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Post by chipbutty on Sept 24, 2022 14:22:58 GMT
Team Truss are taking a gamble but they don’t appear to have any other choice. Even if they put tax up to 70 % it won’t be enough to fill the budget void (and it would cripple spending) and austerity is never going to happen in any meaningful way under any party. Growth is the only option and you do that by putting more money back in people’s pockets and giving them more reason to work.
The banker’s bonus cap lift and top rate tax reduction has people wound up over the wrong aspect (imo). Even with the small reductions granted, bankie bonuses will still be taxed at close to 50% when you include NI.
What’s better for HMRC, 53% of 2 times salary or 48% of 5 times salary.
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Post by chipbutty on Sept 10, 2022 17:12:46 GMT
Very smart, do the R designs have the leather wrapped dash and door tops like the Inscriptions?
With Lizzie’s price cap, has your BIL worked out the likely mpg equivalence from a charge ?
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Post by chipbutty on Aug 23, 2022 8:04:33 GMT
330d and 335ds were punted out on cheap lease deals (particularly 2016-2018) - from memory you could have one for not much more than the usual competitors would charge for their 4 cylinder models.
I think the 18s look great and I would personally look for one without the 19s. Similarly, I can’t get excited about HK speaker upgrades (it’s still not great by all accounts) and a wider nav screen - if I was looking at 5-6 year old used models, I’d be buying on condition and maybe looking for one of the lower spec ones at a BMW dealer with the approved warranty.
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Post by chipbutty on Aug 16, 2022 12:39:11 GMT
The thing is though:
• Where does the boundary between an acceptable and unacceptable level of profit sit ?
• If there is a percentage, it’s clearly a unique number for every company based on many different factors (historic levels of debt, current cash levels, future level of risk and required investment to mitigate probably being the key ones).
• Anyone in the corporate structure who benefits personally via increased bonuses instantly has the best part of half of what they were awarded taken off them in tax and NI.
Given the current level of histrionics regards addressing climate change, can you really blame the fossil fuel industries for take every opportunity to line their war chests ? They either need to prepare for unknown amounts of investment in renewable tech and/or diversify into other avenues to ensure their survival.
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Post by chipbutty on Aug 15, 2022 15:34:13 GMT
Yup - been on Tesco 99 ron since March, cheaper than V power and I am racking up the clubcard points.
Car seems to like it lots...
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Post by chipbutty on Aug 10, 2022 13:51:57 GMT
Is that 25% on top of VAT (or the Aussie equivalent).
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Post by chipbutty on Aug 4, 2022 11:19:11 GMT
And yet the Wee Nipster still has the bloody cheek to tap Westminster up for more cash to cover their funding shortfall.
How they can still push for independence with a straight face.
I hope we offer to cover the funding shortfall on the proviso that devolution is unwound and they give us free shortbread for life
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Post by chipbutty on Aug 3, 2022 16:22:19 GMT
I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all, but I really can’t get onboard with the styling of the 8 series - the rear ¾ view is just horrendous. I also don’t like the interior styling which is nowhere near as pleasing or expensive looking as the 7 series (which it should be as a minimum).
If I was buying a “ nearly new “ BMW, I think it would have to be the 7 series and I would just park it nose first everywhere. I wonder if some enterprising soul has created a conversion kit to put the facelift car back to a pre-facelift condition.
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Post by chipbutty on Jul 27, 2022 16:09:35 GMT
How many extras will be physically able to fall into this model ?
Heated wheel, seats and some infotainment fluff ?
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ST170
Jul 19, 2022 8:29:01 GMT
Post by chipbutty on Jul 19, 2022 8:29:01 GMT
From memory - contemporary road tests clocked the following:
Focus 2.0 zetec - 60 in 8.9 and 100 in 29
Focus ST170 - 60 in 8.0 and 100 in 21.
I seem to remember there being a supercharger kit for the standard 2.0, but I can't recall if one was offered for the ST170 as well.
