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First_Lexus

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  1. I am absolutely not condoning violence of any sort, but people need to be careful these days as the person they are abusing may well have a shorter fuse than they. It just isn’t worth it, the world has gone mad. Back in the 1980s, an elderly relative of mine - now sadly long passed - was being abused by a Porsche driving ‘Yuppie’ following a ‘road rage’ incident. At traffic lights the (young) Porsche driver decided to get out of his car and abuse my relative. Unfortunately for him, the elderly gent in a Volvo he was shouting out was a former WW2 Commando. He’d been there, seen horrible things and done horrible things (we assume). Never spoke about it though. With seatbelt unfastened, the Volvo door was opened - hard - into young abusers face. That was swiftly followed by a couple of punches. He learned a lesson that day, via a broken jaw and several lost teeth. Don’t assume the ‘old guy’ is just going to take it. The story goes that a taxi driver (this was London) and a couple of other bystanders had to pull him away forcefully before the police arrived. The red mist had descended, not a side of him I ever saw as a youngster. Charges were never pressed. Different times, but the police on arrival (I’m told) essentially took the position that ‘Yuppie boy’ started it and got what he deserved… Like I said, be careful. You just never know who the other party is…
  2. Just for interest…no Lexus models in this Top Ten at least! BTW love the Evoque shown being a Nissan Juke and the Range Rover Sport showing the burning car park at Luton Airport…😆
  3. The trouble is that the Lexus CANBUS vulnerability is worse than other manufacturers (apart from JLR). I won’t commit to another Lexus without knowing it isn’t as vulnerable as my current RX - and I think the LBX ought to be ok as the new RX and NX are fixed, but want the assurance…
  4. I’m there, looks great and would suit me very nicely…as long as it doesn’t have CANBUS theft vulnerability. One assumes like the new NX and RX it doesn’t, but does anybody know for certain?
  5. ^^ Or good broadband if signal is patchy using wi-fi calling… ^^ I tell youngsters that when I was growing up, lots of areas were yet to have ‘direct dial.’ Family in London we could call direct, but those in more rural areas we still had to pick up the receiver, tap the buttons to connect to an operator, and ask for a line to the location before dialling the three or four digit number. Good times…and yes, I do miss them regardless of how much simpler technology makes things. Somehow speaking to the operator was more civilised…
  6. I moved into a new build property in 2021, and they don’t fit landline sockets or wire for the landline network any more. I thought I’d miss it, but with fibre broadband and unlimited mobile calls (connected via wi-fi calling when at home) I don’t miss the landline at all!
  7. Kier Starmer wins the General Election, but with a large proportion of seats won with a majority of 5,000 votes or less, he’ll struggle to hold the party together as the left try to re-assert control. Jeremy Corbyn supporters wait excitedly for their moment. There will continue to be political scandals, regardless of which party is in power. With a Labour Government the smart money is on Emily Thornberry doing something dodgy, but it could be any of the rascals in Parliament. The Conservatives will have their ‘Michael Foot’ moment and turn to Liz Truss, ensuring that almost regardless of what Labour do in office, they’ll remain a more credible option. In the US, the Republican Party will finally realise that almost anybody other than Donald Trump can beat Joe Biden. Kermit the Frog wins the nomination, and a landslide victory, becoming only the third muppet to become President. Donald Trump sentenced to prison time. The BBC will continue to make ‘progressive’ programmes to appeal to ‘Gen Z’ failing to realise that Gen Z don’t actually watch television. The people who actually still watch the BBC, and who the BBC despises, continue to give up paying the licence fee, and BBC output and funding becomes a political crisis. Boris Johnson launches a surprise TV career in the remake of the Pink Panther, playing a brilliant Clouseau. He ends the year with an Oscar nomination. People continue to argue online about the EU referendum result in 2016, but to everybody’s surprise everybody on every side decides to ‘agree to disagree’ and move on. A new Bank Holiday is declared in celebration, but arguments restart over whether to call it ‘Farage Day’ or ‘Delors Day.’ The nation sighs wearily… There will be an uneasy peace brokered for Gaza, but no long term solution (after all, why would we expect an easy solution after a couple of thousand years?). The war in Ukraine will rumble on, largely ignored by the Western Powers who have now lost interest. However, Vladimir Putin also loses interest, and in a shock move starts a TV career in the remake of Kojak. He ends the year as a beloved entertainer with a Golden Globe nomination. There will continue to be an absence of genuine good news, mainly because any actual good news is dismissed in the toxic echo chamber that political and economic discourse has now become. Electric car sales will continue to stall, leading to increasing price reductions and finance offers to encourage motorists to switch. Labour’s ‘green industrial revolution’ becomes a mid-term crisis for Kier Starmer, leading to his resignation following details of funding provided to the party by ‘interested parties.’ Angela Rayner takes over as leader. Voters decide perhaps Liz Truss wasn’t all bad… Sadiq Khan loses the London Mayoral election, and tries to mimic Donald Trump by declaring the election void and London a new republic under his leadership. Nobody outside of the M25 notices, and satisfaction levels in the rest of the country increase with London gone… Happy New Year!
