gangzoom

How very sensible suggestions.....Planning to take my daughter to this though, probably even venture onto the track with the X!! Sadly don't think wife will agree to Japfest as well http://www.thefastcarfestival.co.uk/fast-car-festival-0

3500 miles in and am thinking about some minor mods to the X. I will either get the current wheels refurbished to black or ger some aftermarket rims. Tempted also to slap on a front spolier, and get the rear one wrapped in mat black..... Not sure though the baby seat will kinda of ruins the pimped up look, also cannot really run the suspension in very low mode all the time, my wife wouldn't be happy if my daughter comes home with her teeth shaken out due to a very bumpy ride What do people think? For the full chav look you can even retrim the inside in red and slap on some gold rims...kinda of makes a bit of sick come up in my throat!!

http://www.evo.co.uk/news/19352/nio-ep9-electric-car-claims-new-nurburgring-lap-record The quickest accelerating on the planet is currently the Tesla Model S and X. Now the quickest car around the 'ring is an EV built by a bunch of geeks. The new world order is coming .

We completed a few weeks ago, sorted out broadband within a week, got painter decorators in this week, carpet fitters next week, electrician same time, but have now booked a removal van Cannot wait to move in now, never thought we could ever afford to live somewhere this nice, 2% mortgages.... You have to love them. This is the view within 60 seconds of walking out of the front door

Meanwhile in the world of EVs .....am currently trying to convince the wife to let me do the same with a DC2 Teg.

....which explains why your now driving a 6 series

When the first iPhone came out I was using one these.... and when I saw Jobs 'unlock' the iPhone with finger I knew the Treo was destined for the bin. But Apple seem to have become rather stagnant, I moved over the S7 12 months ago and haven't looked back. Android has so many more user customisable features, and the main OS is just as stable as iOS. Its pretty hard to buy a bad smartphone these though,though not sure if the flagship handsets are worth the extra cost. I recent just picked a used S7 for my wife after her 5S died. For £300 its hard to see how the S8 or iPhone 7 fan justify been nearly double the price for very little added functionality.

So your wife will essentially be legally responsible for paying her sisters rent indefinatly to the tune of £600/month....What's the longterm plan for this? £600/month post tax is about £1K a month of your pretax earning now going towards paying for some else housing, that's very generous of you. As for getting a mortgage for your selves later, having just been through the process recently I was shocked how careful they check everything theses days, £600/month disappearing is not going to go unnoticed.

Three kids under 10.....Oh you WILL notice them, just make sure you catch up on your sleep before they move in!!

Why do people get so angry on Internet forums??? This is a tad long but stick with it and actually its a pretty good summary many decades of research.... http://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

It's not just your holiday anything that's imported is going up in price. Our Tesla now costs nearly £20K more to buy today compared to 12 months ago mainly due to the weak £. Microsoft/Apple/Samsung have all upped their prices. Investors on the FTSE have had a field day as a weak £ means their numbers all look better, but for the average person on the street it essentially means your hard earned cash buys you less stuff. Will be interesting to see which way things go, currently low interest rates is keeping the housing market afloat, no doubt if interest rates go up than peoples spending power will drop even more. Looking at things like PCP deals on new cars which drives the car industry, you can easily see if cheap PCP deals start to be pulled due to rising interest rates than manufacturing output will need to be lowered which in real life means job losses.

So it looks like the Tory party will be in for a while longer yet. I have my principles but also need to make sure the mortgage/nursery fees gets paid. Maybe its time to take up offers of private practice and get an accountant, as they say if you cannot beat them join them

Step changes in F number is on a ratio. All the shots I got ar F 5.6 was on the absolute limit of focus/shutter speed to capture a F1 car at free practice pace. In Qualifying trim I couldn't get a single usable shot that was in focus or properly exposed. As for bumping up the ISO.... We all know the problem associated with nosie on APS sensors, I limit ISO to 1600-3200max beyond that you might as well use your smart phone, I can fully understand why many will never consider anything less than FF due to noise performance. If you look at the shots I just about managed to capture the F2 cars in racing action, but that was only possible because F2 cars are noticeably slower, for F1 anyways you really do need photography equipment that can deliver if you want to capture even a single usable shot. The price of Canons 24-105 F4 L lens is £400, the 24-70 F2.8 L is £1500!! So you can see a change of just 1.8 in the F number is clearly a deal breaker to the tune of £1000. Its not just the F number you pay for, fast AF is absolutely key if your doing telephoto. At 300mm a tiny amount of front/back focusing will make your whole shot useless, and its also worth remembering most lens don't focus wide open. My 70-300 had accurate enough AF and fast enough shutter speed to capture the whites in the eyes of a F1 driver coming directly towards you whilst positioning their car into the apex of a corner. BUT If I was a pro making my living off capturing motor sport shots that lens was in no way good enough, only 25% of the shots were usable which is far too low a ratio as that's the difference between capturing the movement versus a blurred mess. Like I said how me some similar shots from one of these super zooms and I'll happily change my mind on them . My 70-300mm cost me £250 used, for the sake of a 30 second lens swap why would you bother with buying a more expensive superzoom lens with worse image quality?? If you care that little about image quality than why not just stick to your smart phone, my S7 will do x10 Zoom too .

