The new news 24 thread

21,054 · October 12, 2024

1 hour ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

Bet they roll it out on 11/05/2025 - we're booked on Le Shuttle
Telegraph reports it in a neutral tone:

Keep your eye on the Government website:

https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/france

Seems unlikely they will have sorted this by then - but Eurotunnel should be fine as there is space for the extra registration required. It's Dover Port which is the headache as there is so little space currently.

2,913 · October 12, 2024

1 hour ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

Bet they roll it out on 11/05/2025 - we're booked on Le Shuttle
Telegraph reports it in a neutral tone:

Can’t wait to be stuck on Hungarian border when they introduce this. It’s 4+ hours now. I fully expect wait time to be measured in days when the go time comes.

10,679 · October 12, 2024

My daily Scirocco is 37 years old. That's about the same as Steed's Bentley was in the original Avengers and that looks ancient.

26,665 · October 12, 2024

1 hour ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

Dinner person? 👎

I'm proud to boast a granny that was a Dinner Lady (she also was the toilet attendant* at Ayr Beach and then promoted to the ones near Burns' Cottage) and they're all, always, Dinner Ladies to me. It's a proper job title, no sexism intended.

*not simultaneously with being a dinner lady I would point out

----------------

Our 'kids' reckon pre-2000 motors are dinosaurs. All crap. Not to be seen dead in.
Anything 2000 - 2010 (provided I fix it) is OK but nothing poverty spec or smol (unless a Bini)
2010 - 2020 - (only MB, BMW, Audi and VW) cool but unaffordable. Anything else is 'meh'.
2020 onwards - uber cool but unaffordable/PCP country-- one had a PCP until she lost her job (life lesson learned there as the single use Bank of (Step) Dad get out of financial jail free card got used)

Anything post 2010 I'd call modern?

I feel quite lucky that my kids have grown up around Autoshite so don't quite have that bias.

Who knows what 'my first car' would be for my daughter in 6 or 7 years! I shudder at the thought of navigating 5 owner 140k 1.0 ecobooms or the 1.2 psa grenade engine! There won't be the equivilant of the unbreakable first car fiesta/corsa/polo would there? £300 eV?

21,054 · October 12, 2024

'Alan's Funny Stories...'

I'm out and about this morning. In a caff having some toast and coffee.

Someone has found a phone and is trying to explain the location of the caff so the phone owner can drop by. A veteran of being given instructions of how to find addresses for cars for sale I am always amazed how difficult people find it to navigate or give an location.

Bloke: "What's the address of the caff?"

Caff Owner: "Where are you coming from?"

😂

27,077 · October 12, 2024

8 minutes ago, beko1987 said:

Who knows what 'my first car' would be for my daughter in 6 or 7 years! I shudder at the thought of navigating 5 owner 140k 1.0 ecobooms or the 1.2 psa grenade engine! There won't be the equivilant of the unbreakable first car fiesta/corsa/polo would there? £300 eV?

Toyota Yaris, Hyundai i10, Kia Picanto and more are good so she don't have to buy any of the wet belt garbage.

13,603 · October 12, 2024

4 hours ago, brownnova said:

One of the dinner ladies at work said to me yesterday “I saw you on the way to work in your really old red car”

That’ll be the Saab… I don’t think 1997 counts as really old… but the perceptions of others are a strange thing…

We had a new young bloke start at work last week and he said to me “So, you’re into classic cars then?” Yes I said and we had a nice chat about cars and I asked him how he knew I was into classic cars? “Oh, I saw you drive in this morning in your retro Toyota.”

I think of my Corolla as an old car, but I suppose 34 years old is getting up there. I still wouldn’t call it a classic.

39,396 · October 12, 2024

3 hours ago, captain_70s said:

I was speaking to @blackboilersuit about this the other day. His modern is a Fabia estate, which I consider a fairly standard 10 year old car.

It's a 1999 reg...

My old Boxster is now 24yrs old.

I passed my test in 2003. Back in 2003 my Spitfire was 24 years old too.

🤯

Admittedly the Spitfire was an old design then and a Boxster a new design but it's quite remarkable the pace of automotive change between those 20 years. I'd argue a lot less in the last 20yrs from 2024 to 2000. NVH between a 2024 and 2000 similar class car is pretty much the same, handling similar, performance marginally quicker now and safety similar. Just more driver aids and better fuel economy.

