mercuryg

yes, that's true, but that's for a mobile phone, not a car. If it's F1 i'll have the press release; check out www.updatef1.com, it's the biggest independent f1 website, i.e. not run by a publishing house, in the world today, and I edit it. The thing is that F1 has nothing to do with road cars. Anything that goes from F1 to road cars is minimal. Those machines are designed to last a four hundred miles and then need a complete rebuild. An example of where F1 does it wrong - last year the FIA introduced KERS, kinetic energy recovery systems (as used by the Leaf, and mentioned by Monsta) as they were said to be seen as the next big thing in road car technology. In fact they're not; they are expensive, inefficient systems that are unreliable and return poor results, and this after fifteen years - at least - of research and development by some very, very bright bods (indeed, Mclaren introduced KERS on its F1 car in 1997 - it was instantly banned). The auto industry sees KERS as something with very limited use, but also views it as a 'look, we're doing something' message, which is why it appears on the Leaf, and others, but not on conventional road cars. (Incidentally, the biggest development house for KERS in Europe - Williams Grand Prix Engineering. That's right, and the reason it costs that much is not because it isn't mass produced, it's because th technology it uses is bloody expensive, not green at all, and not conducive to use on the roads. It's in its infancy, unproven, and the car itself is very, very slow. Even the modern, current electric cars that Monsta is championing (and don't get me wrong, i'm all for althernative fuels and !*!@#, it's simply that we are noweher near to viable replacement for the combustion engine) will give you a hundred miles, but at a snails pace; take one on the motorway and start cruising at 60mph and you'll get to Newcastle before it stops. I'm not kidding, not exaggeratiing, this is as far as they have got, and this is with the might of the world's manufacturers working together. Granted, we'll have electric vehicles one day, but as a personal form of transport, as a viable car, they simply are not ready yet; that's why production levels are low. The simple facts in all this is simple. I can't agree with you, although there is a point to be made, but the thing you're missing is that the oil companies are desperately lookign for alternatives to their current product because it will, eventually, run out (although nowhere near as quickly as th doom-mongers will have us told). Further, it's not up to teh governement, and again, if the government were so keen why are they offering incentives for electric cars? I think it is unprovable, but then it's not the government that makes cars. Look at it this way - which car manufacturers does our government have any influence over now? None. I feel that as the one putting electric cars down here i'm being somewhet mis-heard; i'm not against electric cars - give me one that is safe, efficient, has a great range, can be 'filled up' once a week and take me to where I want to go every day, there and back, doesn't increase my electricity bill by a fortune, won't necessitate the building of vastly more power stations than we already need, doesn't use materials in the batteries that involve raping the areas they are found, doesn't need the expensive batteries replacing every 5000 miles, and so on, and i'll happily welcome it, but it doesn't exist. Electric cars, as we know them now, as the Nissan Leaf and it's compatriots are, ar simply vanity toys for rich people to say 'look at me, i'm saving the planet' when, in fact, they're not. That's not an opinion, it's a fact, and it's borne out entirely by the £28,000 price tag of a 21st century electric, state of the art Nissan that gets you a hundred miles. here's the way I see it - in 50 years, say, when the cost of petrol and diesel is prohibitive, the personal car will be a thing of th past; we will have electric vehicles, but not cars - buses. Public transport will be king.

I think you'll find they have. I'm not averse, however, to your suggestion of new nuclear stations; without them we'll be livin in the dark by 2025, never mind runnign electric cars. No they're not - you pay a rental for the batteries, an additional fee to the cost of teh car. No it doesn't - do you actually drive a car? Are you suggesting that climate change wasn't around a hundred years ago? Ok, we'll use the Nissan Leaf as our benchmark, then. £23,000 for a car that does a 100 miles before it stops, dead (and that 100 miles, again, is at a standard 30mph.) Are you suggesting that's 'good value'? Assuming you use it to go to work, and that's a 30 mile round trip (reasonable, and less than the average) - that's easily three charges a week. How much power is taken in charging the car over a five year lifespan (the lower end of the battery life) and how does that compare to an efficient small capacity internal combustion engine in terms of emissions? Sorry Monsta, like I said I admire your commitment to the proposed emission free vehicles, and so on, but this really is barking up the wrong tree. Electric cars are a no go in mass terms.

