rabbitstew

big engine and a warm bonnet; nice place to sit on a cold evening Enough about your dogging, this is a cat thread

Its like mini cooper racing green!!!!!

Not seen any on mine yet, and my own cat dont seem to leave the garden luckily. But in general the more you tell or stop a cat from doing something, he will immediately go and do it. Like a kid really. Hi powered water pistols are good though and whilst the cat gets soaked its not cruel to them.

And what did they say? I have to do a new quote with Admiral every year to get the best price, but they still beat everyone hands down. Its annoying that they do that, but if people werent mugs and automatically renewing, they wouldnt bother doing it yep, i agree.. they just said it was automated and that they have no control over it. I explained that if they try and rob me again then I would leave them and take all 5 cars in the houshold of them. Of course they go yeah yeah very sorry etc... but they know fine well that I know the system and will keep coming back as they do beat every body out there for price Its just standard practice with insurance companies. They give you a cheaper (cough, splutter) deal in year 1, then ramp it up silly for year 2 hoping most people will not bother to shop around. You then go online, find that you can get it for half the price, phone them up and they (and this REALLY annoys me) happily drop the premium down to the cheaper price. Just goes to show how greedy they were if they can literally half a premium in seconds on the phone. They always say "your details must have changed, let me put them through again", which is a load of bull as my details on confused.com have not changed at all, ive just clicked the "re-quote" button! lol. Another scam I had last year was I had a quote from my insurance company online for 66quid to insure my R1 for a year. (yes, £66 to insure a 150bhp 190mph bike.. and thats about the normal cost to insure it, which makes me wonder why im paying 700quid to insure the zed now). The insurance company then phoned me up and asked if i wanted to go ahead with it. I said yes, went through all the stuff, then they said "the premium will be 102quid. Im like WTF no it isnt. Turned out that they wanted to charge me 36quid for "processing the application over the phone rather than online". Hang on... they were the ones who phoned me and offered to process it over the phone. Needless to say I told them to F off and just did it online instead.

I don't think the industry would like my insurance risk model........its wouldn't unnecessarily fleece hundreds of millions from the hard working public each year because some 'statisic' tells it to do so and then hiding behind the line *said in as girly of a voice as possible* 'well what else are we supposed to use?' Its like the standard 'insurance is going up' headline we have to listen to EVERY YEAR..... If insurers just had the balls to say 'errrrm the Board said they want profits up by another 30% this year so we're going to spin some line about about the 3 scousers who've been doing cash for claims and blame them for a 30% hike in prices'........I'd have a lot more respect for them. Its the same line every bleeding year 'due to the increase in insurance fraud insurance prices will be rising by blahblah'......snooooooooooooorrrrrrrrreeee - if fraud is that bad then investigate it properly, underwrite the policy properly, load people on CIFAS, give the police their details, prosecute when you identify it. I don't see all these millions of people queuing up out of the courts waiting to see a judge, they seem to be able to reoffend every year (unless we're to believe the entire country is at it) so they're not being loaded on CIFAS either (as you'd never get insured again if you did). If bodyshops are fleecing you and draining every last penny out of a job then lets have a think..........STOP FRIGGING USING THEM!!!!!!!!!! Use a better, smaller, independent and get your own engineer to sign off the works instead of putting us all through the ordeal of dealing with Howard 'I couldn't fix a car properly if my life depended on it' Basford. With all the whining they do anyone would think that they weren't all making significant profit every year. EDIT - BTW Olly this isn't aimed at you personally.....at least Sky bother to engage with an Underwriter. Totally agree. My missus had an accident a few years back. I priced up the cost of the bits to repair the car and even allowing for paintwork, my estimate came in at around £500. The body shop charged the insurance company nearly £3000 for the work. Then insurance companies use that excuse to increase premiums. Surely any insurance company with an ounce of common sense would not throw money at bodyshops like that. In my personal view, insurance companies should look at each individuals circumstances and price accordingly. So, in my case, here we have a guy whose nearly 40 (okay, so old man, not young chav), im a company director (so responsible job), ive 18 years ncb on my car having never made a claim (so extremely safe risk), ive 10 years ncb on my R1 motorbike (okay, even safer risk as the guy clearly is very aware of road users), ive experience of fast cars (great, so hes not going to crash the zed straight away), been riding a 150bhp 190mph R1 motorbike for the last 9 years (great, he`s used to high powered rear wheel drive vehicles and he hasnt crashed it), I live in the middle of nowhere in a quiet NO CRIME cul-de-sac (excellent, nice safe area) and the car is parked on my drive, blocked in by my missus`s car (excellent, very low chance of it being stolen). He is such a safe risk, in fact we will pay him money instead. In addition, if i then decide id like to drive an old shed during the week, the insurance company should lower my premium even more, as if im driving an old shed, leaving the zed nice and safe at home, then im even a safer risk. However, in reality what do we have? Im a man (okay lets load the premium up), company director (dont care), 18 years ncb (okay we`ll knock a fiver off the premium or only take into account the first 5 years ncb), 10 years ncb on a R1 (dont care if he`s an experienced biker), live in middle of nowhere in a quiet cul-de-sac (yeah but the first 2 letters of his postcode group him in with the local city where more claims are made). In fact, cos he can afford a zed, lets jack his premium up as he`s bound to be able to afford the insurance. And, when it comes to wanting to use a shed in the week... lol... lets just double the premium cos he can afford 2 cars.

