jimbo01

I really like it too. It's refreshing - something different. I'm sick of SUV styling if you want 4WD and a decent ride height. Reviews I've seen rate it. Twin turbo V8 when petrol is the price it is - buying one of these new will be an act of bravery. I hate to think what the depreciation on large capacirty cars is going to be if petrol stays where it is.

Looks OK to me - an improvement on the 2003 model shape. Personally I'm not a big fan of latest BMW designs, although I do like the X6. My ideal BMW would be a late model E39 540i - now that still looks great - a clasic shape.

Good luck. We need good cops, and they need the support of the general public. There have been a few ratbags spoiling the reputation, but it is a few. As a group of people who enjoy BMW's we sometimes err on the wrong side of the speed limit, and if we get caught, thats our fault.

Dude if you are driving on the road and are not "interested and involved" take public transport. UK studies have fingered inattention as their major cause of accidents. Inattentaion is another way of saying uninterested and uninvolved. I checked the NZ stats a few years ago - to my surprise the catergory of "inattention" has relatively few % in it. Apparently "didn't see (the invisble?) other vehicle", or "crossed centre line (for no apparent reason)", and the "vehicle left road" are recorded separately from "Inattention". That's alright I'll stay interested and involved when I'm drivng to make up for the inattentive peole who are actually causing most of the accidents. Others will contine to think (encouraged by stupid adverts) that driving at 100kph magically protects them. Sorry but when that other inattentive driver crosses into your lane you better be awake, you better react in a split second - opps too late.

Last year I watched an episode of the NZ show "Motorway Patrol". On the Auckland motorway, in the wet, a car with serriously bald tyres had rear ended another car. Mr Plod turns his head and anounces, like he actually believes it; "a clear case of excessive speed". And that kiddies is how we get the sorts of stats that suggest speed is the route of all evil. If we had sensible enforcement of speed, people would not percieve a need for radar detectors. Example; if you are passing someone doing 90kph it is far safer to do so quickly at 120kph than try and creep past at 100. The time you spend on the wrong side of the road is massively reduced. However 110 and over and yo are nicked. It's nice to know before you commence to safely overtake that there isn't a cop about. Example; actually giving tickets to people who choose to drive slowly, and hold up traffic. At time I drive slow, for example if one of the kids is feeling unwell on the Rimutaka Hill, I just pull over on the many corners and let any cars go past. It's not hard, just takes a little comman sense and respect for other drivers. And if you have every car on the road wanting to do 100kph, passing a car doing 90kph, you have a huge number of cars spending a hell of a long time on the oposite side of the road. With heavy traffic volumns this gets even worse. I don't want to speed, I want to able to travel at 100kph to 110kph. What I don't want to be is pinged for speeding when i'm safely passing a car. My wifes 1st and only speeding ticket was near National park where she finally passed a truck and trailer after being sprayed in effluence for many kilometers - her crime? doing 114kph - why - so tthe other 4 cars behind her could also have a chance of passing the moving roadsblock on the small passing lane. The defacto speed limit is actually 60kph, where it says 50kph (except outside schools where it is 55kph), and the defacto speed limit for the open road is actually 110kph. Now if the speed limit for an area is deemed to be 50kph for safety reasons, like it's a residential street, allowing someone to go 60kph is just plain stupid, and the same token someone managing 110kph up the Rimutaka hill won't get a ticket unless they cross the centre line, yet they will be on the ragged edge of disaster. Someone doing 110kph on a 2 lane, separated motorway is another case again, they could go 120 and still be safer than our friend not legally speeding up Rimutaka Hill. And if safety is such a concern how come they allow a speed limit of 70kph outside a mahor school in MT Manganui when 40kph is what most commentators say is the maximum spped you can hit a child and expect they have a better chance of living, than dying. And just a couple of weks ago a girl was killed by a logging truck that didn't even notice. Now that stupid - that dangerous, thats a safety issue - but hey 70kph is legal. Enforce the speed limit with zero tolleence where there are safety issues, remember th old "black spot" signs, and initally as part of an orchestrated softening up of the NZ public thats where speed cameras went. "we are only concerned about safety" they said. The black spot signs were replaced with speed camera zone signs, then they took away all the signs and just stuck speed cameras where they wanted. The black spots were a useful reminder to slow down, as were the roadside crosses. If I saw a corner with 5 or 6 crosses - oh yes - I slowed down and paid attention. When i saw a black spot, yep and I focused my attention, as obviously the risk was higher here than on other areas. Yet they have quietly removed all these passive saety reminders. The trouble is many people in NZ beleive the propaganda, perhaps its the flouride in the water, or just living too close to all those sheep. The facts from overseas do not support the blinkered focus on speed. In any cases increased speed limited resulted in fewer accidents. Stricter enforcement and zero tollerance of spped limits, as in Australia has seen some record accident rates in holiday weekend. Statiscial error cry the true beleivers BUT the correlation isn't there. Recent UK studies point the finger firmly at INATTENTION, with speed a much lower factor.

