PhilJ W

I noticed a slight 'stutter' going over the points, more noticable perhaps with the side rods.

I'll have to start looking into my ancestry again. I found an article mentioning that a person with the same surname as myself was hung at Wapping for piracy in the late 1500's. I wondered if perhaps he could have been a relative as my surname is relatively rare in the south of the country. I had traced the name back about 180 years and discovered that I am descended from a long line of Thames watermen. I have recently found out that the crime of piracy did not just cover pirates of the 'Long John Silver' variety but included such minor offences as stealing goods from vessels moored in port. I have often joked about finding an ancestor hung for stealing sheep but I might have one hung for the marine equivalent.

Seeing as urea is chemically identical to sheep urine there's a joke in there somewhere.

The Europe vs. USA thing is a none starter with regard to the VW emissions row. Most if not all Volkswagens sold in the USA are manufactured there at their plant in IIRC Virginia. This factory was built in an area of high unemployment with subsidies from both state and federal sources and its a possibility that if VW if their sales in the US are hit badly by this scandal might find that manufacture in the US is no longer viable.

I thought for a minute that there had been an earthquake in Birmingham after looking at the fourth photo. It turned out to be an optical illusion caused by a reflection off of the building on the right.

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Glad to hear that Matthews back nearer home Jock and I hope all our other invalids both two legged and four are on the mend. Birthday congratulations to Roundhouse, many more of 'em. On the subject of names as you can see from my forum name that it does not matter to me whether my name is abbreviated or not, the only problem that I have is that my full name is spelt with two l's, which I now have to stress when reading out my e-mail address. My doctors surgery still only writes my name with one 'l', a bit annoying as I have pointed it out on numerous occasions. I do know why I was given my name as my mother was something of a royalist and I was born only a few months before Prince Charles, hence the two ll's. Weathers drying up nicely now so out for the shopping shortly, see you all later.

I was getting the same thing on Firefox. I was able to view the entire images by clicking on the 2 mm that was showing and they came up as another page.

Goodnight all.

Such as MP's being addressed as 'Right Honourable'. I won't make any remarks about pigs however.

I just happen to have a spare keyboard, only a couple of years old thats free to anyone who needs it. The only problem is getting it from Essex to Wales. As my new computer is a laptop I no longer require it. It replaced the keyboard of my old computer when the original keyboard failed.

A worrying feature of this is that the failed electronics could be replaced with cheap copies, not to bad if it means the engine destroying itself but if its something safety critical like ABS it could be dangerous. Another feature of modern car electronics I discovered, I have my car serviced every year by the dealer I purchased it from (new), a couple of times I've noticed on the statement an item 'upgrade' with a zero charge against it. When I asked what this was I was told this was an upgrade to the cars electronics software. As I said I have my car serviced by an accredited workshop but what if a second or third owner does not have the car serviced by an accredited workshop? On the subject of aircraft that can be flown by computers, this is now a fact with regard to modern airliners, most could fly a regular route with no one in the cockpit, the pilots are only there in case something goes wrong. The military in various countries have been flying pilotless aircraft (drones) for several years now, the advantages from their point of view are many. I can see the situation where freight only aircraft will take to the skies with no humans on board, if they are confined to over ocean flights or over thinly populated areas I do not have a problem with that.

Talking of classic cars in films. In the film 'Chinatown' an extremely rare 1934 Ford phaeton was deliberately crashed into a tree. Needless to say the owner was livid although the film company rebuilt the car at considerable expense. They tried to get out of by claiming that the owner was aware of what was going to happen to his car but fortunately for him this didn't wash with the court.

Morning all from Estuary-Land. Thought I'd overslept again this morning, instead I misread my watch and got up 50 minutes earlier. Glad to hear that Matthew will be getting moved back to nearer home soon Jock, the A12 is a terrible road at the best of times. Jock and Dave talking of radiation therapy reminded me of when my mother had to undergo similar treatment over 30 years ago. My dad and myself went to visit her in hospital where she was in a side ward on her own. We were sitting talking to her for about half an hour when the ward sister came in and ushered us out. The reason was that because of the radiation treatment visitors were limited to ten minutes as my mum was radio active! Hard to tell if it had any effect on my dad or myself, I have not suffered any cancers or anything of that nature but we all probably received a bigger dose of radiation when we were in North Wales at the time of Chernobyl when that part of the UK got considerable fall out. Fine weather for today so a walk into town beckons, have a good day all.