Photography style might be subjective but lens performance isn't. What everyone wants is a lens that's quick to focus, large aperture for good low light performance, and good sharpness all round to enable you to deliver good image quality. Realistically what kinds of subjects are you going to shoot with a 300mm Zoom lens?? Unless your into spying on people it's probably going be either sports/air craft where your shooting from the audience areas or wild life. Your both sports/wild life fast AF is absolutely key, along with not too high f-number otherwise your end up not been able to 'freeze' the image. The zoom lens OP is/was looking at is actually very good value for the money, I had the 70-300mm version and it was good enough to let me get shots like below. https://www.amazon.c...ords=B00EP71ETU However with a super zoom lens like some of the ones suggested with a f stop down to 6.3, you haven't got a chance in hell of catching anything moving quickly in focus......If you got some shots show me that proves otherwise I'll be gladly to change my mind on the subject (Not 'demo shots' but shots done by normal people) http://www.wexphotog...553135/#1553135

So this is what happens to health care when you ask a business person to run it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39813825 I've spoken to many Americans abour Obama care the fear of those who can afford private health care is genuinely real. The thought of having to share a bay/hospital with people from the lower social groups strikes fear into peoples hearts. Obama care a big NO NO to most of the wealthy in the US. Strange really that people in the supposedly most 'developed' nation on the planet essentially are so divided into the haves and have nots. When I was in the US last I took a bus from the Hotel to SantaMonica beach, when I got back and some US colleagues found out I had taken a bus they really were genuinely relived I was 'OK'. It was almost as though just stepping onto a bus was some kind of danger sport, and I would catch some deadly disease. Its a really strange society over the pound, I really don't get it. Having a private health system is also no guarantee of efficiency or value for money. The average pay for my job in the US is $270K and my wife could be on $400k!!! Our NHS salaries are not even 25% of that and yet both of us have given international talks on how to manage patients in the US, my wife even got an award last year for her work beating many US doctors up for the same award. So just because you pay your health care staff more it doesn't buy you better care. So becarful of what you wish for interms of private health care, because let's be honest without the NHS the only alternative is the US system. Personally I hate the idea of private health care, I actively choose not to see patients who have private health insurance. The concept of segregating hospitals into different social economics zones is a step too far for me, but it happens and I accept need to try keep the books balanced .... But if that is route the national wants to go down I wouldn't fight it too hard, our bank accounts will certainly look happier. However a private NHS will not be good for the overall health care fo the national, not for those who cannot afford insurance anyways.

It's not just the NHS, social care, school, policing. All these 'state funded' services run at a 'loss' and none are cheap. This chart below is produced by the institute of fiscal studies, and it essentially shows the balance of how much money people receive (top half of the graph) versus how much people contribute to tax (lower half of the graph) broken down according earnings. Essentially if the top bar chart is the same as the bar chart at the bottom than that group of people use as much public resources as they contribute in tax. If you look carefully it's only the top 20% of the working public that contributes more to state funds through taxation than they consume in public services. The old favourite line touted by many 'I deserve X/Y/Z from the state because I've worked all my life' is really only true if you earn at least £38K pre-tax. Been devils advocate if you really wanted to run the country like a business and balance the books the only solution you have is to exclude 80% of the population from accessing public services once they have used up their 'allotted' amount - be that health care, school, housing etc. Would you expect Nissan to give you a GTR if all you could afford was a Note because you have previously owned a 350Z so clearly a Nissan citizen/club member? BUT would you judge one person life over another purely based on the size of their bank account? Because if all you care about is the financial figures that's what it comes down to, I know I wouldn't want to live in that kind of society. https://www.gov.uk/g...e-and-after-tax There loads of things I love about StarTrek, but the notion of humanity existing without money is probably the most exciting thing part of the StarTrek universe for me.....However I'm pretty sure that is also by far the most unrealistic SciFi idea anyone has come up with ...We'll probably have flying electric antigravity cars before than happens

DO NOT get any of these cheap superzoom lens, not unless you like wasting money. They are cheap for a reason and virtually everyone I know who bought one don't use them. Heavy, slow, poor image quality, if you even remotely care about image quality stay clear. Am pretty sure we are all familiar with the term 'buy it right or buy it twice' for cheap car mods/parts that look attractive for price but turns out tobe junk.... Same with lens, the kit lens are the best value lense around. But to get the next step up in image quality to have to step up your budget. If you have not got the budget yet for a better lens stick with your kit lens and practice taking more shots, that experience will get you better photos than any lens. All these shots below were taken with the kit lens that came with my mirrorless camera, the lens is worth about £50 on ebay. Again like cars, a pro driver who knows that they are doing well get around a track in a Golf GTI than a neeb in a £200k Ferrari, its not really about the equipment, it's the human factor that makes the difference.