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ST170
Jul 18, 2022 8:26:34 GMT
Post by chipbutty on Jul 18, 2022 8:26:34 GMT
The ST170 is a great car - I had one for a long weekend when they were new (a 3dr in Magnum grey) and enjoyed it immensely.
I remember it getting a bit of a kicking in the press because it was felt to be in no man’s land between the 130 bhp 2.0 and the RS and because it had surprisingly long gearing despite it being a 6 speeder, however, the benefit of that longer gearing was it was went like a b’stard between 70 and 95 mph (so I am told) in 3rd gear on the motorway and it was economical when tootling. It had quite a throaty induction roar and it was fun to work.
It was very good looking and the ride/handling/steering was fabulous - regrettably I elected to buy a 3dr 2.0 rather than the ST170 because the insurance groupings meant I could protect my NCB on the 2.0 but not on the ST170. I was I hadn’t been quite such a large person’s blouse at the time (although the Focus 2.0 was still very good).
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Post by chipbutty on Jul 4, 2022 17:08:52 GMT
Bit of an open goal for Ford to be honest. The interior trim quality, design and user interfaces are so poor on ID3 that Ford could right all those wrongs and give us something that makes the ID3 look like the upturned sick bowl it really is.
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Post by chipbutty on Jul 4, 2022 15:28:55 GMT
Ford and VW have shared engineering projects for electric passenger cars and commercial vehicles.
Expect Fordified versions of ID3, ID4, blah, blah, blah to come in the near future.
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Post by chipbutty on Jun 28, 2022 7:00:20 GMT
My street has plenty of gear heads and a few are definitely punching above their weight on a perceived car to house valuation. I’ve also noticed post Covid in the neighbouring streets that there have been numerous windfalls, coupled with some clear YOLO’ing.
Examples such as:
• Cayman GT4, Defender D300 HSE with all the bits and a new i3 (all belonging to the same house). • 2018 E220 coupe swapped for a 2019 RRS P400 • 2008 R8 as a weekend car edition.
On my street – worthy of note:
• Porsche Cayenne, Tesla Model S and a Huracan convertible (assume it has a wanky name like “ Roofarelli Apertarino “) – house worth £850k • M5 Competition, M4 Convertible and some kind of unobtanium Porsche (changes often – looked like a 911 GT3 and then a Cayman GT4) – house worth £800k • Old 911 (964 Carrera 2 I think), Mk2 Golf GTI, 5 series and 3 series – house worth £500k.
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Post by chipbutty on Jun 25, 2022 19:43:23 GMT
Can’t speak for Porsche, but the expensive paints for JLR products (SV paints and finishes or SV bespoke) are applied in the SV paint shop and not in the standard paint shops at any of the plants. There is an additional level of finishing too that goes some way to justify the cost.
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Post by chipbutty on Jun 25, 2022 19:30:17 GMT
At £450k, this is close to Singer 911 money isn’t it ?
Matters not a jot though, all are now sold.
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Post by chipbutty on Jun 20, 2022 8:39:37 GMT
I'd like that powertrain in a S3 XJ12, or something very similar in an X300 V12.
Manualising a V12 is a win on all fronts, massively increased performance, driveability and economy.
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Post by chipbutty on Jun 13, 2022 8:12:10 GMT
160 mph in my old XF 5.0 V8 on the Autobahn on the way back from Munich.
175 mph in an F-Type SVR Coupe on the Gaydon test track.
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Post by chipbutty on Jun 9, 2022 16:12:42 GMT
The outlets were crap when I went in April 2019 - Sports Direct was cheaper in every instance when it came to trainers and sporting wear.
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Post by chipbutty on May 20, 2022 11:35:31 GMT
Interesting combustion engine cars are a dying breed and in theory this will keep prices firm – right up unto the point when the Government do something really stupid:
For example:
• Massive increases in annual RFL for cars over a certain threshold that is especially punitive to powerful, 5 + cylinder vehicles • Introduction of additional restrictions as to where and when such vehicles can be used • Massive loading of fuel taxation once the tipping point between ICE and EV is reached • Further reductions in speed limits and/or retrospective introduction of speed tracking devices
You can well imagine that if the new cars sold from next year onwards have intrusive speed limiting and recording technology enabled – there is going to be even less public tolerance for free spirited individuals “ making progress “.
