Saturday (I don't want to blog about politics) night

The Sierra is dead! Long live the Clio!

Mrs Buckos Sierra XR4i has failed it's MOT to a spectacular degree. The fail sheet was three pages long. Here's a taster of some of the bits that need replacing:

Brake discs, pads, callipers and hoses, both sides
Fuel lines
Suspension bushes and steering rack
CV joints and track rod ends, both sides.
Both number plates??
Both sills and seatbelt anchorage points

The chap who did the MOT was someone we know well, so I dread to think what would have happened if we took it to a random garage. They probably wouldn't have let us drive it away.

Apart from the welding, I could have done the work myself over summer, but as we need to be running two cars for work, it had to go. Mrs Bucko managed to swap it for a Renault Clio with tax and MOT, so fortunately we didn't have to shell out any money at all, which is good because my MOT is due next month.

The only problem is, Mrs B has had to go from a nice, rare 2 litre Sierra to a poxy Clio and she isn't liking it.

It's got the pulling power of a well whipped mule, and you would get better acceleration if you got out and pushed.

Renault Clio

It's 1.4 litre engine is about .6 of a litre shy of anything useful. If you put your foot down it just makes a lot more noise.

I does have one big advantage over cars with real engines though. The fuel costs are going to be very economical as it runs on cheese. This is a picture of the engine taken earlier today:

1.4 litre mouse power

The mouse turns the wheel that turns the crankshaft. Every 50 miles or so, you have to stop and feed the mouse. Being a French mouse it prefers Brie or some other soft cheese, although I'm reliably informed that you can run it on Sainsburys basics cheddar with little noticeable difference to performance.

The mouse needs changing every 10,000 miles. Cheap technology that only the French could invent.

This car was definitely built with A-B people in mind. It's a hairdressers car. I'll have to watch Mrs Bucko because she's liable to start some kind of mobile hairdressing or gel nails service if she runs this thing for too long.

Not only does it lack any kind of satisfactory performance, it's an ugly little bugger too. Short and stumpy with silly little froggy headlights. There's no room inside and no comfort. I like a car you can stretch out and relax in. Driving this vehicle could easily be compared to flying by Ryanair.

So to sum up, I don't like the Clio.

Hopefully she will get a few hundred quid for it that she can put towards another petrol guzzling lump that will have the enviroloonies lamenting and rending their garments. That's the only way to drive.

Bored!

Mrs Bucko is visiting friends and I have some spare time on my hands so I'm relaxing with a film for an hour or two. I'm also looking at a few blogs as I seem to need two screens in front of me rather than one these days.

The film is called "Countdown to Looking Glass". I've never seen it before but it's supposed to be an eighties film about a coming nuclear armageddon done through newsreel footage. I'm only about twenty minutes in, but so far the build up has included a banking crisis caused by defaulting countries, uprisings in the Middle East and American troops in Iran and Saudi Arabia. Chillingly predictive so far. Anybody seen it?

I have to take Mrs Bucko out this evening for Valentines Day. She wants the opportunity to dress up like a girl because she spends the week driving fork lift trucks and working in a warehouse with a bunch of blokes. I have no plans so far, and I can't think of anything we haven't done before. Suggestions would be appreciated. I am on a budget though because we spent all our money on tobacco and cigars in Belgium last weekend.

Mrs Bucko is a bit depressed this weekend so not only is it Valentines Day tonight, but I have to try and lift her spirits a bit too. She had to get rid of her dream car, the Sierra XR4i she has been driving for the past eight months or so.

We took it for it's MOT last Friday. We were expecting quite a bit of work including 2 new sills, a new CV boot, horn, indicator stalk and exhaust. It was a lot worse than that. The fail sheet was three pages long and the estimate for the work was a minimum of £800. Most of it was mechanical stuff that I could have sorted over time. If we didn't need to run two cars for work I would probably have had a go at it.

She managed to swap the car for a Renault Clio with MOT and tax. The guy she swapped it with is a mechanic who will either do it up or break it for parts. She hates the Clio but did it because she needs to run a car until she can save up for another beast.

My car is also due it's MOT next month. Hopefully that won't be as bad. It's a Seat Cordoba that we bought of ebay four years ago for £220. It was Mrs Buckos at first, then I took it on when she bought the Sierra. We keep piling the miles on it and it just keeps going. So far it's up to 187k. That's a lot for any engine but it says something for German engineering.

It's about time I bought something new though. Like Mrs B, I'm no fan of bog standard cars that have no character. I really want an old Jag XJS but the budget won't stretch that far for a while. My brother in law has a tasty convertible Escort and I'm trying to convince him to sell it to me. No luck so far.

One of the reasons I want to retire to Greece is the abundance of eighties vehicles on the road. Cars don't rust quite as fast in that climate, but with the more relaxed rules on MOTs, people aren't constantly scrapping them. I once saw a car in Greece that had it's windscreen held on with parcel tape!