Which makes you wonder why insurance companies only use the first 2 letters of postcodes to assess the "risk". In my case, my postcode is NN. Which covers a massive area. According to my insurance company its a higher risk area than my old postcode, and my insurance was loaded by about 20%. Even through my old house was on a dangerous main road in a city with no end of accidents on it, and yet my new house is on a quiet edge of town/village cul-de-sac full of curtain twitching old biddies who are at home all day pretending to be Miss Marple. So go figure. Why dont they use the full postcode, or enough of it to narrow it down to the exact street. That way they can accurately calculate risk. Sure, if you live in the centre of the city on a street full of busy pubs then you`d expect it to be a higher risk than a quiet street on the edge of town. Of course the answer is, its so the insurance companies can charge more. Like when women used to get cheaper premiums, just because they were female, rather than analysing which people were higher risks in more detail.

Try a Kango?! Seriously tho, these are well easy to do. dental floss to cut the batches off, then hairdryer or hot air gun (gently!) to soften up the adhesive. Scrape it off gently with your finger nails so you dont damage the paint. You`ll likely have to use some white spirit or petrol to get any sticky ness off. Then a nice polish will clean it all up.

I plan to sell mine this time next year and I know already what cars I will consider replacing it with. For me, coming from a Golf GT TDI, I would seriously consider another one. You can get a 170bhp mk5 version which will return you 60+mpg (from my experience), whilst being fun and comfortable to drive. Maintenance wise, having owned a mk4 for 4 or 5 years, its very cheap to look after and no major problems. Another option I would toy with is the Subaru Impreza - also on your list. Purely because they offer very cheap performance. 3 of my mates have them and they are easy to work on (they do all the work themselves) and you can get mega power cheap. One mate has a 1999 one with around 300bhp and the entire car stands him at £2000. One of his mates has one with 727bhp (30->130mph in 6.5seconds), and whilst ive no idea what that cost him, he built it all in his garden shed using a lot of 2nd hand bits, so i doubt its cost him mega money. Of course whilst its MOT`d and street legal, its not a practical every day runner, but you know what im saying. Lots of potential.

Wow! Looks brand spanking new! Nothing like having your car freshly painted is there. I remember the last car I had resprayed, it was mint, not a mark on it. Then I was driving along following a lorry, and he cant have been looking where he was going, as he veared off the road onto the verge and his wheels threw up all sorts of gravel and stuff all over the front of my car. The front bumper looked like someone had been at it with a shotgun.

+1 Theres loads of country lanes and roads around where I live and being an biker I have spent years whizzing up and down them on fast bikes and fast cars and know them all like the back of my hand. I know what speed, gear for each bend, where each dip, each bump, each pothole is. Of course it then becomes anoying when they re-surface! I remember test driving a bmw out a few years back and took my mate with me down one of these roads and he was literally leaving a brown smoke trail, and yet I wasnt even going as fast as I could do on that piece of road. Luckily most of the roads I like are 60mph and 60mph is plenty around the bends! Of course, you do have to still use your common sense. Around my way, especially at harvest time you get millions of tractors, and the last thing you want is to come flying around a bend to meet a tractor.

Oh, I agree, they usually jack it up each year. But, I did find some insurance companies this year used the excuse "oh you havent driven a zed before so your likely to crash" to charge a higher insurance premium this time around. So in "theory" they should offer less next time after a years experience of the zed.

Sounds like your zed will be loads of fun with 450bhp! Welcome!!!

Welcome!

I`ll be interested to see how much your premium drops this year. You would expect after having driven a zed for a full year the insurance companies should reduce your premium no end as you clearly are a much lower risk than someone who has just purchased one.

I just managed to update mine to the latest 2011 maps. Mines the X7 satnav which I think was fitted from 2005 onwards, and even used in those 370`s which didnt have the nissan connect. If anyone has the same system and needs instructions, feel free to pm me.

And im in Rushden so not to far from you either. I nearly bought a dark blue one myself but settled on the grey in the end.

There is a paint place i always use local to me who match up the paint to anything you give them. Is there anything like that near you? They give you a paint code so if you need more they can always match it up.

And im in Rushden so not to far from you either. I nearly bought a dark blue one myself but settled on the grey in the end.

Surely the amount of layers of paint on that car must weigh loads !!!! Nice looking car tho.

"going up in my 1.4 corsa and im coming back in a zed" f**k me, thats a hell of a upgrade! Watch that loud pedal until you get used to it.

Welcome!!! Nice choice of car!

I think you'll find that already happens. They are called "estates", and most coppers will tell you that that's where they spend the majority of their time, because the residents keep calling the police in over minor infractions all the time. Where it seems to fall down though, is that new property developers have to build a certain percentage of "benefit houses" when they build new developments. So you end up with a nice new estate of £300k houses with a load of chavs on benefits living right next to them. I guess the original idea was to help these benefit sponging wasters integrate with the rest of normal people. But in actual fact, the scumbags just simply trash the area and rob off the normal people and bring the whole area down.

One of the local councilers in Peterborough had the right idea. He once said they should take all the low life trouble makers from each area of Peterborough and put them all together in their own little town called Scumville. That way they could cause as much trouble as they wanted and smash each others stuff up etc.. to thieir hearts content, without causing the rest of the citys people any problems. Of course, he then got into trouble for saying stuff like that was was thrown out.

I'm not. That's nature's way of curtailing an exploding population, and perhaps if they stopped breeding like rabbits they wouldn't have such an issue with a lack of water and food. You're absolutely right fella, we should be looking after our own, but you're labelled as racialist if you dare to suggest that. We've been giving billions to developing countries over the years and they're still screwed. I do agree with that, it's just a shame we're so PC. I still can't believe we give aid to India, a super power. Now I understand there is poverty there and these people need help but their own government must provide this help, not us. I totally agree. there are loads of needy people in our own country we should look after first.