Fords Wreaked when Barn Blows down

My mate got he's lock up broken into last year and some kids nicked he's collection of fully restored Vespas and Lambrettas took them over the park and made a bonfire out of them 'just for a laugh'. There were six scooters in total. insurance paid out £16,000 BUT that didn't make up for the 20 years it took to do them. I was told that the kids were found and delt with.

Turned sour? How so?

Also its interesting with the "storms will only get worse" comment (I can't be arzed to scan back and see who made it) that there was a prog on Radio 4 recently and they were discussing how we percieve how or weather is getting more violent when its not. In the early - mid 20th century for example we regularly had really severe storms. My dad was nearly killed in Bradford in the early 50s in one fo the Hurricanes which trashed that city good and proper. He saw a trolley bus blown over and him and a couple of his mates litterally had to hold on to a lamp post for their lives. Something like a dozen people died that day. My parents remember it being a regular occurance that shops were boarded up during the winter because of the risk of the big plate glass windows getting blown out by high winds and the debris beign ripped around by them. There was a hugge hurriccae which killed about 90 people hit the South East IIRC not long after the San Francisco Earthquake so 1910 or so. People were saying it was the end of the world then, hurricanes in England, Earthquakes in the US and there werea couple of big volcanos blew round that time as well.

Wow, terrible shame. Insurance can never make up for the loss of that sort of stuff.

Last week my boss had to visit a local airfield hangar where the doors blew into the building and trashed the planes stored inside. Winds then got in and popped the roof (you get suction on outside of roofs, if there's a large opening you then get +ve pressure inside making it worse), so they then got peppered with debris from the roof sheeting. Was doing drawings for repair work on it yesterday.

About 12 years ago Datman had cars stored in a barn on which the roof collapsed. His rather nice 180B ended up getting a new roof and much other work.

Youre right. In 1953 there was a huge storm, causing a tidal wave that started at the North East and ended up completely flooding Canvey Island down here in the South East. Hundreds of people died. If that happened now everyone would scream about global warming being to blame but not then.

Sorry, we wont do it again.....promise

Just out of interest, seeing as the turnover of threads on here is pretty high, is it that bad if one of them gets derailed into a global warming debate, it would probably only vanish to about 10 pages back, never to be seen again before long anyway so I wouldnt have thought it could do that much harm to discuss something that could end up forcing these old motors of ours off the road in the not too distant?

This is the only forum I`ve ever been registered on so I`m not that well up on whats done and not done.

Oh don't get a Pruis! That just fools you into thinking you are being good to the environment, ignoring all the battery acid, plastics and manufacturing hours that have gone into making such a "green" car that is only as efficient as a modern diesel anyway!

Stick to the old machines and ignore the hype.

I'm not about to start feeling guilty about the MPG or emissions of any of my cars.

Cars do not pose a great threat to the environment - consumerism does. Consumer based capitalism if you prefer.

The problem is that all the "products" we buy (like ally good happy little consumers should) have to be manufactured, which means raw materials need to be mined/quarried/harvested/etc. then these are transported, then they are manufactured into goods, then packaged, then trasported, then sold, then transported again, used then discarded, thansported, recycled or landfilled and possibly tranported again...

The energy used actually operating a "product" is seldom significant comparted to the energy and polution and use of natural resources involved in its manufcature, distribution and disposal.

Now I'm sure that many members of this forum are like me, natural born scavengers, but the vast majority of people (look at your workmates, family, etc.) are in the cycle of fashionable purchase and disposal. Perfectly good "products" are disposed of simply because they are out of fashion or demed obsolete. I forget the numbers but in the lead up to the world cup British households dumped more TV sets than you could possibly imagine in order to replace them with larger flat screen ones to watch the footie on. I know people (not just girls!) who have bought clothes and never even worn them and thrown them away. With all these home makeover shows on TV interior decor is more than ever a fashion item and you have to buy new furniture and all the gubbins every couple of years to stay up with the trends...

There is enough "stuff" in the world for everyone. We don;t need new stuff. But we (as a society) want new stuff so we keep buying new stuff without any thought to where it comes from or what happens to all the old stuff we took down the tip. And whats worse is that our economy demands that this is what we do. We are no longer set up as a nation to repair anything. Everything is disposable white goods. You buy it, then once the interest free credit is done it is no longer what you want so you throw away perfectly good stuff to replace it.

Thats how come tips make so much money! Most of the stuff down there works!

OK we can devise more energy efficient ways to manufacture, transport and recycle. We can devise new "goods" with lower energy requirements and greater recyclable content. But we are far better just sticking with the stuff we already have....

Wrile this is going on who gives a stuff what I drive. I make the effort to live close to work and reuse, repair, recycle. Until the environment is actually addressed seriously and wholisticly then its all just political bandwagon jumping and thats all it is.

People will use whatever the weather is doing to justify their own viewpoint. More storms, less storms, hotter eather, colder weather... it all "proves" that what whoever is speaking is sayig is right... Nope, it just proves that we have weather and it changes.

Spot on alistair, my point entirely (that i have not made in this thread). waste is the enemy, not the humble motorcar!