I've just started planting seeds for this years bumper harvest of veg and stuff. I didn't do too badly last year and I'm hoping to do much better this time around. My turnips are sprouting already. I'm also going to have another go at growing my own bacci. I tried last year but it was a total washout. Other bloggers have had much better success and I've managed to pick up some tips for this year. Does anyone have any tobacco seeds to give away? I can pay postage.

Well the film is nearly over now so I think I'll have a bath. Not because I pong but because I can't think of anything else to do.

Catch you later Bill and Ted.

Friday night Moose music - Soul night!

Free entry (Dress code applies)





















I feel good! Another ciggy and a beer, I'll feel even better.

NHS malpractice costs more than smoking

Government accounts show 'gobsmacking' costs

Estimates showing £10.9bn in unpaid tax was written off and medical negligence could cost £15.7bn are "gobsmacking", says the Commons spending watchdog.

The ten billion in unpaid tax I am fine with. The Government wastes the bulk of tax it receives anyway, so the less they get the better.

It was the fifteen billion for medical negligence that caught my eye.

This BBC article from 2009 puts the cost of smoking on the NHS at five billion. ASH have gone as far as to estimate the cost at thirteen billion, although by doing so they suggest that every citizen has the moral obligation to live as long as possible in order to keep working.

There is no report I have seen, scientific or nonsense, that puts the cost higher than this estimate on medical negligence.

Maybe those people who think the NHS shouldn't be spending any money treating people should take a look at the treaters rather than the treatees. If the NHS got it's act together it could save a lot more money than persecuting smokers has ever done.

Smoker hatred gives a large chunk of the treasury's assets to single issue groups made up of the otherwise unemployable though.

Usless product of the week

In a consumerist society where people are hell bent on buying crap that they don't need and cant afford, companies are always trying to invent the next must have item.

Sometimes they are successful and get customers queueing through the night to buy the next model of a mobile phone; people who have probably forgotten how to use the things to make a simple call. Occasionally they will stumble across a really useful invention that actually enhances peoples lives, although the creation of the paperclip, microwave oven, Sinclair C5 and velcro all came about in a different economy to the one we have now.

Most of the time they just invent bollocks. Like this.

Description:

USB interface
Supports USB 2.0/1.1
Plug and play
No driver required
Connect these slippers to your PC or laptop USB port and your feet will be quickly wamred by the internal heating pad
Slipper contains a warming pad that operates on safe and reliable 5 volt USB power
Just slide these slippers on your freezing feet, plug them into a USB port on your computer, and your feet will suddenly become
Super nice and toasty!
The cord is nice and long, so you'll still be able to dance around your work area, and the front of the slippers can even become detached so you can run to the bathroom or get a snack without removing your feet from these wonderful heated cocoons!

USB heated slippers. Have I seen it all now? I think so.

Bacci, Belgium, beer, blogging and other stuff that begins with B

Went to Belgium at the weekend on another bacci run with Pat Nurse. That's partly the reason why things have been so quiet on this blog for the beginning of the week. That and I've got some unexpected time off work. I've had to book my last remaining days before starting my new job on Monday, so I've been using the time to do a bit of DIY around Moose Meadows.

I love these bacci cruises, although this is only the second one I've been on, I hope there's many more. It's not only the opportunity to stock up on cheap tobacco (cigars in my case, bacci in Mrs Buckos) and stick it to the British Government and Nu Puritans who think punitive taxes will stop us smoking, it's also a great opportunity to meet up with like minded people who we only normally speak to on the internet.

I love talking with Pat about the smoking ban and related stuff. I know many people who are strongly against the ban, but Pat is by far the most passionate.

She pointed out while we were waiting to leave the boat back in England, that none of the people leaving were taking back stacks of booze with them. Beer is cheap enough over here (for now), most people on that trip were bringing back tabacco by the boatload *ahem*.

In how many other trades can you open a specialised shop and have regular boat loads of people come from another country to spend £1000 a time there? None.

That money should really be staying in the British economy. Some say the powers that be are too stupid to realise this. They aren't. They will solve the problem and keep the money over here eventually through tax harmonisation. Unfortuantely this doesn't mean lowering British taxes to match Europe, it means raising European taxes to match ours.

It won't stop there either. Minimum alcohol prices and fat taxes are not far off.

In a few years time the entire western world will be paying through the nose for all the things they enjoy. This is supposed to be progress.

Everyone who values their own freedom needs to do what they can to oppose this, acively or passively, just in any way they can. Fat people can't afford to dislike smokers, smokers can't afford to dislike drinkers. We're all the same. We cannot fight amongst ourselves, we need to stand together to fight the new Nazis.

If we can't do that then we haven't learned a thing.