  8. Three ways for me. Most of the time I listen to the DAB radio built into the car. Alternatively I use Apple CarPlay to access my Spotify account and playlists. Lastly I still load CDs and listen to those if I just want to hear one album (find it easier than Spotify in that situation if I already have the CD, and I’ve got over 1000 so I do have most that I want to hear!)
  9. I too have never heard of Zen, but according to their website checker they don’t cover this part of Berkshire near Reading. Very odd! I’ve been with Sky for a few years and have always found them exceptional, really impressive. When my internet router broke earlier in the year they did a rapid assessment and then sent a replacement by courier. Issue reported about 19.00 on a Saturday evening, replacement router delivered on Sunday. Tbh I never had an issue with BT or TalkTalk (I was with both over the years). The only issue I had was with PlusNet who really were the worst organisation I’ve ever dealt with. Broken promises and non-existent customer services (despite the ‘cheery Northerner’ adverts). I had a battle with them lasting a year for compensation based on their breach of their terms and conditions. Often they simply didn’t reply to letters, claiming they could only deal with issues by telephone (an outright lie). In the end a friend who happens to work as a journalist for a national newspaper (ahem) started investigating the story and hey presto - one telephone call from her to their PR team and I had compensation in full with an apology and further ‘goodwill’ payment as ‘their service hadn’t met their usual standard.’ Yeah, right. Just a bunch of cowboys in my experience.
  10. Indeed, Shaw’s point was (we assume) that we don’t take advantage of the benefits of youth until it’s too late and by then we know better not to waste such opportunities…
  11. “Youth is wasted on the young. They’re brainless, and don't know what they have; they squander every opportunity of being young, on being young.” George Bernard-Shaw Seemed somehow appropriate… 😆
  12. This is how I feel too. Every debate, whether about politics or gender or anything else has to be binary, i.e. there has to be a ‘correct’ answer, and anybody not in tune with ‘the message’ is somehow evil just for holding a different opinion. Conflating opinion and fact has, as you say, become endemic. I’ve said before on these pages, many years ago a very senior Civil Servant gave me advice that has stuck with me; “Never present an opinion as a fact, as others will think you a fool.” For the avoidance of doubt, and in order to maintain some balance, I should also say that those who trumpet ‘free speech’ as a way of promulgating hideous views also have no place in society - or at least don’t deserve a platform to spread hate. My issue is that I’m not sure where the dividing lines are now, or what the rules are (assuming there are rules!) As a liberal, the thought of causing offence to somebody makes me uneasy, but also as a liberal I feel I have the right to my opinions. In the US, student activists have thrown red paint over the Lincoln Memorial, and other memorials and statues to him, ostensibly because he once owned slaves and prosecuted war and land theft from the Native Americans. This is problematic. By all means teach the whole person, stress that not everything he did or believed was right (by our modern standards, there’s that context again) but please don’t seek to CANCEL him entirely, that’s madness. Churchill is similar in a UK context. Yes, he held problematic views by our standards, and those should be understood and taught appropriately. However, the obsession with a message of ‘Churchill bad’ ignoring undeniable examples of ‘Churchill good’ is academically poor practice. That is where we’re headed though I’m sorry to say… I said earlier that I don’t know what the rules are any more. The best example I can think of comes from early years (primary) education. The Roman Empire is still taught - generally - as a force for good and civilisation in a style I recognise from my own childhood in the 1970s. Roman slavery is taught as a bad thing - often using the “how would you have felt as a slave” perspective - but it very much takes a back seat in the learning. Compare and contrast with teaching about the British Empire at the same ages and older. Fascinating…
  13. I’ve moaned about the state of education in this country previously, and you’ve hit one particular nail fairly and squarely on the head there! Speaking with my extended family, and interacting with youngsters through volunteering at my former University, I see one aspect missing these days - context. There seems to be a move towards a single ‘correct’ or ‘valid’ message, from which nobody should deviate. Teaching Elizabeth I simply with lots of references to the evils of colonisation and empire, or Henry VIII as a misogynist tyrant, the Great War trivialised as ‘lions led by donkeys’ and ‘unnecessary slaughter’ - I could go on. Nowhere does there seem to be any appreciation of the context of the times, the simple truth that thought and belief was alien to how we think now. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t teach the evils of the past, far from it. But, and it’s a big but, we need to give our children the appreciation that things have changed and will continue to change, and that reflecting our values onto history is at best problematic and at worst just lazy and ineffective teaching. I appreciate I’m going back some years, but our school made us - MADE US - debate and argue points of view with which we didn’t agree, simply so we could try and appreciate other viewpoints, and that there WERE other views than those we considered to be the consensus of the time.