All very well, and Mr Darn is right in what he says, but he - and you - are talkin about laptops, mobile phones and the like. Here we're talking about batteries to power a car. Not just power the car, remember, but all of its ancilliaries, too - lights, and so on. Indeed, what Mr Darn says is interesting, in that while raising hope he dashes it with one comment - 'My laptop has a four hour range'. Four hours, thats it - to power a laptop. The point you're missing, that i've raised a couple of times already and is the sticking point that even the manufacturers agree upon, is that electric cars are not new; the concept is not new, the technology is not new. In the 1950's it was possible - and it was done - to build an electric car with batteries that would power it for a sixty mile range; what's the average projected range of an electric car now? No, tell you what, what's the range of the Citroen C-zero, also built as a Mitsubishi and set to be one of themost widespread models of all? 80 miles. With constant development, much expense, massive investment and technological advances in all manner of electrical motors and batteries, in 60 years we get an extra 20 miles. And that, by the way, is at a constant 30mph. It has already been universally accepted by the motor manufacturers that electric vehicles are of use as 'city cars', runarounds that will do short journeys, with much stopping and starting (this being teh reason milk floats used electric power it's ideal for them) and that's great, really great, but models like the tesla are simply showcase devices, extremely expensive, which look like major white elephants when compared with similar petrol engined models in their class. So let;s be honest, and take the C-Zero as the benchmark; it will get you 80 miles, you charge it up in six hours (and, remember, pay for that charging), you can do the shopping in it, take the kids to school, all great, and it costs at least £10,000. That's why it's a plaything for rich people. If battery life did, indeed, increase 'two fold' every couple of months, given that the average electric car from the 50's could give you 60 miles, you'd have a range of well over 500 miles by now, Monsta. The truth is, it doesn't, and it won't.

There's such a lot wrong with this post Monsta, but I will say I admire your support of electric cars. The problems are much deeper than you seem to understand, however, and you fall at the first hurdle with 'electric cars are much greener than petrol' - they're not. You even say why yourself - we would have to build more power stations to run them. Lots more. Have you thought about how many cars there are on the roads - just of Britain - today? Have you thought about how much extra electricity - that is, beyond what we use now - would have to be generated to create enough to power a whole nations worth of electric vehicles? As for wind turbines, surely you have realised - as most have - that they are a massive red herring (yes, another one); they operate at less than 50% capacity, sometimes less, cost an absolutel fortune to build, need their turbines refinnin every few years, and when there is not enough wind to power them they have to be kept moving artificially in order that their shafts do not bow - by drawing power from the national grid! Back to the problem with electric cars, and moviong on from the environmental stuff: a short range, th need to charge on regular basis, expensive maintenance, batteries that need replacing every few thousand miles at massive cost, expensive to build, heavy (and therefore inefficient), the need for expensive materials such as lithium to create more efficient batteries, disposal of old environmentally unfriendly batteries, a lack of engin braking hence the need for brake replacement on a regular basis, and so on, and so on. I said it before - has it occured to you why, given that the technology for electric cars preceded that of petrol driven ones and has been improved greatly in the past century, the internal combustion engine is still the method that leads the way? it's simple - it's because it is more efficient. The major manufacturers are working towards clean, super efficient small capacity engines that will provide more power, range, fuel economy and flexibility than ever before, that will be cheap to build as the idea is to create a series of 'world engines' and that will lead the way for many, many years to come. The electric car is, as it always has been and always will be, a toy only affordable by rich people.

Same as before - expensive red herrings that represent a technological blind alley. We've been through this before. Put simply, there is a reason that the Internal combustion engine won over the electric car in teh first place (to the uninitiated, electric cars are nothing new and have been around for over a hundred years) and its because they are more efficient all round. The future is small capacity turbocharged high efficiency internal combustion engines, for at least 50 years.

There are some that censor Scunthorpe.

Again, trying to be clever comes back and bites you in the !*!@# ; it hasn't gone down at all, it's an additional menu that runs alongside the standard one, perhaps in recognition of those peiople who consider that one to be more than they wish to pay. Now that's not fair - i'm asking you a serious question and you respond by stating the town is tainted by someone you don't even know! It's a fair point - the vast majority of your posts on here are bitter rants or sly digs at anything and everything - why? What has life done to you that makes you so upset and dissatisfied with everything? Why not add some constructive, interesting points, like others do, rather than insisting on slating everyone and everything and then, half heartedly, trying to pre-empt a wriggle out by adding the much misused and, frankly, redolent of the playground 'lol'? There must be something, somewhere, that elicits at least a positive response? How would that help you? You'd most likely comment on the subsequent news story of the subsequent death of those who follow your instructions by commenting on the run down state of the spine road and how it is useless, pointless, and basically crap.

Someone enlighten me - who, or what, is The Real Renegade??

