On Tue, 06 May 2008 23:40:50 +0100, Dave Baker wrote:


"Mike G" wrote in message
news:AumdnRfQzPKQDb3VnZ2dnUVZ8qKvnZ2d@plusnet...

"Zimmy" wrote in message
...

"Dave Baker" wrote in message
...

"Doki" wrote in message
...
wrote:
Going rate for an 8 year old Focus looks like £1-2k. I
recently picked up a 5 year old 406 HDI estate for £2.5k. If
you avoid the German makes, the depreciation is pretty
vicious and the cars end up damned cheap for what they are.

The speed of depreciation on cars always surprises me. My
Focus 2.0 ESP is 7 years old in June, hasn't gone wrong in the
4 years I've had it, does everything just as well as a new car
but is worth only a tiny fraction of the price. High
depreciation makes more sense with cars that rust badly but
the Focus doesn't do that. If the government really wanted to
do something about the environment they'd make it more
financially attractive to keep running older cars rather than
squandering resources building new ones.

How about no road tax on cars over 10 years old?

That would put the cat amongst the pigeons as far as the car
manufacturers were concerned.
I think any measures taken to promote the idea of making products
that last longer, and that encourage consumers to have things repaired
rather than simply replaced if they do go wrong, is far greener than
advising we use things like fluorescent bulbs, or switch off low
volt adaptors, phone chargers etc, when not actually in use.
Mike.

Whenever governments get involved in things like the environment A) they
cock it up and B) they run into big business interests which generally
don't
want things changed. Numerous examples spring to mind.

1) My house has 80 year old single glazed metal framed Crittal windows.
They
have the insulation properties of tissue paper and leak like sieves
anyway,
but if I want to replace them with double glazed windows I have to pay
for
building approval. Now any double glazed windows, however crappy would
be a
huge improvement but I can only fit 'approved' double glazed units for
which
I have to pay the local council for the privilege. If they want people to
improve their insulation why give grants out on the one hand for some
things
but make people pay for approval to do it on the other? No f**ing sense
there at all. The way to do it would be to regulate the window vendors
as to
what they could sell rather than make every single house have its new
units
checked by the council.



We could call it something like FENSA