  14. I’m with you! Have never owned a sports car, but… Vanden Plas 1500 (posh Allegro); Lada Riva 1200L, Rover Metro 1.1C, Mini Clubman 998cc automatic, Mini Mayfair 998cc automatic, Hyundai Accent (it was the 1500 GSi though. Does that count as sporty?) I’ll stop there…😇😅
  15. My NX had a new screen because of a similar big crack after a stone hit - first one I’d needed in years too!
  16. Perhaps. But the equipment isn’t my biggest issue. The drive really is good (ride quality excepted), but the general decline in interior quality combined with the big screen mean it’s a no from me. Hard plastics on the front door tops? Really? For £70k?! Just my opinion, obviously.
  17. My two year old RX 450h is having its second service today, and as a courtesy car I have the new model RX 350h Premium. Interesting to drive them back to back and compare. What do I like about the new RX? - it feels far more nimble to drive, and noticeably sharper than the previous model RX - performance is strong. I’d worried about the drop in engine capacity and the added turbocharger, but I couldn’t notice much difference in performance, if any. Unfortunately that’s about all I am positive about! - styling - which I know is subjective - doesn’t do it for me. The colour I’ve been given doesn’t help, being Sonic Copper which I don’t think suits the car at all. The rear quarter view is dumpy and, to me, has more than a hint of Maxi/Allegro about it! Yes, really…and the front view is just ugly. - ride quality. The drive is sharper, but the trade-off is ride comfort. On the exact same roads it was noticeably jittery in comparison, and I much prefer a softer ride - quality. To me, it feels as though interior quality has declined. Some of the plastics don’t do a car of this price justice imho, and certainly feels like a step backwards. Also, why remove things like proper door handles (seems like the answer to a question nobody asked) and kickplates on the rear door sills etc. The column stalks feel cheaper too. I guess weight saving is at the heart of this, but again given the price I’m underwhelmed! - tech. I just don’t like the big central screen being something of a Luddite. Yes, I’d get used to that, but I don’t want to! - equipment. Given the price increase over my current RX, I’m surprised to see no glass roof, no HUD etc. It is well equipped but the comparison given the price difference doesn’t sit well with me. Don't get me wrong, it’s a good car. I do like it. Problem is, I don’t like it as much as the previous model…
  18. I think the local bank manager had to tread a fine line though. I remember my Father telling me about the manager of the Midland Bank in the town where I grew up, who had quite the reputation aka Cpt. Mainwairing in Dad’s Army. At some point, I assume in the 1950s or early 1960s he upset one of the local business owners once too often. It turned out that said businessman knew somebody high up at Midland ‘Head Office’ - probably Freemasons, Rotarians or similar as was the fashion back then. The Bank Manager pretty much vanished overnight and was replaced by a much younger and more modern chap…ironically my Father (who had his account there) never got on with the new guy, and shortly afterwards left Midland never to return. There was an episode of Dad’s Army when Sgt. Wilson got his own branch - briefly before it was bombed - mainly through his public school education and connections which were from the ‘Upper Classes’ rather than Mainwairing with his Grammar School and aspirational ‘middle class’ background. Every time we watched that episode (my Father lived with me in later life when he wasn’t in good health) the story about the manager of the Midland bank would be told…😂
  19. Hard to imagine what the youngsters of today will be saying in fifty years time… “…I remember when we didn’t have these computer chips put into our brains at birth, and we used to actually hold a separate device…” Let’s hope they’re not saying; ”…I remember the days before the war / asteroid / pestilence (delete depending on level of pessimism) when we had devices that would do all sorts of things for us. Now go and hunt squirrels if you want to eat tonight.” Remain indoors.
