coldel

I thought someone on here wrapped their matte grey and looked pretty good - sure it came up something like this...

Maybe at some point but I am in quite a nicely paid job at the moment (not one I particularly enjoy mind you) and have plenty of overheads...maybe one day...

Something car related..!

I am utterly hopeless at anything practical - if I had my time again, I would do a degree again..!

Love cars with the wide arch/body kits, really sets them apart.

Thats the point though isn't it Alex. That some career paths you will need a degree to get your foot in the door. For others you do not. My wife doesn't have a degree I do, up until a couple of years ago we were on the same salary. For jobs like law, engineering etc I would imagine having a degree gives you a very good chance of getting that first job vs someone who has just left school and doesn't have one. I am sure there are plenty of people without degree's who did other things which resulted in a well paid job. That said pretty sure I saw some stats about degree type (i.e. maths based, engineering based etc) vs the country average earnings and on average they were much higher.

Exactly that mate, for our grad roles at the company I work at we get 300+ applications per role. Its not possible to interview all of them to ascertain personality or get a feel for them (if anyone does have time then clearly they have the easiest job in the world). For grad roles i.e. getting their foot in the door early in their career I - clearly the easiest way to start cutting them down is appropriate degree/training and go from there - in the hundreds of CVs we receive for grad roles the experience is usually non-existent or not appropriate.

They look perfect... ...for corsas/saxos/pugs with blacked out windows, crap exhausts and a max power output of 80bhp.

Its the way it goes sometimes! You set yourself up for a career then end up doing something else...no issue with that really, its hard to think you stay motivated doing the same thing for 50 years...

I used a stick on plate on my Zed, almost impossible to spot the difference to just sticking the plastic plate on - up close clearly a much cleaner look to the car.

I was exaggerating the point on the fees btw I know lots of people were opposed to fee's at the time, but a large swath of the population were for it - I just don't think they appreciated at the time (I am talking back in 1994 not the debates on the £8k fees introduced in the last few years) the wheels they were putting in motion and where it would end up. As I said, if you want to get into a particular career you need to look at the entry requirements and meet them as best you can. I would imagine law firms would like people to have law degrees/education if they are going to take them on, doctors ideally should have the required educational qualifications which are usually degrees and car mechanics had what was required, which might be experience/vocational/training but not a degree. Are degree's essential, to give yourself the best chance of getting into a career where it is a pre-requisite yes I think they are.

I always wanted to go to uni, when I was 10 I made a point of getting through all my maths SMP early so I could get onto secondary school work which they sent over from the nearest school. I took pure maths, applied statistics and business studies a levels, did a stats and economics degree. It was what I planned for for years, other people around the time I was going to uni never put a minutes thought into it and just went for it in the absence of anything else to do - this was back in the day of no fees. Over time people saw this as a good chance for a jolly and the quality of entrant in my view decreased as uni's got money from the government to fill places. The public were shouting from every roof top that students should pay for their university education (funny how fickle the public are eh...look at them now) as it was viewed as a jolly. If you hate degree fees, you only have the generation before you to blame... Anyway, thats the history lesson over are degrees worth it? Of course they are, it is absurd to believe otherwise. There are many careers where a degree is a requirement to start out on, you won't even make it to interview without that on your CV. There might be instances where people start out on careers without it but those are more in the minority. Nowadays degrees are not special that make people stand out, they are a hygiene factor in selection for interviews i.e. you have to have one to be considered and its all the other stuff on your CV that sets you apart. I am sure there are people who disagree, who run their own businesses and would choose on personality, but there is a difference there - that they are risking their own money and are entitled to go on gut feel - but for most jobs which are with larger organisations recruiters are faced with hundreds of applicants per job, if the job in question is one that requires a specific skill set that is degree based then the only way to filter is on degree. Clearly if someone is recruiting for an entry level job working as a car mechanic, then me applying with my degree vs someone with no degree but 2 years working in garage is going to make my application pretty much worthless. If you want a particular career, look into what the interview requirements are at entry level and find out what they want. If they want a degree then you should go for it. Just as an aside, its picking the right degree at the right uni that is important, not just going for the 'best' uni on the list. There are quite a lot of misconceptions that Oxford and Cambridge are the places to go if you want the best but it varies wildly by qualification. Coventry no one would bat an eye at, but if you want to get into engineering its one of the best uni's in Europe - they built the land speed record Thrust cars there etc. and house a Mercedes sponsored wind tunnel, they have a fully working Harrier Jump Jet in one of the labs and so on and so forth. Any recruiter worth their salt will know what uni's do good degrees for the role they are recruiting to and not just look at uni names.