There is a downside to trying to be clever that often returns and bites you on the !*!@# . Have a look in the window and you'll see a bloody big notice advertising a new 'Traditional English Menu' with all meals at £6.50, running alongside the one you kindly reproduce. I'll not bother to tell you what's on it as you're clearly able to read, but it's more than starters and cheese - 'lol'. Really, I wonder, is it your aim in life to simply put down everything anyone does in Bedlington? maybe you're jealous because you've done nothing of any worth in your life other than exist in a town that you clearly hate? What is it? Your whole demeanour reeks of someone who is quite content to fester away in a life that is giving you nothing and clearly not satisfying you; why, I wonder? Seriously, everything I read from you on here is either a snipe at someone else or an ill-informed judgement that shouts of you being a bit pissed off with everything - anything we can do to help? (again - 'lol')

What an odd response! Of course, Monsta being Monsta you would have to find a poor review more 'believable' than a good one, because that's how you want it to be, isn't it? As it happens, I wasn't even aware i'd posted a 'review', but I have recommended the place on the basis of having eaten good, well priced quality food there. Quite why you should choose to believe one, and not the other, is actually very curious indeed. Furthermore, I have no reason to disbelieve Ms Hair, for she has no reason not to tell the truth; as you point out, no establishment - of any kind - is perfect (much to your lifelong chagrin, I fear) and there will be those who have a bad experience. I'm interested to know what she chose to do about it, for had it been me I would not have hesitated to complain, just as I have in other places. So far I have had no reason to complain about anything at Accolade, but I don't recall ever having said it's 100% absolutely spot on perfect. Perhaps you should try it, and make your own mind up, rather than choosing to listen to others? It can't be that much of a push for you to spend £6.50 on a decent meal one night. Seriously, I - and i'm sure others - would dearly love to hear what you think of it, that's you, yourself, Monsta, after all. In fact, lets all have a whip round and pay for Monsta to have a meal there.....

Of course, what you really mean is 'at last, someone who didn't like it'. Went there for there new menu last week, £6.50 for a choice of bloody good food that puts the Ridge carvery to shame. £6.50 - that's a couple of quid more than a donner. Ms Hair - did you tell them you weren't satisfied, or did you just walk away and leave it at that? If the latter, why? If the former, what was the response (that, Monsta, would be a 'real review....')

Er, no, it means he's still Prime Minister.

Must say, not often I find myself on the same side of the debate as Monsta! (no disrespect intended, of course!!)

Fair enough, with one concession........ This is a misunderstanding, and one widely proliferated by typically innacurate wikipedia article that i suspect you've accessed. Those five countries are the ones who openly ADMIT to having built their own nuclear weaponry, yet there are numeous others that are well known to have not only the capability to do so, but in some cases are believed to have done so. India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel - as you mention - are known factors, and Iran, Syria, Japan, a number of the middle east countries and a handful of others are widely believed to have nuclear capability. Furthermore, many countries are home to nuclear weaponry in good order - the former Russian states (the Soviet Union no longer exists) being notable as not only did many f the weapons stay in their bases upon the break up of the Union but their is a well known quite alarming discrepancy between the number of warheads that were around at that time and those that exist now (in other words, quite a large number have 'gone missing'). One other thing I will say is that your last line about free speech is interesting, and while it may well be in no way down to Nuclear Weapons it is certainly down to weapons per se; that nuclear weaponry was in its infancy at the time of the last world war is the reason for that, otherwise we would undoubtedly have been looking at the H-bomb as our saviour from a Nazi regime.

Fair comment. Ok, let me get this straight; if I'm reading this right, you think that we can do without Trident and nuclear deterrents because the USA will come to our rescue? That is what you're saying? That because we are with them in the Oil War they will leap to our defence? The scenario is this: we do away with Trident, North Korea or a.n. other goes apeshit and decides to bomb us as a show of strength, and the USA is our saviour? I'm sorry but if that's what you believe then you clearly ARE looking at the world through rose tinted glasses! The USA wouldn't lift a finger unless it, too, is attacked. Ok, it's very expensive, granted, but then keeping your country safe and protected is never going to be cheap. I understand your reasoning that the money could be - in your eyes - better spent elsewhere, but that misses the point that if xyz party does scrap Trident they aren't going to spend that money - it will be an example of 'spending cuts' hailed to show how economical the new leaders are being. I can only say I disagree with you in that it's great to have a country that we wish to strive to improve, but I'm happy to pay my bit to make it one that future generations can strive to improve with a reduced threat of being blasted from the face of the earth by some mad idiot.