  20. Still mulling a sensible downsize from my RX next year, I’ve now decided on a shortlist of a Toyota Corolla Excel, Mazda 3 Takumi and…erm…I included the BMW 1-Series due the reviews, and never having owned a BMW. Prices of all three when specified to the same level are within a few pounds of one another, with the Mazda cheapest. What I can’t understand are the reviews noting how wonderful the BMW cabin is, both in terms of design and quality. What Car? even notes that while the Corolla interior is very good, it can’t match the quality of the BMW… …I must be looking at different things. Both the Mazda and Toyota appear far better made to me. I specifically looked at cars on the forecourt that were 1-2 years old, and the BMW doesn’t wear miles well whereas the Japanese (Toyota built on British soil) pair are just superior.
  21. I feel the same sometimes. It’s a funny thing, age. When I first started work - no mobile telephones, only a few big desktop computers - I worked with senior managers who I considered ‘old.’ They were actually about the age I am now. They lamented the decline in Britain’s global standing, the change in etiquette and standards, we’re appalled by long hair and as for removing formal dress (and I mean three-piece suits) in the office, it was like the world was ending! They found new technology scary and threatening. I thought they were out of touch and that I knew it all… …fast forward and I now know only too well how they felt. I don’t do much online, I also lament Britain’s (continued) global decline, I don’t like home working much, and as for the move from business dress in the office to no dress code at all…! One of those managers, all those years ago, used to tell youngsters like me - who thought we knew it all - that “…I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know.” Turns out he was right.
  22. This isn’t just affecting EVs as many of us with the 4th Gen RX are painfully aware…😬
  23. I think the stereotype of ‘thick posh children’ going to private school is just that - a stereotype and a cliche. Harry Enfield’s ‘Tim Nicebutdim’ for those with cultural references from the 1990s and ‘Whacko’ with Jimmy Edwards for those of an older vintage. The majority of private schools have an entrance exam - Common Entrance - which is far from simple to pass to get to the better establishments. Many also add in interviews with both prospective students and parents. Worth noting that in the past thirty years many fee paying schools also partner with local state schools to try and raise standards, and almost all offer scholarships to the brightest. Granted, money has a place - but it isn’t a passport to a good school if the child doesn’t have the academic ability. For those students, a less well known and respected private school may offer little benefit over the better state provided options. For me the issue is the approach. Academic rigour and education for its own sake isn’t fashionable in the state sector, perhaps because so many teachers are (with good intentions) left leaning. The result is unintended consequence, essentially a race to the bottom designed to ensure nobody feels left out and that nobody feels in any way superior to anybody else. That isn’t the real world and serves no child well.
  24. Funny thing. Corporal punishment existed when I was at school in the 1970s. The cane was in the Headmaster’s private study. To my knowledge he only used it once - possibly progressive for the time, and it was a deeply traditional school, but he preferred to engage with the children and present positive reasons for us to conform. We all did. Perhaps it was the threat in the background of the cane. I’d prefer to think it was the collegiate style of the Headmaster and his staff who respected us, and we respected them as well as their rules. Even so, I have to post these classics…
  25. I’ve been considering a Hyundai IONIC5 EV. That’s not quite comparable in terms of size or price, but it’s not far off. Like for like insurance quote for that was £375. I fully accept that insurance costs have risen, and that other brands are affected, but none seem to impacted as Range Rover and Lexus as far as I can see, albeit Tesla are having similar issues with price. I bought my RX on a PCP that expires in twelve months. There should be a lot of equity in it, and as I said on another thread I’ll be downsizing. It’s a real struggle tbh as I like the RX so much, but not enough to have that sort of insurance cost. The cost / benefit analysis doesn’t add up for me. I’m only doing 5k miles a year these days, so I may even consider a supermini like a Honda Jazz Crosstar. Something like that has added savings on VED and servicing. I never needed an RX, I only bought it because I could tbh. That itch is scratched, and I can downsize ahead of retirement in 12-18 months time.
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