...and for the Grundy's of this world?

Or blag your way into a wind tunnel...

OK let me rephrase that, aero doesn't work to a noticeable degree until you hit a certain speed I would have thought. I get the hand example but that's with a flat hand causing direct resistance, you need to turn horizontal air flow into down force, which is a change of direction I would think which means much more impact on an angled wing to create horizontal force into downward force - there must be an optimum speed where it becomes tangible, I would imagine its much higher than 30 mph? The boxster the rear wing comes up at 75mph I believe, why would it remain out of view until this point? Watching F1, often see cars that lose downforce because they are not travelling fast enough. Just questions really - I understand wings work - I am just wondering at what point they work to a point they make a significant difference... ...off to google...

I thought most wings have no effect until you hit speeds over 80mph or the like, drifting at 30mph, not driving in a straight line so the airflow is going across the car, I am slightly confused as to how a wing no matter how big can actually generate downforce? Also a genuine question, promise!

Sounds like you got the same person I did - one of the most disinterested people I have ever spoken to regarding insurance!

Gotta be drunk driver

For my Skyline it was the first time I used a specialist insurer as the more common ones wouldnt insure the modifications/car. I rang Sky and first quote came up at £1200, I got quotes from Adrian Flux and A-Plan which were much lower (without negotiation) and rang Sky back but my consultant wasn't available so was told he would call me back within and hour. Never did. I chased, left another message with another person and was promised a call back, never did. I rang a third time and got the guy and the attitude was pretty poor. Talking to me like a layman, lots of sucking air through teeth, I am sure we have all had to deal with those types of 'sales' people who think they know better than you. So even when potential custom was on the table they didn't bother to chase (as per Dans point). Needless to say I didn't bother investing any more of my time with them, A-Plan far out performed Sky in terms of customer service, speed, returning calls when promised. My gut feel to go with them proved perfect as when I cancelled my insurance I also had to send off my certificate (as you have to with any cancelled insurance) and I got an email from A-Plan to say they received it and will send me follow up docs shortly, I got a cheque back in in the post 5 days after posting off my certificate to cancel.

That is mental Darren! Spare keys taped to the bottom...haha! And Ammunition. Can't say I remember much exciting stuff, when I bought the Skyline I found a genuine mono gear knob in the door pocket.

So what? 😄

How could you! Oh the shame!

Good one Graham

Not easy being a sole voice in a wave of easy criticism! Doffs cap to WMR I am not religious but having to line manage someone who believes strongly in Islam means I have to understand his views if working together works well. Its easy enough for people to say its all rubbish and people that follow it are idiots, but easier to have apathy for that view when you work closely with someone and take the time and effort to understand why they believe. What I do find interesting are the number of people who are out and out atheists who are superstitious! There is no god but they will walk around a ladder, avoid the number 13, think that sometimes they get 'lucky' at things and so on and so forth - the idea of luck or bad luck is as 'stupid' as following a religion as it has no scientific foundation at all yet I bet at least half the atheists on here have their superstitions

Wow 14 pages! I canine be ar5ed to read the 10 pages between my last post but hey interesting stuff on page 14. The idea that people with a religious belief cannot move on is somewhat narrow minded (Sorry!) there seems to be in my mind so many varying levels of belief of a god that yes some will be happy to sit in a cave and worship the sun still but others that are ground breaking creative minds who still go to church. I would agree that religion is dying out, I don't think it will eve go away as it seems to be something that certain elements of cultures enforce on their children as a matter of course and even with a tonne of information at their finger tips still choose to believe which is their right. From what I have seen in history, powerful people with non-religious motivations in mind tend to cause more war, strife and death than those who are religious. The ideologist global war of 1939 I would fairly confidently say killed more people than all the religious wars put together. To be honest, I am quite happy to let people believe if they like. Atheists who shout down people for believing or resorting to name calling (such as saying they are stupid or idiotic) them are in my mind no better than your next religious lunatic/fanatic who tries to stuff god down your throat - they just happen to be at the other end of the scale.