Big J

If you are going to get into the 40% tax bracket, you want to be a limited company as tax on dividends is 19%.

Plus, you'd probably survive a crash better in your old Landie if you sat astride the bonnet (like a hood ornament) as opposed to being strapped into the vehicle. Whilst they're at it, please can someone up the speed limit on motorways to at least 90mph. ?

It's all very silly really, as it's an arbitrary line drawing exercise where the characteristics of the vehicle have little bearing on the laws applicable to it. For instance, I think my Berlingo, fully loaded, weighs less than a Landrover Discovery 4 empty. Much smaller too, but restricted to lower limits. All daft, if you ask me.

Fair enough. I was under the impression that it was determined by their classification as a commercial vehicle. I'm pretty sure my Berlingo is regarded as a van (not a car derived van) and as such is limited to 50/60/70 technically.

That's the case for all pickups

I don't think it's necessarily just sharpening. It's just the inherent weakness of the system once you get onto longer bars. If you pop a 60 inch plus bar into a chainsaw mill, it will be easy to flex the bar 10mm up and down in the middle with your hand. Given that the forward momentum of the mill means an inevitable fractional forward tilt, the bar will be driven on a slightly downward trajectory. The longer the bar, the greater the flex. The only way I can see around this is a super rid mill frame with a bar tensioning system. An untensioned chainsaw bar of that length is a bit like running a bandsawmill with the tension at half. It'll run flat for a while, unless it hits something challenging and the deflect.

All the cheaper pickups seem to be going two ways. Smaller, weaker engines and more chrome and bling. Particularly the Hilux looks like someone has just glued bits of chrome effect plastic all over it. Looks ridiculous - what is wrong with understated? When you're looking at a machine that has a gross train weight of 7000kg, a 2 litre engine with 150-180bhp seems unwise. I'd much rather spend a bit more for something like an Amarok or an X Class. The X class is to be discontinued by the way.

I think I'd go Amarok. I was a passenger in a V6 a few months ago and it was smooth, fast and quiet. Test drove a 3.2l Ranger and it was slow, uncomfortable and the auto box was terrible. You can uprate the towing capacity to 3.5t on the Amarok with SV Tech.

It's more or less impossible to stop this on bars this length. It makes the cut much, much harder on the operator and machinery. It snaps chains, wears out sprockets rapidly and actually destroyed on almost new MS880 (which thankfully Stihl replaced). Wide cutting with chainsawmills was the final straw and I haven't touched a chainsawmill since. Up to about a 50" bar it's great, but beyond that you get bar sag. What is needed is a bar tensioning system to eliminate this.

What is the felling capacity Eddie?

That hasn't been my experience of Sweden (not to cast aspertions as regards yours). My brother in law lives in Lidköping, about 2 hours north of Gothenburg and it's very nice around there. Lovely countryside, nice houses, friendly people who seems to be happy. I'm happy to be down here in Devon, but just because I'm fairly content and an incomer shouldn't mean that I am prohibited from pointing out what is an obvious flaw in the transport network. I don't buy the charm argument. There is nothing charming about driving down a narrow lane with 10ft high green walls on both sides, never with more than a 50-100m line of sight, constantly having to hover over the brake pedal ready to do an emergency stop. Or having the passenger side of your car scratched to hell as you have to bury the vehicle in the hedge to allow another car to pass. It is logically flawed and no argument about charm, character, history or heritage can override that.

I don't see the correlation between improved infrastructure and negative impacts in terms of urbanisation, population increase and development. I refer back to my earlier comments regarding continental Europe and Scandinavia where they seem to manage to balance this. If you want to point fingers, square them up on the planners, who seem to think that allowing Class Q conversions of barns for rich yuppies who can afford to pay £250k for a ramshackle barn to convert into a swanky pad in the country, whilst making it genuinely hard for working people in rural industry to build their own places........as you say, that's another thread! Scotland's economy is hamstrung by other issues, including geographical distance and remoteness, social issues and land inequality (500 people own more than half of Scotland). Tourism would benefit hugely from improved transport connections. Devon and Cornwall could seamlessly absorb many more people with better infrastructure and the net effect would be that they were less noticed, as traffic jams would be fewer.

I can't wait for electric work vehicles. Just think of the torque!

Is that too much to ask?! ?

