coldel

Right out the Dianne Abbot school of media management - class.

...found the preliminary sketch work for the design of the back of the new Civic Type R

I agree, cannot own a Nissan and look down on a Vauxhall. Appreciate Nissan have the GT-R lineage but they also sell 99% of their products as little bubble cars Vauxhall has a great touring car heritage, there is one at Rockingham that is a monsterous car I would say Nissan and Vauxhall aren't leagues apart in terms of the brand. Nowadays with the likes of Skodas made out of Audis its hard to turn your nose up to a badge alone

But 5% is fairly sizable - if you are on say 36k (and cannot be bothered to find an online calculator or the like so excuse inaccuracies) but you would be paying 20% tax on say 25k which is for all intents and purposes £5k, 25% would put that figure over £6k so more than a thousand quid a year extra. I know a fair few people in that tax bracket who would very much push back on that. Note: appreciate the above is simple calcs but really its to provide a point

Its a double whammy though - those 650,000 are not all individuals all working in individual corporations. If Goldman Sachs up and leave taking 4000 high earners with them you lose individual taxation plus the corporate taxation. Let along the halo effects to the economy as a whole of large corporations (love em or hate em) causing instability in the economy. In other news in less than 12 months the country has now moved into a situation of a drop in year to year real wage levels (inflation vs pay rises) which will lead to a slow down in spending right on the immediate horizon...

I still think there is a large proportion of public out there that still think the rich shouldn't be rich and that they need to be paying in even more than they do currently. But their view of this is that its a static world and that these people just sit and work here day to day. A lot of high end taxpayers could quite easily end up outside the country, investing in tax avoidance, investments outside the UK etc. the rumblings from the likes of Goldman Sachs etc. setting up scenarios for moving business should serve as clear warning on this.

I would disagree with the last paragraph in terms of its assumption that the public have 'figured it out' - I dont think the majority have at all, I think the polls deficit is a reflection of the current mess the Labour party is in more than anything?

Yep fair point, you do change career through your life, but a plethora of uni spaces does create an effect of young adults 'drifting' through education without a thought for what they actually want to do. There is no reason why someone at 17 years old cannot sit down and think what they want to achieve over the next few years and why. And there is no problem changing direction, but having some idea on where you are going in the short term and why is highly motivating I have found.

Ha! I had an 'Opel' called a VX220, which is really a Lotus underneath, would you not want one? When I was a kid I remember the car I really loved was the Opel Manta! Super cool back in the day!

I think the problem with education is that people do not choose a path and then support that. Many go to university then try to work out what job to do after that, rather than do a degree that supports what they want to do, if that makes sense? I also have some quite grave concerns about the life skills of some students, my wife teaches at a uni (Kingston) and many stories about students who aren't interested in learning stuff like interview skills, networking etc. all important (probably moreso than the actual degree) in getting you a job - many students *think* they know how the world works in business and are due a big shock when they step out the safety net of education...anyway thats the end of rant!

Ooooh brexit well a few things still irritate about this. Firstly the constant trotting out of the phrase 'the will of the people' which it clearly isn't. 16m voted in, 17.5m voted out 13.m didn't vote at all. So 37% actively voted out, the way the leave vote campaign spoke after the referendum made it sound like it was an overwhelming support of the country that made it happen. Lets face it, if the result was reversed and remain won by 3% then you could be pretty sure the Leave campaign would have led with a declaration that the country wants out and its only a matter of time and that the result cannot stand forever etc. and pushed for another vote. I read Fox's comments but for me the real indicator is in the profile of those who didn't vote, the profile is highly correlated with those voting remain (millions of young people who were more favoured to remain didn't vote). The result was a leave win, if you forced the whole country to vote, its likely remain would have won by some margin. Anyway, nationalisation f railways, not an expert but I do know that the railways were build by private companies and owned in that fashion from the start and it was post war Labour that nationalised them, they never in 40 years hence managed to break even until John Major put the privatisation bill through - putting them back they way they were (most people assume railways were always nationally owned). It will cost the country to nationalise, straight out of taxpayers pockets. There are also plenty of statistics that show old British Rail, despite our derision of the current rolling stock, never performed near the levels that privately owned companies run at. Anyway just my tuppence worth!

I wonder if Dianne Abbot was involved in the financial planning...although I wonder if she would have the time with her 37 hour days and 9 day weeks she works...

As I remember, policy changed early 90s so that the more students uni's got the more money they got BUT they could literally allocate people anywhere. In clearing people with A levels in one subject could fill up unpopular courses without the required qualifications just because by having them there the uni got more money. Uni's offered more spaces, more courses, some courses which were just pointless, just to up the numbers. Then government realised that they were paying a fortune for the fees, that too many people were attaining them and that they devalued a degree's worth. Solution was to in draconian style slap a big fee on it. Problem is that it makes uni a privileged attainment now rather than something intelligence based...

A raise in corporation tax (which will need to bring in around 75% of the billions they need to fund everything) whilst we leave the EU is just ridiculous. But as Fox said, the interests of Labour are to appease the masses out there with pitch forks and torches rather than plan for the future of the country. I think there should be a fee on university fees, but it should be capped much lower than it is now. I was at uni in the 90's and the amount of people rocking up to do degrees who really were not into it was a joke. There should be a fee (say £2k-£3k a year) to put off the drifters who are wasting university spaces but also very achievable and pay-back-able for those having to borrow to pay it. And yes nationalising, costs a fortune and guarantees little, except maybe strikes?

£15k-£20k will just about get you my Celica, PM me

Nice spot!

Its a fair point - somewhat ironically the best manifesto is the one aimed at people that have no desire to read manifestos we are in an environment of blame mentality, moreso than I can remember for decades. The only thing holding back Labour from making inroads is the leader himself...

Labour first up http://www.labour.org.uk/index.php/manifesto2017 A raft of spending and getting the well off to pay more. Feels very high risk to me...if Brexit doesn't work as well as we like despite us being strong and stable, the income expected from corporation tax could plummet and leave a huge hole. It does feel very old Labour...

I have used those pre-made leather parts before on the VX220, the fit is 'ok' and glueing on large items is an absolute pain in the backside, it sets quickly and its hard to get the alignment right when it doesn't quite fit properly. I am somewhat OCD so when I fitted mine and found bits of the leather console cover hadn't glued down properly and you could literally pinch it up with your fingers I knew 'i got what i paid for' which is certainly 99% of the law in most things in life. I have seen other people try this stuff with mixed success - you could fork out a couple hundred quid and then be left with something which when looked at properly will look crap, and then you are stuck either living with it or replacing the dash.

Each to their own I guess - I bought a cheap DIY kit off ebay and had a go myself and it worked quite nicely in the interior of the Celica, which to be quite frank is not that far off the quality of interior of an early 350z it certainly made it feel like the cabin had a more expensive quality to it.

Whys that? Some of the stuff a guy on the Celica forum does is pretty good, it is certainly a step up from dated plastics. The good thing about it is that it stops dash reflection - so in sunny weather you get a reflection on your windshield of the dash (I am a bit OCD and it drives me nuts)

What about flocking? When done properly can work really well.

As above the specialists usually ask this question to suppress your premium i.e. you have this experience therefore less risk of the lack of it causing an accident. I was asked by AF also (who were excellent by the way great price and speed of sorting stuff out, all done online no paper to fill in etc) but they specifically asked for VERY RECENT experience of driving performance cars which I could give (R33 VX220 350z all in the last 6 years) - if its not recent though it might count against you?

You should just remove the entire dash and hydro dip the rest!

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