I also remember buying this in 2008 when it was a 15 year old car. It felt positivity an old car even back then. All my cars (apart from my wife's Civic) are older than when I bought this, but my cars don't feel old. Probably because the perspective of age was different for me being younger.

20,438 · October 12, 2024

1 hour ago, IronStar said:

Can’t wait to be stuck on Hungarian border when they introduce this. It’s 4+ hours now. I fully expect wait time to be measured in days when the go time comes.

It seems a bit mad to think I can probably get to Hungary quicker than you can!

2,913 · October 12, 2024

7 minutes ago, SiC said:

I'd argue a lot less in the last 20yrs from 2024 to 2000. NVH between a 2024 and 2000 similar class car is pretty much the same, handling similar, performance marginally quicker now and safety similar. Just more driver aids and better fuel economy.

I think this is it. We were around to see cars getting PAS, ABS, ESP, multizone climate, fog lights, heated seats, mirrors and all the other jazz as standard(ish) in late 90s and early 00s. Give it 20 more before that and none of those things were even optional extras.
Now on design front things did change (not for the better IMO), but it’s probably more visible to people who are 16 or 18 as those cars were around since they can remember so they think about them as cars when they were 4.

1 minute ago, Yoss said:

It seems a bit mad to think I can probably get to Hungary quicker than you can!

They are absolutely out of their minds. I really don’t know how did I not get entry denied last couple of times, as I was openly insulting the border police and being fully noncooperative. Didn’t even want to speak Serbian or English to them and acted like I don’t understand a word.

17,676 · October 12, 2024

2 hours ago, lesapandre said:

Big pickups - Guardian article. Bit muddled, hysterical and including a very surprising Nazi reference.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/12/monster-pickup-trucks-accelerate-europe-sales-rise-safety-fears

I'm always interested in the space between what's legal and what certain section of society don't like.

Nazi comparisons are never acceptable to make unrelated arguments.

Hilariously hysterical language; a perfectly reasonable argument(that US pick ups are bloat wagons and should be licenced/inspected/etc alongside commercial vehicles of similar weight, not as PLGs) utterly submerged in a bath of frothing nonsense.

4,573 · October 12, 2024

2 hours ago, lesapandre said:

'Alan's Funny Stories...'

I'm out and about this morning. In a caff having some toast and coffee.

Someone has found a phone and is trying to explain the location of the caff so the phone owner can drop by. A veteran of being given instructions of how to find addresses for cars for sale I am always amazed how difficult people find it to navigate or give an location.

Bloke: "What's the address of the caff?"

Caff Owner: "Where are you coming from?"

😂

The 'Where are you coming from' bit happens so often, then they speak as if you are a related and a local, 'turn left at the Dog & Duck, then right at our Tonys place, go over the hill round the bend and its the 21st house on the left next door to our Pats, but you can't get to the front door that way you'll need to go round the back down the lane by mad Petes and the knocking shop'. FFS man just give me the street name and number or post code, I'll find it.

6,972 · October 12, 2024

28 minutes ago, somewhatfoolish said:

Hilariously hysterical language; a perfectly reasonable argument(that US pick ups are bloat wagons and should be licenced/inspected/etc alongside commercial vehicles of similar weight, not as PLGs) utterly submerged in a bath of frothing nonsense.

I read that and thought the same as you. Also thought of all the millions of full size vans in Europe that are also high up and weigh three tonnes loaded.

The graun seems to rely more on freelancers to fill space these days.

15,118 · October 12, 2024

5 hours ago, New POD said:

Point of order. If you had a bloke doing the same job would he be a "Dinner Gentleman" ?

Further point of order. Why are they called Dinner Ladies when they work at lunchtime?

2,913 · October 12, 2024

Yesterday, the Commission for the Protection of Competition initiated proceedings against four retail chains after raiding their offices and an office of a price comparison website due to the suspicion that the retail chains violated competition by concluding a restrictive (price fixing) agreement.

These 4 hold over 50% of market share in Serbia.

Now, I’m not shocked they are fixing the prices, this was obvious to everyone for ages. I’m shocked that they took it so far or forgot to bribe the authorities so it’s actually getting investigated. I fully expect this to go nowhere and business to resume as usual.

Google translate link:

https://www-danas-rs.translate.goog/vesti/ekonomija/komisija-za-zastitu-konkurencije-trgovinski-lanci-cene/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=sr&_x_tr_pto=wapp

12,572 · October 12, 2024

33 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

Further point of order. Why are they called Dinner Ladies when they work at lunchtime?

