Big J

It's settled. I'll get it properly valeted next week (for the first time ever), take lots of nice photos and advertise it for a slightly silly price. It's a one off spec, and ideally suited for someone who wants a fast, comfortable runabout with the ability to go off road a bit.

I disagree, for the most part. The problem has always been there, but has been masked by having access to a European labour force. The problem is that we don't have the staff in the UK. Brexit has exposed this.

They just can't find the quality of staff, and the exodus has been rapid. Previously, drivers have been on the £12-13/hr mark, and suddenly they are getting hoovered up by the supermarkets paying £20. Additionally, training forestry lorry drivers isn't a quick task. They have to reach a fairly decent level of competency before letting them loose in the woods with a timber crane. I don't think that this country really has labour force with the work ethic for 44t haulage. We have terrible, overcrowded roads and low wages. Why would anyone do it? I did look into HGV driving in Sweden out of curiosity and their salary is much higher for experienced drivers, as well as the job being far easier for most of the year.

The driver shortage is starting to affect us now too. The main sawmill we supply in Wales is contracting it's operational radius for collecting timber to just Wales and the borders due to having 6 lorries parked up. Not good. Inflation is about to explode in the UK I feel. With shortages of everything (materials and certain staff) and billions of excess currency in circulation, I can see 5% inflation happening within 12 months.

Oooh, two conflicting bits of advice - which one to go with?? 😄

I guess it's a combination of huge demand (big uptick in home deliveries and people going self employed) and lack of production. The perfect storm. We're probably looking at spending a total of £80k on a 300 square metre house, once it's fully renovated. Triple glazed and geothermal heating too.

Good point. It might be worth advertising it at a daft price and if it doesn't sell, no matter, if it does, kerrching. There isn't really anything that I specifically need that particular van for, but if I was to replace the van and Touareg at the same time with a couple of older 4x4 estates (Volvo XC70 for example), I'd liberate about £18k or so. That's almost a third of a house in Sweden 😄 It's mad. I remember struggling to get £8k for my 6 year old Navara in 2017. It ended up going to Nigeria.

I was chatting to the chap at the Citroen garage about the value of my 2 year old Berlingo the other day. I was just curious to see what it's likely value might be in a year. Anyway, it turns out that there is a massive delay for new vehicles, with new Berlingo orders scheduled for a Christmas build and new Dispatch scheduled for March. Consequently, 2nd hand values have shot up, especially for nearly new vans. Looking online, it would appear that my 2 year old , 36k mile Berlingo is worth only a couple of grand less than I payed for it. It's a rare spec with the highest power output and loads and loads of extras. We might be purchasing a house in Sweden in October and all cash is useful. Would you gamble on the prices still being high in 10-12 months time (when I'd otherwise sell it) , or would you sell up now and run an older vehicle until then? How long will the production delays last? Anyone any experience in other related industries? Given that production delays are making life difficult for lots of people in lots of industries, I'm inclined to try to capitalise on what I can.

Had Katie out all day today, with a checkup in the morning at the vets (her heart murmur is improving and generally she's in good shape). I strayed across a nice river swimming spot on the recommendation of a friend on my way home this afternoon. Obviously, she had to come in for a swim too

Fair enough. The battery was around £300 by itself through VW, so that was a fair chunk of the cost.

When you know the weather's about to shaft you....

It really would have been. It's no worse on fuel than a Ranger 3.2TDCI but in standard form puts out more than 60% more power and torque. That said, all these impressive old ICE engines will seem like sluggish, dirty dinosaurs in a few years with the electric takeover. I'm looking forward to 600bhp with the Rivian pickup

Everything is tight, in terms of working space on the V10. A big engine in a normal sized engine bay.

Very much so. The VW book requires the engine to be dropped out but the specialist was able to do it without going to those lengths, saving £400-500.