I can't agree - 50kph can be interesting and involving, if it's on a nice twisty bit of road, but driving along trying to sit on no more than 100kph on many of our roads is tedious. The is no arguing that driving over 100kph or other speed limits is illegal, but is it more dangerous than becoming lulled into an inattentive state by the sheer boredom. So this is just me, but I'd rather share the road with 10 attentive speeders, than 1 inattentive moron religiously adhereing to the psoted limit. Exceeding the speed limit by a mild factor on the open toad is not more dangerous if you are alert, involved, slowing appropiately, not taking risks passing in stupid places etc. As they have working out in the UK most of all crashes are some form of inattention, and hey thats my point. However many people who exceed the speed limit are driving like munters, and so rather than asess skill, cars capability etc, it's a lot easier to throw a blanket limit on, one that takes into account the sorry state of our roads, many of the cars, and the apalling driving skill's of many NZ'ers. My current radar detector includes a spped disply that is based on GPS - this allows me to check my speed without taking my eyes off the road - it also compensates for the outlanders invisible bloody speedo (if you are driving in bright daylight with sunglasses on the speedo is in such a dark recessed hole you can't actually see the freakin speedo). On detection - it's almost useless as the cops now turn their radars on to zap you and get a reading - they usually don't leave them on. So if people with radar detectors are speeding they will get caught like anyone else (my last ticket Novemer 06 driving north out of Wiaiouru). What it does mean is that if the cops zap the car in front you have a chance to check your spped and ensure you havn't crept over the limit. I have been done by a cop at the bottem of a steep hill on the western access of taupo, with a nasty steep hill to get up. Empty road other than me and a cop, 115kph, fine day, and no tickets in over 10 years. He asked if I'd had any tickets recently and i said none in over 10 years, which he checked. he then daid "You are right, no tickets, surprising, so heres your reward" and gave me a ticket. The very next week I got a V1 - when that was stollen I got the Escort 9500. The other thing it can alert me to is the cop at the end of a passing lane, so you can forget passing the munter who has just sped up from 80kph to 105kph. Much worse is the mufti cop who is driving about 85 when you can't safely pass then speeding up to just barely under 100kph when you could (November 07 SHW1 north of Tokoroa). Without a radar detector I would have been done for speeding to get past a prick who happens to be a policeman, but shouldn't be one. I especially like having the detector as it warns me that all hell may be about to break loose as the innocent holden SV6 coming the otherway (a mufti cop) pings the guy who just passed me, and decides he can execute a quick turn right in front of me (to the point i have to break to avoid hitting him). This sort of shite has resulted in accidents, 2 late last year, caused by cops attempting to give chase to mildly speeding motorcycles. Or the roadwork signs left out near Ohakune a couple of years back, it had been resealed, and 3 days later (it was a long weekend) the signs were still there - 30kph signs. people were slowing to about 70kph - there was no reason for the speed restiction evident, all the loose metal was off the road, and our V1 went off, so we slowed right down. Didn't have to worry as there were 2 cops patrolling, both with victems who were psossibly discovering their cautious 70kph was 40kph over. Charming stuff - and nothing to do with road safety.