In simple terms – the remaining “ interesting “ options may well have their use cases completely hobbled by a host of new initiatives under consideration that leave you with a nicely painted driveway ornament.
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Post by chipbutty on May 19, 2022 8:48:46 GMT
One commentator piece from the Telegraph
To the experts, economists and other idiot savants who inexplicably failed to see this storm coming, thanks for nothing. All of their acronyms, PhDs, fancy modelling and algorithms have proved useless: Britain and the world are plunging into the most terrifying economic, political and cultural crisis of the past 40 years. A bunch of intelligent amateurs couldn’t have done much worse.
Inflation is out of control, a terrible recession is looming and higher interest rates are about to send house prices tumbling and unemployment soaring: the politicians are still in denial, unlike the voters, but the reckoning, when it comes, will be traumatic.
This is like the financial crisis all over again, only worse: for the second time in less than 15 years, the public has been betrayed by a failed technocratic orthodoxy, an over-educated yet staggeringly ignorant ruling class convinced that it can defy human nature as well as the laws of economics.
Why do these people never learn? Why do they have no shame? Where is the abject apology from the Governor of the Bank of England for the fact that, even after stripping out the cost of food and energy, inflation is hugely higher than his target? And why are our politicians refusing to treat this crisis with the sense of emergency that it requires?
The system is broken, millions are facing poverty, the middle classes are being hammered and yet no action is being taken on tax or supply-side deregulation, while interest rates, scandalously, remain at just 1 per cent. Why is the Chancellor not holding Andrew Bailey, the Governor, publicly to account for his reluctance to act and his abysmal predictions? Since when is the Bank’s “independence” an excuse to allow it to fail with zero consequences, with no genuine oversight? The cowardice and buck-passing are sickening.
The rot started, as with so much else, in 1997 with the election of Tony Blair. The Bank of England was given the wrong mandate when it was granted its operational autonomy: it had to focus almost exclusively on consumer price inflation, rather than asset prices (such as property) or financial stability. Soon enough, house prices started to surge, the Bank ignored the liquidity-fuelled madness in the City, and economists on a power trip started to believe their own propaganda.
The experts drew exactly the wrong lessons in 2008 when Northern Rock and Lehman Brothers went bust: they thought that bailouts and ultra-low interest rates were the answer to every problem, even though they were actually the very cause of the irrational exuberance of the 2000s.
All of these tools and more were wheeled out again and again over the past decade, as those entrusted with our money convinced themselves that inflation was forever tamed. Fixated as they were on narrow measures of price increases, they turned a blind eye to the money gushing into property, commodities or tech stocks. The central banks, the supposed guardians of our capitalist society, had become central planners, prisoners of an intoxicating groupthink: they were sure they could manipulate interest rates and use QE to guarantee perpetual growth. They thought they were right, god-like even, and everybody who didn’t buy into their new religion was not just wrong but stupid and old-fashioned.
The politicians, starting with David Cameron, lost interest in economics: an older generation of Tories studied Keynes, Hayek, Friedman and even Mises to understand the chaos of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, but their successors – with a few glorious exceptions – couldn’t be bothered. They quickly forgot two of the golden rules of economics: too much money chasing too few goods, services and assets pushes up their price; and debasing the currency is one of the easiest ways to destroy a civilisation.
Instead, the job of the politician, as Cameron, Theresa May and even Boris Johnson see it, is to divvy up the proceeds of growth that somehow automatically appear like manna from heaven, rather than having to think how to grow the size of the GDP pie. Thanks to the magic of ever-lower interest rates, it no longer mattered whether they hit businesses with regulations or entrepreneurs with higher taxes – or so they thought.
