So if lots of panels and the windows are smashed with airbags deployed likely a Cat S.
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Post by Big Blue on Jan 24, 2024 9:55:13 GMT
We've had Vigin Media for so long I've forgotten how long! Every so often (18-24 months) I throw a wobbly and they reduce the price; I dropped the TV option during lockdown and went with several different providers as the broadband is so good these days. We also have O2 phones so get double data on those now (as O2 and VM are under one corporate roof in the UK) and additional VM cable speed. This year they dropped the price by £20/month without asking. Every time I look at justifying dropping VM there is no rationale for doing so.
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Post by Big Blue on Jan 22, 2024 22:19:23 GMT
Yeah I am also stunned as to why, in the world of plastic moulded body parts, there can’t be market-specific variations. Having said that, regardless of national styles and tastes I see no reason for the existence of the front end of the BMW i7. Nobody can possibly want to look at that, whether on the driveway, in their garage or merely awaiting the arrival of their private hire.
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Post by Big Blue on Jan 21, 2024 22:00:28 GMT
Aside from griping about cheap switchgear (and I assume Thomas has the journalistic rights to “#capacitivebullshit” otherwise Harry would have used it) it was largely a complaint about the electric model. Short range, massive M60 price tag and weight were the takeaways for me. The petrol ones being 600+kgs lighter was an eye opener: that’s six of me before I get in! Oh yeah and the modes stuff and billion screen interfaces was another issue: I think manufacturers have tried to attract Tesla fan boys/girls with this one-screen-does-it-all shite without stopping to consider that Tesla owners are actually a species in their own right and their preferences should be avoided by other manufacturers.
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Post by Big Blue on Jan 21, 2024 19:18:15 GMT
Will be on Harry’s Garage this afternoon I'll see if the pull is strong enough to drag me away from Tax Returns! Just watched it. Tax returns are better than the car.
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Post by Big Blue on Jan 19, 2024 14:44:16 GMT
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Post by Big Blue on Jan 16, 2024 21:16:35 GMT
What I don’t understand is how come Tim, his brother, is so laid back and amusing. Both grew up local to me and Tim still lives in Cheam, goes to Sutton United regularly (poor bastard - they are shite) and is an all round decent chap.
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Post by Big Blue on Jan 16, 2024 18:45:07 GMT
How do you find the original clip you were talking about? I've found d the Surrey Police one and I'm on their side. I'd expect the car driver to be fined for that offense so no reason why the cyclists shouldn't be either as they have just as much responsibility to follow the rules of the road. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to give their head a wobble. Just tried to look for it on Twitter but, of course, I've muted the account
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Post by Big Blue on Jan 16, 2024 18:32:56 GMT
......how far Jaguar has been allowed to lag behind - if I was a Jag salesman I'd almost be embarrassed by what I had on offer compared to my mates in the BMW/Merc/Audi showrooms). Twas ever thus.
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