I'd highly recommend the Ruakuri cave. In the area there are also has some spectaclar walks up and over a natural tunnel, through which the Waitomo stream passes, before reaching the waitomo flow worm caves. We did that as tourists back in January - I think it was at least $50 each, may have been more. The trips are small (about 14), and the cave is realy amazing. They dug a new entrance and you access it via a big spiral staircase, and an airlock. The old entrance is tapu as it has burial gaves about it. By the way if you follw the waitomo stream up from the Ruakuri natural brige (there is no track) you will come to the down stream entrance of Gardners Gut with is a 12 km cave system. I't worth a quick look (you will get your feet muddy on the "track", and wet in the cave"). There are heaps of cave weta's, spoted by my son who beat a hasty retreat. My daughter went in anohter 10 meters or so, looked at a huge weta for a bit then decided to go back, but adament that she was not put off by the weta. We did cape reinga a copule of years ago, including 90 mile beach etc (stayed at coopers beach). May get back there this coming summer. however we could try castle cliff lighthouse in the Waiarapa - thanks for the idea.

My wife left for LA and tto catch up with fiends, and catch the Las Vegas Goege Michael concert next weekend so I thought to myself, what can I get up to while she is away. The answer was a return to something I did when i was in my teens and 20's - caving. We left at 5am on Saturday and drove from Wellington to Waitomo. It's been over 11 years since my last caving trip to this area, and surprise, surprise found the cave 1st attempt (up the hill from the downstream entrance of Gardners Gut). Rigged a rope to access lower levels and took a while to remeber and tie the appropiate knot. 8 year old daughter raced down the rope (hand over hand, walking down rock face, not abseiling) like an old hand, 11 year old son was a little less confident but nailed. Overall Kids loved it, and especially climbing the rope to get out at the end. There is talk of a next time with mum. So mission accomplisshed - get kids into stuff dad. I now have tramping, caving, and skiing on that list. Observations: LED lighting is so much better than old incandesent bulbs. My mate had one of my old lighting rigs - so dim, and so yellow! The rest of us acutally turned down the power on our LED systems so he didn't notice the diffference so much. The sooner this is standard on cars the better. An extra 15kg makes climbing up a rope a LOT harder, and make caving overalls an unflattering fit! How come it's so easy to get lost AFTER you come out of a cave? We ended up in the Waitomo stream about 200 meters above where we left it to find our cave entrance - which resulted in up just wading down the stream between towering limestone cliffs. Really really cool though - almost worth getting lost for. nast ythought though, 10 meters to the left or right and we may have gone over those cliffs! How come something you remember as "easy", and took 20 girl guides through, seems really risky when it's your own kids on the rope? Why does the Waitome pub "curlies bar" have signs claiming "Open for food", "food now", "bistro open" etc. 5 hunger and thristy souls venture inside and when we ask for a menu, the bar tend points to some eta chips and says "that it, we don't open for food till 5pm". I guess they put the signs out ealy in the back blocks - beer was nicely cold though. Stayed in Rotorua and had visions of a nice soak in the Polynesain Spa, except the family pools was closed. Ended up 5 of us in a private pool for 2! Not 1 cop on the trip up (escort 9500 on), or from Waitomo to Rotorua Cops like fleas on a dog on SHW1 from Taupo to Bulls with the Escort telling us "ka band detecteded" over and over and over. They don't signpost no exit roads arround Tekuiti - we sampled a couple and ended up in cow / sheep padocks with some very unamused farmers looking on. I'm so glad we took the Mitsi Outlander and not the BMW - the outlander is covered in mud and sh*t (litterally). Next weekend we are going to try something else - it was meant top be skiing but there's not much snow about yet. Any suggestions that are family friendly?

I work in IT as an Enterprise Architect My wife works for the good old Ministry of Education (and you would not beleive the stories she comes home with). In the past few years she has works for IRD, Internal Affairs, Dairy Board>Fontera>EDS, Ministry of Education so I've got relaible 2nd hand knowledge of how Govt departments work verses priviate companies. You make interesting points. My point on the decile system and funding is that it is effectively taxing those with high disposable incomes again - so not only is the government taking moeny in the form of tax and redistributing it to lower income familys as "working for families", it's then providing less funding to the higher decile schools, so the parents with all this disposbale income are forced to pay more (this is just a hidden tax). There are good public schools - and very few of them are in income challenged areas, depsite the better funding those areas receive. So it's not working. A lot of the achivement of the kids in the higher decile schoos is that culterally the familys are more focuded on sucess and achievement, there tend to be better family role modles. The Upper Hutt schools have been the victem of yet more gross mismanagement - no capital expenditure for about 5 years as the government thought they could move 3000 students into the old CIT campus and form a super school. I know teachers who work there - it's not very nice! They have now canned this idea. Of course the CIT, a perfectly good facility, with a train station across the road, heaps of parking sits decaying with the Government spending 80 million of so trying to make the facilites in Petone of a similar standard.