As it clearly concerns you - being bombed, that is - surely you can see that having the ability to retaliate means you can, in fact, sleep easier? I'm not sure that you're being consistent here; on the one hand you say you can see the arguments for having Trident, on the other you are convinced it's a waste of money. Granted, it's very pricey, as is anything designed to protect an entire nation, but surely the portion of our taxes that goes to the defence budget is something we should be happy to contribute to? I agree, it's of little use in Iraq and Afganistan but that's a moot point as, like you I suspect, I don't believe we should be there. The point is this: there are mad tyrants in the world who are gaining in power - look to Korea, for example, for the first signs of instability - and who, like many have gone before, may well have delusions of world domination. It's always been like this - we are not, in any way, one big, happy family of nations all existing in the perfect harmony of an aged Blue Mink hit. Say one of those tyrants decides he fancies unleashing his firepower on a country that would show his might; if he knows they would simply wipe him out in a retaliatory attack, he's much, much less likely to do so. He'll choose someone who can't retaliate. Get rid of Trident, and the resultant vulnerability you leave the county open to is worth far more to thers than the price we pay for a deterrent.

Before we start messing with the voting system we have to get more than six out of ten people to vote.

You've answered your own original question there; we don't want to get bombed, and neither does anyone else, hence having an effective deterrent such as Trident means we are much less likely to. That's why we have it, and must continue to do so.

With respect, this is a scary post. We need a deterrent that is enough of a threat to keep people worried. There are some very unstable regimes in the world right now that should not be underestimated.

Love old steam trains! Where will I be able to see it then?

Not racist at all, no matter who it's asked by. How many unemployed? How many work for the civil service? How many use the X31 everyday? How many were born outside the UK?

This is a serious question, not one meant to be inflammatory at all, but how many immigrants are there in Bedlington?

Sounds like a load of !*!@# to me; Merlin's mate must have misunderstood something somewhere. Think about it - unless the job centre bods say this to everyone who goes in for the interview then that means there's a bag load of jobs that never get filled. I have never had this question asked in all my time going there in the past, and from a quick question to those i've just spent the morning with - some of whom are still going there, two of whom have recently had such an interview, they weren't asked the question either. Surely, also, they would have the interviewees details in front of them, on computer? Indeed, I remember my address and postcode being part of the security questions asked! There's a rabbit away somewhere.

Mobius, Nothing wrong with what you are saying at all; my problem - in response to cympil and others - is not that I believe our politicians are a whiter than white biunch of honest men who are going to, somehow, turn this mess around, but that not voting because 'it won't make any difference' is actually the thing that is making the biggest difference! Do those proclaiming complete and utter apathy at the thought of voting realise what the turn out was at the last election, i.e. what proportion of people with a vote actually bothered to use it? For the record, it was just over 60% (not as bad as the previous one where it was just under 60%....). That translates as this - and i'm not being facetious in outlining something so simple: out of ten people who can vote only six bother to do so. Think what a difference there may be to the results if that remaining, and they are the 'i'm not bothering to vote because it won't make a difference' crew, actually cast a vote; presumably they are not happy with their lot, as it is primarily they you read on forums such as this spouting off about what a bunch of !*!@# our MP's are (not something i'm going to dispute) and how they are doing a really !*!@# job. If they are not happy with their lot, they have the opportunity to actually do somethign about it; granted, nothing is going to happen overnight, but being utterly complacent and choosing not to vote is not the answer to anything - short or long term. This isn't a minor portion of the population we're talking about, it's 40% of them! The thing is, Cympil, you may come back with your 'I told you so' line as things get worse, but what have you achieved? The pride in knowing that there isn't going to be an instant revolution? We all know that - it doesn't make you special! Further, you will have no right blaming anyone for voting for someone as those who did vote were at least deserving of your help, and you didn't give it! If you have a vote use it, if you don't use it keep it zipped when you don't like what happens at the next t budget; me, I'll be ranting rightfully about the actions of a party that I voted for and didn't keep their promise, or one that i didn't vote for and aim to get rid of.

This is the most ridiculous sentence that anyone can possibly write in relation to an upcoming general election. If you don't vote you are allowing others to determine the outcome - you cannot then rant on as you have been on here if you have had no say in the process. Why do you think we get a vote? Do you think it is our God given right to live in a country that elects its political leaders this way? Or perhaps it was something that people actually fought for, and that we should respect? The sentence quoted is absolutely and intrinsically wrong - any person with any sense makes it their duty to vote, for that's the only way you stand any chance of getting things changed. Merlin - why should you vote against those in power? If you have to ask that question you're as much a clown - with due respect - as those you are complaining about; the very fact you're complaining about them is your answer. If you don't like what you have, you don't accept it without trying something different. I hope, after the election, there are no tirades of complaints from those who choose not to vote, as in doing so you choose nto to have a voice at all.