This emboldened the hard-Left. If it was OK to print money after the sub-prime crisis, why not print more now to pay for public spending? Why not ignore budget deficits altogether? The centre-Right, meanwhile, embraced green and public health schemes to make energy, travel and food more expensive, convinced that overall prices would remain low.
The lockdowns were the culmination of this madness: the Government spent as if in a World War, “paid” for by central banks creating money out of thin air. The Corbynites had won. The magic money-tree was normalised, with catastrophic short, medium and long-term consequences that haven’t all become clear. Millions became addicted to the crack cocaine of free money. House prices and share prices rose further, fuelling the rage of the have-nots. Many decided that they were entitled to an income without needing to work for it. Older workers quit the labour market. A socialist ethic gained ground, undermining the free society.
The benefit-to-cost ratio of lockdowns continues to deteriorate: yes, furlough bailed out millions, but now is the time to pay up, and the inflation tax, dislocation and cultural meltdown is going to prove extraordinarily steep.
The inflationary hit is being greatly exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the massively reduced supply of food this is causing. But this supply shock comes in the context of years of excessively low interest rates and quantitative easing, a grievous set of errors for which Western elites have nobody to blame but themselves. Inflation would have been a massive problem even without Putin’s crimes.
It now looks as if the public will either be forced to accept its greatest real-terms pay cut ever, or wages will spiral, requiring a savage overreaction via much higher interest rates – and a bitter recession – to wring the inflation out of the system.
“Why did no one see it coming?” the Queen asked after the demise of Lehman Brothers during a trip to the London School of Economics in 2008. The answer then is the same as it is today: a toxic combination of intellectual error, hubris and political short-termism. The voters’ revenge, when it comes, will be pitiless.
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Post by chipbutty on May 17, 2022 16:47:25 GMT
I think we are in uncharted territory with regards to the economy because there is no clear historical precedent to guide and inform, so much has happened and so much is happening in a relatively compressed time frame that usual expected outcomes are muddied.
If I take a simplistic view – I think this means one of two things. Either the global economy is going to go tits up in the most spectacular way , or it will prove to be surprisingly resilient when you turn the crazy up to 11 and everyone pretends to have a magic money tree.
I am very suspicious of all the price rises driven by “ shortages “ – it just looks like rampant profiteering to me and whilst I don’t agree the Government have a responsibility to protect people from price rises, the actions they could take to address the root causes longer term are caught up in all of the environmental hand wringing.
What keeps me awake at night is worrying about what new and ingenious ways Governments globally look to limit our freedoms in the name of “ the collective good “. On that basis – you should look to enjoy what you can before the new Puritans decide to tax the stuffing out of it, or ban it completely.
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Post by chipbutty on May 10, 2022 19:04:36 GMT
Tidy
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BMW i7
Apr 21, 2022 8:22:39 GMT
Post by chipbutty on Apr 21, 2022 8:22:39 GMT
When did contemporary = swamp donkey ?
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Post by chipbutty on Apr 20, 2022 19:22:52 GMT
Just what exactly is a chap (or chapess) supposed to buy now ? With a few exceptions, the cars from ze Germans are universally bloody awful and Jag don’t do proper saloons any more..
I am really going off cars
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Post by chipbutty on Apr 14, 2022 19:45:26 GMT
BMW shifted 48,000 in its 1st year and 23,000 in the US alone in 2021.
Is that 48k units in spite of the looks or because of them ?
With the exception of the 5 series, I think all BMW models are ungainly, unbalanced and poorly detailed, but people appear to like the latest styling (the new M240i is pretty, apparently)
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Post by chipbutty on Apr 13, 2022 19:05:27 GMT
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Post by chipbutty on Mar 9, 2022 9:55:52 GMT
What's worse is people who drive to the gym when they live 300 metres from said gym.
I routinely see two neighbours cars in the gym car park - it's beyond mental.
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Post by chipbutty on Feb 28, 2022 11:21:51 GMT
Mine lasted 6 months
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Post by chipbutty on Feb 24, 2022 13:17:59 GMT
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