At a guess it would probably have ended up in Africa somewhere with a lot of the environmental gubbins removed as the engine fault had resulted in this closing down the engine. I was told that it could be something as simple as a seal or gasket failure but the cost of resetting/replacing the electronics made repairs non-viable.

Last year I had a problem with my 08 registered car, fortunately it turned out to be the tyres. In the yard of the dealer there was an 08 registered Hyundai sports coupé, a top of the line model and apparently in very good clean condition. Someone then told me it was going to be scrapped as it had an engine problem! A six year old car with bodywork unmarked scrapped for a mechanical problem.

Just what were you doing in it? Just hope it did not involve a pig.

Afternoon all from Estuary-Land. I just discovered that there was a fatal accident yesterday on the A13 near the Pitsea flyover, not long after I had left the nearby Tesco store. It involved a farm tractor, a heavy lorry and a van, the tractor driver was the fatality and it appears that he was thrown from the cab. The truck driver has been arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving but I think that slow moving vehicles should be banned from such 'fast' roads.

Actually it was a Ford Anglia, my current 'Mini MPV.' a Hyundai i10 is actually bigger.

More than £24,000 fine per vehicle!! No wonder VW shares have crashed. No doubt being the USA many purchasers of these vehicles are reaching for a lawyer. No sympathy whatever for VW in the circumstances and I hope that the right heads start rolling.

IIRC when learning to drive (nearly 50 years ago now!) I was taught to pull over to the right as far as it was safe to do so to allow following traffic to pass. One thing I do not do is pull out of a side turning even if someone indicates they are giving way without checking that it is safe to do so. Also traffic turning into a side road has priority and should only give way to emergency vehicles using 'blues and twos' so I rely on my own judgement as to whether I make a manoeuvre. Obviously the drivers who when turning right and don't position their cars properly are not using their mirrors as they are completely unaware of the queue that they are creating.

Morning all from Estuary-Land. I hope Jock was able to get to sleep again, I'm sometimes woken by the arthritis and is quite literally a PITA. Luckily it doesn't happen that often and a couple of paracetamol's is all that is required most times. In fact I overslept this morning by about 25 minutes which I put down to the new mattress. The old one was long overdue for replacement, as many as half the springs were broken and the one that broke through the cover did so because the surrounding springs were also broken, if you can 'bend' a sprung mattress any more than its thickness its a sign of broken springs, that is what the delivery man told me. He also told me that bending a sprung mattress is a no-no as it damages the internal springs, this he told me when I suggested 'bending' the new mattress around the awkward corner, the delivery men found no problem doing so and probably have had far tighter spots to manoeuvre mattress's in. A bit dull at the moment, at least its not raining but the forecast for today is rain and yet more rain. Have a good day all, be back later.

This thread has made it to a thousand posts, I and many others I guess didn't expect it to go much further than 100 posts before being closed. (Being such a contentious subject?)

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Don't worry about falling asleep during the day Tony, it seems to be something that comes with retirement. As I mentioned my new mattress is very conducive to sleep, its quite often that I have an hours or so lie down after lunch and today I laid down on the bed about two o'clock, three hours later........

One thing that annoys me is that no one seems to bother to move over to the centre of the road when turning right nowadays. They prefer to sit in the middle of the carriageway with a queue of vehicles behind them, or even sometimes from close to the left hand kerb. I do try to leave enough room where possible for traffic to pass on my nearside when turning right and even then some cockwomble coming the other way objected to having to move over slightly by sounding his horn and gesticulating.

There is a surprising number of Japanese cars in Malta that have been imported second hand from Japan. The biggest market for such cars, India imposes tough import duties but most of South East Asia is 'drive on the left' the only exceptions are Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Myanmar changed the rule of the road as recently as 1970, a bit of a surprise as all of the surrounding countries drive on the left. China used to drive on the left but this was changed in 1946 but Hong Kong being a British possession kept with driving on the left as did Portuguese Macao.