I cannot praise the Canon 17-55mm f2.8 IS enough. The large aperture with very good IS means you can get some really good shots regardless of light conditions. I bought a used example and sold it for a fair price despite damaging it after I moved over to a compact camera system. The lens was pretty much permanently attached to my old 550D, it's expensive but worth every penny. https://www.amazon.c...s/dp/B000EOTZ7G

Drives a BMW, private health insurance, open to the idea of tax efficency, I would say you fit the profile of a certain political party very well... When are you painting the bimmer green .

Car magazine just did a piece on the Honda Clarity Fuel cell car. http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-reviews/honda/honda-clarity-fuel-cell-2017-review/ This line sums up why oil companies are keen for hydrogen to succed petroleum. `Currently, Clarity drivers will pay about £85 for a full tank (or tanks in this car’s case) of hydrogen' It essentially allows existing petrol chemical industry to stay relevant. Contrast that to my battery EVs, the X has now done 2300 miles, I used 650kWh of really cheap overnight electricity, total cost of electricity £46.

I've got the ultimate car tracker built into mine, even comes with a phone car app that shows you on Google Maps where the car is, how fast its going and direction of travel. If your the untrustworthy type makes spying on your other half quite easy... But the phone app can be installed on multiple devices so works both ways .

Just realised its now coming upto a month since picking up Kia. I always think short test drives tells you very little about a car and it's not until you live with a car day in day out you can truly bound with it..... Well all I can say is I must like driving Kia, because despite my commute to work been 5 miles I've somehow managed to rack up nearly 2000 miles in just 4 weeks. I should also point out most of those miles have been done on twisty B roads like these... Non of this Autopilot M-way 'driving' rubbish for me. Forget about the fact Kia is an EV, or a Tesla, it is simply a fantastic car to drive and live with. Every time I sit in the drivers seat it simply brings a massive smile to my face and at the end of the day thats what matters. Bring on the summer and next 2000 miles

Our department has constantly had 2-3 vacancies on a 8 person working rota. I cannot blame people for not wanting to work 24hr shifts, having to go from breaking the awful news of someone dying to relatives and than immediate get called away to do job X/Y/Z, work under the stress of knowing any mistake means someone might die, and than on top of all that spend half your working day not doing medicine but trying to find empty beds whilst getting hassle from managers who have very little clinical awareness. No wonder I have no time to even think about tax avoidance No politician will ever have the balls to make drastic reform the NHS, there is simply too much at stake. You also cannot run an acute hospital like a shop/business, the clinical work load is simply too unpredictable, I've had days when it has literally been non stop for 24hrs and the first time I get a chance to stop for a break is 5 am after starting work at 830am the day before. I've also had days when I'm sitting there at 2pm waiting for things to happen. You simply cannot predict a day will go and I've been doing this job for coming on 15 years. That kind of unpredictable work loads make resource planning an absolute nightmare. Anyone actually interested in seeing what kind of pressures the clinical staff are under in the NHS should take a look at the latest Channel 4 program on Junior doctor. I was in Northampton for 18months and can 100% agree the senior clinical staff about just how bad things are now. The system will collapse, its not if, simply when. People can talk about the NHS as much as they like but anyone who's actually been acutely unwell will realise just how scary things will be when hospitals shut their doors and tell you sorry but to go for help else where when you suddenly take unwell......This winter or next the **** will hit the fan and we'll see just which politicians has the balls to do something meaniful. http://www.channel4..../episode-guide/

The problems facing the NHS is urgent/acute care. You cannot deliver 'free' care as the NHS does without someone paying for it. The NHS is actually one of the most efficient health care systems, the US health care system spends upto 30% of their income on simply working out how much to invoice people!! http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/uks-healthcare-ranked-the-best-out-of-11-western-countries-with-us-coming-last-9542833.html The whole A&E system is about to collapse anyways, demand is simply overwhelming the system, I'm surprised we made through this winter, the next flu outbreak will kill the NHS. What replaces will be interesting, as the private sector have already realised running an acute hospital will never make money without charging people up front - Which is fine if you can afford to pay, but if you cannot what do you do....Either way we'll find out soon. http://nyenquirer.uk/excusive-virgin-pulls-out-of-whitby-hospital-deal/

That's exactly what we keep getting told, but I will personally never do it. I get an income and I'll pay my dues.