I got a tit for tat neautral feedback 2 years ago. It still anoys me. I think it's the fact that you can't do a thing about it. Bought some ski boots that were "as new but a little dusty". The dust was birdshit, and inside was compost, dirt, snails etc, and inner boots were rotting and musty. Basically gave a neatrual saying: boots were dirty, musty and rotting - not - "as new but a little dusty" This guy then posted how he had offered me my money back several times which was complete crap. He never did a thing and ignored every email I him. In a perfect world I'd be allowed to go round and encourage him to remove his feedback, which should have bee a happy face "buyer paid cash, picked up, and only gave a netautral despite me lying abou the condition"

Never happen, he said that he doesn't want morons voting for him. This may have disucoraged most of his voter base which seemed to be made up of morons and racists (although if they are morons they won't get it -damn!)

On the tax nonsense. Lets not forget the fact we pay tax as individuals in a two income home - but if one of you gets made reducndant do you get anything - no way? A company now onl pays 30% - we the workers have to pay 39%. Apprently if they didn't lower company tax the companies would go overseas. What about the workers faced with higher tax? DO these moron forget that we too can leave, and are leaving. So much for that vision of a knowlede economy!. Turns out with my job I could earn A$30,000 to A$50,000 more a year in Australia. Now I love NZ, but at some point you have to get pragmatic - and Melbourne isn't too bad. Why do they still tax your kiwi saver contributions - they could have been made contributions tax free. The reserve bank act and using the interest rates to control inflation - this only works if the inflation is internal demand driven. The inflation we are experencing is mainly extermal generated. Putting up interest rates in NZ only makes the problem worse. And people think Cullen is on to it? This is basic stuff. So now kiwis are loosing their homes, unable to afford the new interest rates. Yep onto it allright. Why did they allow banks to offer 100% loans - if someone can't afford to save any deposit, at a time when it's way cheaper to rent, how the hell were they goijng to afford a morgage. While you can sey it's people own stupidity, or that the banks are gready (and they are), what about regulation to protect kiwis from their own stupidity or banks greed?

And it seems you have a short memory (perhaps too young); don't forget who bought in Rogernomics - Labour! Cullen seems like a most unlikable peice of work, condesending, sarcastic, very smug - he makes my skin crawl. Helen's ethic are really low, who leave cops to hang out to dry?, paintergate etc? The redistribution weath to those who don't earn it, in a way that makes the effective marginal tax rate even higher is a complete dis-incentive to be more productive and earn more. At the same time they worry about deceased productivity - serriously - is there anyone at home? Have more kids?, get more in the way of schooling health etc, and as a bonus have some of someone elses hard earned money. Apparently labour have visions of a knowledge economy - where? - certainly not here, not with their policies. The ineffective and inefficent duplication in the health system, health boards, separate IT etc. What a wank - we are a country with a population the size of bloody Melborne - why have we got all this inefective and expensive management? We are a small country down the arse end of the world - we need to be efficient, we need to be smart. This elected health board nonsense is just a facard to make us think we have a say. Get some effective world class management in and sack the lot. Education - don't get me started - the schools have to raise more and more of their operating budget - and if you are in a higher decile area (where incomes are typically higher and there the tax rape is way higher they fund less, and so this is just even more tax burden. These dickwacks (labour ) don't like privately run prisons - even if they were doing a better job. Private schools are evil. Well put it this way - Heretaunga Colledge and Upper Hutt Colledge have about 35% sucess in NCEA, whereas Hutt International Boys has abnout 96%, and even St Pats in Silver Stream has about 85%. So is the tax payer getting value from these public schools?. Their results are pathetic. Bloated public service - too right. My wife works for one of the government departments - they have perfromance appraisals, and all this sort of polically correct shite. And what happend when the stas provie that hard working wife is doing about 2x the work of the next best employee - they reluctantant agree shes exceeded expectations - and give her the same riase as everyone else. Yes we will see increased productivity in such an environment - pretoct the lazy, reward everone equally, for inequal input. This crap dodn't work for the USSR, it doesn't work for Borth Korea, it bloody well won't work here either. And isn't ironic that those farmers that the labour government have always treated like crap are basically keeping our country afloat. And all us so called professional selling services to each other are basically doing sweet FA for the economy. So no - I'm not voting for labour.