They're there to serve cheap food to working class brats, so the title is something that will be understood by those they serve.

16,573 · October 12, 2024

10 minutes ago, artdjones said:

They're there to serve cheap food to working class brats, so the title is something that will be understood by those they serve.

I worked in a posh school full of definitely not working class brats, being served not cheap food, they were still called dinnerladies

8,858 · October 12, 2024

20 year old Rover Streetwise in no advisories shocker.

26,665 · October 12, 2024

2 hours ago, clayts450 said:

20 year old Rover Streetwise in no advisories shocker.

Probably one of the only few who do get a clean sheet nowadays of the ones left, nice one 👌

2,980 · October 12, 2024

On 10/10/2024 at 18:41, Popsicle said:

Make your own access panel, thats what angle grinders are for.... 🤠

I certainly would if it was my car, my father cut one in his Rover P6 for the rear calipers.

I now have a suitably bent cheap spanner for bleeding E-Type rear brakes and no great desire to do another!

10,098 · October 12, 2024

Just finished scraping all the PU sealant, bitumen and shite off the underside of this.

There's twenty odd welding repairs required, nothing major, just fiddly small stuff.

Hopefully I'll be cranking up the welding apparatus in the coming week.👍

4,573 · October 12, 2024

16 minutes ago, Snake Charmer said:

I certainly would if it was my car, my father cut one in his Rover P6 for the rear calipers.

I now have a suitably bent cheap spanner for bleeding E-Type rear brakes and no great desire to do another!

No I don't blame you they're not the easiest things to work on. Many years ago while struggling with the inboard brakes on a series 2 XJ6 rust bucket I owned, my dad came up with the plan to make his own access panel. Unfortunately neither of us owned an angle grinder back then so it was a drill and hacksaw/chisel job.

2,356 · October 12, 2024

Re: dinner ladies

When I'd finished uni as a mature student, and before we moved to Norfolk, I was signed into an agency to get some work whilst the kids were at school, and Mrs cn was still studying.

I got put into school kitchens, absolute con, they knew I could drive, and had a car, but they still provided a taxi to and from a 4 hour shift. No wonder local councils had money problems. Still, I wasn't going to argue.

In these kitchens, there was only pink attire, which I thought was hilarious, and wore quite happily.

Primary school kids, the youngest probably just about 5, I'm stood at the counter dishing up the mash. One young lad looks at me with eyes like saucers, turns to his mate and on his best stage whisper:

"That lady's a man!"

This was about 20 years ago, but it still rates as one of the best jobs I've ever had.

2,980 · October 12, 2024

3 minutes ago, 4wheeledstool said:

Just finished scraping all the PU sealant, bitumen and shite off the underside of this.

Super neat job. 👍

3 minutes ago, Popsicle said:

No I don't blame you they're not the easiest things to work on. Many years ago while struggling with the inboard brakes on a series 2 XJ6 rust bucket I owned, my dad came up with the plan to make his own access panel. Unfortunately neither of us owned an angle grinder back then so it was a drill and hacksaw/chisel job.

He would have cut the P6 panel out by chain drilling then filing, l think by then he may have had a Black & Decker drill. He beat an alloy panel up to cover the hole and held it in with dozens of PK screws, all very neatly spaced in his typical style!

12,572 · October 12, 2024

1 hour ago, comfortablynumb said:

Re: dinner ladies

When I'd finished uni as a mature student, and before we moved to Norfolk, I was signed into an agency to get some work whilst the kids were at school, and Mrs cn was still studying.

I got put into school kitchens, absolute con, they knew I could drive, and had a car, but they still provided a taxi to and from a 4 hour shift. No wonder local councils had money problems. Still, I wasn't going to argue.

In these kitchens, there was only pink attire, which I thought was hilarious, and wore quite happily.

Primary school kids, the youngest probably just about 5, I'm stood at the counter dishing up the mash. One young lad looks at me with eyes like saucers, turns to his mate and on his best stage whisper:

"That lady's a man!"

This was about 20 years ago, but it still rates as one of the best jobs I've ever had.

He would have been taken away for reindoctrination in the current year.

"Who will you believe, me or your lying eyes?"

19,952 · October 12, 2024

8 minutes ago, artdjones said:

He would have been taken away for reindoctrination in the current year.

"Who will you believe, me or your lying eyes?"

What do you mean?