Apparently it was too hard to apply for compensation.

a) Productivity is a driver of employment and in order to improve living standards (which are depressed in some parts of the West Country), there needs to be better employment opportunities. Reducing inefficiency improves sustainability. b) I disagree. Population pressure is not the issue in the West Country. 19 century roads are. Almost all modern lorries (which have been the same width for decades) and tractors scarcely fit and the companies that run them are the prime drivers of the economy in the area. I accept that there is a cost, but as I said, just taking one hedge out rather than two would go some say to mitigate this. You highlighted the relative ecological deserts that are modern farms. I've stated before that in the thread about planning that they are almost all unprofitable without subsidy, so in a situation where they are neither ecologically sound or economically sustainable, why is it that we are so protective of farmland? We wouldn't be reduced to relying on hedges for biodiversity if there was a larger forestry industry.

I doubt that increasing the size of the main B roads would have any serious effect on culturally importance or biodiversity. The amount the bankings get hit by cars, they're hardly undisturbed! I'm enjoying this thread though, even if I am yet to hear a convincing argument for retention of narrow lanes and hedges on the more important, strategic roads here. ?

That's a fairly simplistic way of mocking my point of view. Devon has low population density but the landscape is entirely managed, mainly for farming. Its not a natural, utopian wilderness. The dreadful road network can be regarded as a directly contributing factor in the fact that west Devon and Cornwall is regarded as an economically deprived area. Wages are suppressed, living standards lower and poverty more prevalent. I see nothing wrong with wanting to aspire to a system where there isn't needless wastage and inefficiency. The benefits are multifaceted and far reaching. The improvement of infrastructure for those that use it daily does not have to be at the expense of those that use it infrequently and want to maintain that nostalgic charm that they so appreciate when they come here once a year on their holidays....

As I said, I'm under no illusion that the road system will ever improve here, but it doesn't mean that I can't point out that it's stupid. I've driven a fair bit in Germany, Sweden and Poland and the contrast is stark.

That was the original plan but it wasn't workable for us. We should have done it before having kids. Besides, I really enjoy living here, but like anywhere, there are things that get on your nerves. The driving conditions are absolutely bananas. Possibly. I'm not suggesting doing all the residential lanes, but for instance the main road from Cullompton to Tiverton is in many places single track. I've personally twice seen road blocking accidents there. The signage tries to take you up the motorway and then along the A361 but that's 12 miles as opposed to 4. If they just sorted the B roads it would transform the driving experience. Make hauling timber a hell of a lot easier too!

I'm a big believer that the long term viability and sustainability of an economy hinges on good infrastructure. The capability to move goods and people efficiently from points A to B and so on is of crucial importance. The terrain present challenges down here, that is true, but far worse is overcome elsewhere in the world (and done so sympathetically - look at the mountainous areas in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and so on). Devon and Cornwall are empty, but only seem as busy as they are due to the terrible road network. Investing in it would mean that people could move around so much more efficiently, hugely diminishing the liklihood of jams. As I said before, I don't for a second think it'll change, but it doesn't stop me getting frustrated with it. One of my German uncles was over for my brother's wedding near Plymouth last month and he quite bluntly just asked me why they don't widen the roads? That kind of nonsense would never wash in Germany!! ?

Haha! That's crazy talk! ?

I know it would be a huge legislative/legal headache and I don't for a moment think that it would happen, but it would nevertheless be a benefit to the locality. I completely agree that Devon is a beautiful county. I don't regard the bloody hedges as part of that as you can drive for miles without ever getting a glimpse of anything but hedgerows, so deeply recessed are the lanes. It's an expensive endevour, but the economic payback over a reasonable time frame would more than compensate. Possibly, but there is nothing to say that you can't replant the hedges. As I mentioned before, I don't think that the hedges add to the local aesthetic. If anything they mask it.

I disagree. I think that the tight lanes cost the local economy millions every year, as well as needlessly endangering the people traveling on them. Take out one hedge, leave the other, expanding the road to a standard width that will accommodate traffic easily for the next 50 years. Seems sensible to me! Additionally, the tight lanes cause poorer fuel economy. I'm lucky if I get 42-45mpg with the little van in Devon, but I get 56-58mpg in Scotland. So (and these are approximate values) with approximately 468k vehicles in Devon doing 12k a year, that's 5.6 billion miles a year. At at average of 42mpg, thats 133.7m litres. At 52mpg that's 108m litres. As well as a direct cost of £33m to the economy, that's an extra 66000 tonnes of co2 into the atmosphere, which seems like a high environmental cost for the sake of some hedges.

Haha! ? I assume to recommend me to their road upgrade team?