It wasn't the battery. It's the fitting. It requires the whole passenger seat to be removed, annoyingly. Plus some wiper blades on that visit too 😁

Sold 😎

Ahead of us moving next year, I need to streamline my machinery lineup, and with the possibility of us buying a house in October, I honestly can't justify the presence of the Touareg after that. I'd take it to Sweden, but tax is horrendous on big old diesels. I bought it for occasional heavy towing and as a family vehicle, but in nearly two years, I've only put 10k on it and I've never taken it into the woods other than on a couple of main tracks. I'm too precious with it. It's an outstanding example of a 2006 V10 with 111k at present. I am only the second owner. It had never towed prior to me owning it, and has towed probably only 15-20 times with me. It had a full VW history before me, and has been serviced fully twice in the past two years with a third service to come before it's sold. It's had a new starter motor (£1350 job), new battery (£500 or so) as well as gearbox oil change. It's also been waxoiled, albeit not since Nov 2019. I'm only selling it (and only in October) as it sometimes sits 2-3 weeks between uses. It's an overpowered ornament and would be better off with someone who actually uses it. It's in outstanding cosmetic condition with only a few tiny blemishes. No rust. Make no mistake, it doesn't matter what you hitch up to it, you'll accelerate to silly speeds up any incline in very little time. I get 23mpg as an average bumbling around locally, 29mpg on longer runs and 16-18mpg when heavy towing. 370bhp, 850nm. Probably be about £6k in October, fully serviced.

Almost a quarter of England's pupils out of school WWW.BBC.CO.UK The "pingdemic" continues to affect schools and families with nearly 25% absent as the term ends. This is ridiculous. I know that there is only a week left of term, but they honestly need to sort this out before school resumes in September. It's not only the disruption to the education, but to the working lives of the parents too.

This is most certainly me 😄

They are certainly slimmer and healthier, but the proportion that live in urban settings is actually a little higher than here (86% as opposed to 83% here).

I agree, alongside better (cost free) access to outdoor spaces. It doesn't help that we live in the smallest houses in Europe. It's almost impossible to maintain any social distance with anyone in your typical 3 bed new build.

But why can a country like Sweden go through the pandemic with no masks and have a statistically insignificant death rate and an infection rate much lower than us? I've been twice in the past 9 months and didn't see a single mask on anyone at any time. Their current situation is much better than ours and their overall situation compares favourably too. I don't think that it's as simple as "everyone put on masks and keep 2m distant". In the UK we've been treated like total idiots. We've had all personal responsibility stripped away from us through much of this, and then randomly been given it all back in a rush. Think Eat out to help out and now the 19th of July. Infection rates are going to skyrocket again because there is no happy middle ground where the individual assumes personal responsibility and shows mutual respect. It's government diktat or total personal freedom. I expect that before the schools go back in September that the government will have reimposed restrictions of some description.

I am inclined to agree. I think that the factors having the greatest influence on the spread of covid (and the death rate) don't relate specifically to lockdowns or PPE. Look at the US. They're more or less fully open, have a less compliant public and a lower vaccination rate than us. Then look at Sweden. Totally different approach with minimal social distancing and no PPE at all. Then Germany - harder lockdowns than us and more more militant use of PPE. Here are the current infection rates per 100,000 per week based on the 7 day average: USA: 62.8 Sweden: 15.9 Germany: 10.1 UK: 461.2 But then compare death rates per 100,000: USA: 0.52 Sweden: 0.001 Germany: 0.16 UK: 0.41 What this indicates (in my opinion) is that different approaches don't seem to offer especially different outcomes, that vaccinations make a difference to death rate within a country (compare wave 2 to wave 3 in the UK), but interestingly, in the four countries I've picked, those with the highest vaccination rate have both the highest infection and death rate. I wholeheartedly support vaccination, but I don't think that social distancing by diktat works. I won't be wearing a mask in the UK again and I won't comply with any further restrictions if they are reimposed. We're close to herd immunity and the very high infection rate in the UK is largely asymptomatic or cases of very mild disease. Shutting down a country for what is now less severe than flu (in terms of health outcomes) is nutty.