No Thanks.

Nice article in Autoguide today.

It makes a change from the sort of article you regularly get like this one from Fox.  Autoguide have taken the usual article stance of cars we want but can't have and replaced it with cars you don't want and still can't have anyway.

Cars like the Tata Nano:

This is a particularly apt photo because as well as showing how ugly the car is, it shows a group of people excited by it that you particularly wouldn't want to go for a drink with.  And the car is UKIP purple - UKIP being a group of people that you particularly wouldn't want to go for a drink with and who don't like foreign things - like Tato Nanos or the other cars in the list:
  1. Jiangling Landwind X6
  2. Tata Nano
  3. Mitsubishi Mirage Hello Kitty 40^th Anniversary Package
  4. Iran Khodro Samand Sarir
  5. Chery QQ
I suppose it is a bit unfair to put the Nano in there given that its remit was to provide safe transport for people who couldn't previously afford a car - but that picture is just vomit-inducing on so many levels.

Number 3 is obscene beyond belief.  Number 4 was a bit of a surprise because I didn't know that Iranians had moved on from rebadged Hillman Hunters.  And, as Autoguide say about number 5, why bother making a copy of an already rubbish car?

Now, dare I comment on American cars that I'm glad we don't have over here?  Probably not a good idea given some British cars of the past but I suppose the AMC Pacer gets a notable mention.  And besides, we are talking cars currently on sale - which does make the list a bit scary.

Why I'm Voting Labour Tomorrow

For the past five years, The Tories & Liberals have been punishing the firemen.  And the teachers.  And the librarians, the doctors, the nurses, the binmen, the Town Hall staff, the police, the soldiers, the street cleaners, the school crossing patrols.  In fact anyone paid by the public purse.  Apart from the politicians.

They have been punishing them for the crimes of the bankers.  This annoys me.

David Cameron says that this austerity is the fault of the mess they inherited from Labour - the huge debt-pile.

Except there is nothing wrong with debt - properly regulated and properly accounted debt.  How else does he expect people to buy these properties that he's forcing the Housing Associations to sell off cheap?  It is the same way Thatcher sold off the Council-owned properties in the '80s.  It is how most of home-owning Britain buys its homes.  It's how I bought mine.

It is with a mortgage.

The problem comes when corrupt bankers decide to give mortgages to people they know cannot afford them.  Then they sell those debts on to other bankers, gullible ones or incompetent ones or greedy ones who then sell them on again.  Until the people who can't pay don't pay.  Then we have the big crash and the world governments have to step in.  That is the real cause of this austerity.

The bankers seem to have gotten away with this though - certainly there aren't any languishing in prison anywhere - and I'm pretty sure they are not worse off than they were five years ago.  Cameron says that the economy is recovering now.  I'm not convinced.  I'm certainly worse off than I was five years ago.

So what about the other parties?

UKIP are just Tories who have argued with their constituency parties.  They have some very right-wing ideas.  They would probably try to reintroduce fox-hunting.  And smoking in pubs.  And probably fox-hunting in pubs.

I live in England so couldn't vote for Plaid Cymru, DUP, Sinn Fein, SNP etc. even if I wanted to.  Although if I lived in Scotland I would be asking myself why The Sun was saying Cameron is no good, vote SNP whereas South of the Border, the Sun is saying Cameron is wonderful and the SNP are trying to hold Britain to ransom.

Next question - what is this doing in a motoring blog?  Where are the usual inane comments about Formula 1 or Top Gear?

Well that brings me on to The Green Party.  Less than a month ago, they wanted to ban my car.  And my wife's.  And, almost certainly yours too.  They have now relented a bit on that and just want to fit future-tech speed limiters to all new cars.  Bad enough in itself but reading the rest of their transport policy does sound like war on the car-owner.

So, that just leaves Labour then.

UKIP on wheels

Ugh!

 

I did consider calling this post "Grumpy Old Men" and making some reference to Clarkson & May but I think the UKIP similarities are more apt.

 

UKIP are basically elderly Conservatives who have fallen out with their constituency parties and gone out alone.  Some of these then fall out with UKIP and go out further alone - quite funny really and I do like the way they split the right-wing vote in a Tea Party sort of way.

 

But let's get this back to cars - specifically F1 cars. 

 

The elderly conservatives here are Dietrich Mateschitz, Bernie Ecclestone & Ron Walker.

 

I recently read this interview Dietrich gave to the Austrian newspaper Kurier and I didn't understand a word of it - presumably because it isn't in English.  However, someone at the BBC could understand it and explained it to Andrew Benson who wrote this article for the BBC F1 Website.

 

The gist of the interview is that Dietrich is unhappy with the way F1 is being run - especially the new rules about the engines and engine-noise.  He is also unhappy at his Red Bull driver, Daniel Ricciardo's exclusion from the Australian Grand Prix for fuel flow issues.  Anyway, he is so disgruntled that he is talking about pulling his two teams (Red Bull & Torro Roso) completely out of F1.

 

Yeah - right.

 

Meanwhile, moving from an Austrian to an Australian, Ron Walker is chairman of the Australian Grand Prix Corporation and is also unhappy with the noise (or lack of it) from the new engines.  The Telegraph report this here.  The story continues in The Independent here.  There is much threat of litigation for breach of contract. Tracks are saying they will pull out because the new engines do not provide the noise (and therefore excitement) that was paid for.  Ron & Bernie are old chums so are probably both very publicly arguing for the same thing (we know Bernie hates the new engines) to wind up the FIA.  Sort of playing UKIP to the FIA's Conservative Party.

 

Ronnie is also threatening to drop F1 and switch to Indycar Racing.

 

Yeah - right.

 

 

None of this affects me after I gave up on F1 years ago.  But, even so, what's so bad about racing cars that sound like goats?