The bastards have a problem with the plates i wanted EVILMF V8MOFO Not sure why?

Bloody lucky if he got money out of them. Most racing car engines need some serious attention after a seasons racing. My brother just used Aviation gas in his rally car.

This probably confused him (from manual): Break-resistant security glass The glass installed on all side windows and the rear window is designed to offer resistance to breakage and vandalism. Each break-resistant window contains several layers of clear synthetic plastic film sandwiched between the inner and outer glass panes. In addition, another film is applied to the inner surface of the glass (facing the passenger compartment). This film prevents the glass, if shattered, from spreading into the passenger compartment.

740i has 85 litre tank 750i has 95 litre tank Just checked the manual!

I've got a 99 E38 740i - 9l/100km is what I can get on a trip (Auckland to Wellington via masterton and the Rimutaka hill. It's pretty impressive. It's about 11l/100km on the commute Wellingto the Upper Hutt (if driven carefully). Of course I bought it for the V8 power and so usually get about 14l/100km. Its economy suffers if you are doing start stop driving / round town etc. Interestingly the BNW manual claims pretty good fuel economy - but it's raing so I'm not getting it from the car to check.

Seems to me suicide bombing is very much a part of recent islamic culture, a very nasty part. And the weird thing is that they seem to mainly target each other. It is very irrational, and therefore scary. Humor is a western way of dealing with it.

I went to the Monaco F1 last year, didn't look like a joke, didn't sound like one either. Great circuit, great ambience - a clasic.

Now that is a sexy device - not UMTS though - I guess that will come in version 2. Good news is that it doesn't look like Voda have an exclusive deal on the iPhone. It looks like Voda is going to SIM lock it phones, apprently to protect the customer expereince. What it also will do is stop a customer popping in a Telecom SIM when Telecoms GSM network is up and running, and it will stop people romaing overseas buying a local SIM foir their nphone rto avoid high romaing call charges. Telecom has annouched today it will NOT be locking the SIM on it's new GSM / UMTS network. Personally I'm looking forward to when we (Telecom) have access to a wider range of handsets, and are able to compete head-on with Voda.

Hi Bravo Set up of Chorus shouldn't have affected this sort of thing - it wasn't meant to. Chorus got all the people who did this work. BTW - I work for Telecom

Telecom is investing vast amounts of money in NZ. However Telecoms investment is not exclusively in one ares. Chorus (a Telecom company) is investing about 1.4 billion installing thousand of road side cabinets to house broadband equipment, and thousands of kilometers of fibre to connect them to the network. At the same time Telecom is deploying a new GSM / UMTS mobile phone network which is due to be available before the end of this year. The CDMA network will run in parallel with it for about 4 more years. Telstra's decision to change from CDMA to GSM / UMTS means Telecom CDMA phone can no longer roam to Australia - but for instance they will work in the USA, where GSM is a minor player. Howere they do have WorldMode phones available, which are both GSM and CDMA - these pupples work just about everywhere. Before privatising Telecom was a complete shambles - 25,000 staff, and even with all those staff it still took 6 months for a connection. Since it was privatised Telecom has become world class. By the way services like real time video sound cool, and are good once or twice to impress people - but how many people are making live video calls? Unlike SMS (text) it's not a killer application - cool - but not something that everyone wants (yet?).

Well that may reduce the number of people driving - less congestion. Sweet as long as I can still afford to pay for my petrol.

I work for Telecom. You are not allowed to talk on a handheld phone and drive. If you are driving a Telecom car and have an accident while using a handhelp cell phone you may well loose your job. They are a mobile phone provider and they back banning all driver use of hand help phones in a car while driving. I have to agree.