Latest news with #RangeRovers
Daily Mirror
2 hours ago
- Automotive
- Daily Mirror
'I'm a mechanic and you should avoid buying these used cars in UK before major change'
As the used car market continues to grow, experts have been warning potential buyers of what to look out for, including which models to choose, and which to avoid A car mechanic has issued a stark warning to motorists looking to buy used cars, naming certain models that he believes should be avoided. The trend of opting for second-hand vehicles over brand new ones has surged in recent years, as drivers hunt for nearly-new cars at bargain prices. This shift in consumer behaviour has allowed some car dealers to increase their prices in response to the increased demand. However, amidst the scramble for a premium deal, experts have been advising potential buyers on what to look out for, which models to opt for, and which to steer clear of. In response to a query about the least reliable vehicles, car mechanic and author James Goodhand offered some advice on which cars prospective buyers should approach with caution. James singled out two popular brands at opposite ends of the premium scale, pinpointing Jaguar Land Rover 's Range Rover model and certain used Ford cars as ones to avoid. Speaking about Range Rovers, he said: "The ownership experience is akin to sitting in a comfy leather chair on top of a block of flats, tearing up fifty-pound notes." He added: "As I have had to advise several unfortunate customers who've faced ruination, this is a £100k car and no matter that you bought it second hand for £25k, it still has the running costs of a hundred-grand vehicle, and an appallingly built one at that." On Fords, James added: "Sadly (as a historic blue oval fan) I tend to direct people away from used Fords. The petrol engines with their 'wet belts' can be an absolute disaster - killing an engine if they break or disintegrating with a consequent 2k repair bill. "Timing belts are reliant on friction and rubber breaks down in oil, and yet these engines have the belt quite deliberately running in engine oil as a timing chain would. And Ford's diesels seem to suffer more particulate filter issues than most, so the brand is best avoided full stop." While James slammed second-hand Fords, another motor expert sang the praises of one of the marque's most beloved models, the Ford Focus, claiming it represented excellent value in the used market. Speaking to the Daily Mail, Paul Lucas championed the Mk1 Ford Focus for its straightforward design and dependability. He told the publication: "For me, a 20-year-old 1.6 litre Mk1 Ford Focus is top for reliability. "It was designed before all the unnecessary bells and whistles came in and even lets you start the car with a real key rather than press a button. I bought mine 15 years ago for £500 and have no regrets." The contrasting views from James and Paul emerge as the pre-owned vehicle sector experiences significant transformation, driven by growing numbers of electric motors flooding the marketplace. This trend has been highlighted by the SMMT (Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders) who reported that appetite for second-hand electric vehicles had rocketed in 2024. In a statement, they said: "Demand continued to soar for used battery electric cars (BEVs), rising some 57.4% to a record 188,382 units and achieving a new high for market share, at 2.5%, up from 1.7% in 2023 and 13 times larger than back in 2019. "Combined, the number of used electrified vehicles changing hands increased by 43.3% on 2023, with more than half a million of these ultra low or zero emission motors accounting for a 7.7% share of sales. "This growth aligns with the new car market and demonstrates the increasing demand and choice across the sector for new and used electric motors - at price points to suit all potential buyers."
9 News
15 hours ago
- Automotive
- 9 News
Almost 3000 Range Rovers recalled in Australia over airbag fears
Your web browser is no longer supported. To improve your experience update it here Almost 3000 Range Rovers are being recalled over fears the passenger airbag could tear in an accident. The Land Rover recall is for the Evoque model from 2020 to 2024. "Due to a manufacturing defect, the passenger airbag may tear during deployment," the recall notice said. Almost 3000 Range Rovers are being recalled over fears the passenger airbag could tear in an accident. (Drive) "This could cause hot gases to escape from the airbag and result in insufficient protection to the passenger. "In the event of an accident, the airbag not deploying as intended and hot gas escaping towards the vehicle" occupants could increase the risk of injury or death to vehicle occupants. Owners of affected vehicles should contact their Jaguar Land Rover to schedule an appointment to have the passenger airbag replaced free of charge. More than 2800 vehicles have been affected by the recall. For more information, call Jaguar Land Rover Australia's recall hotline on 1800 625 642. national Australia Product recall CONTACT US
Scottish Sun
a day ago
- Health
- Scottish Sun
While you and I struggle with the real world, our leaders sit and ignore chaos in Unicornland
BILL LECKIE While you and I struggle with the real world, our leaders sit and ignore chaos in Unicornland EVER wonder why the national animal of Scotland is a unicorn? Historians tell us it's because our forebears saw it as a creature whose strength, innocence and purity embodied the values our people held most dear. 3 Bill Leckie reckons our leaders are living in Unicornland Credit: John Kirkby - The Sun Glasgow 3 First Minister John Swinney Credit: PA 3 The case of nurse Sandie Peggie has shown how leaders and civil servants are living in a fantasyland Credit: Alamy But that was then, back in the 15th century when it was first adopted onto our coat of arms. While this is now, when the people who run the country have long since deleted those values along with their incriminating WhatsApp messages. A time when the textbooks really should be rewritten to record that the unicorn is Scotland's beastie of choice because, like our politicans and bureaucrats, it exists in a fantasy world. And because anyone doesn't like what they get up to is welcome to sit on its horn and swivel. We see this attitude in First Minister 'Full-On' John Swinney's latest re-heating of an Independence policy which, were it a Tupperware of leftovers in your fridge, would long since have mutated into its own tiny population of furry bacteria who hate the outside world. We see it in the 67 days summer holiday our MSPs have awarded themselves while the country they're paid handsomely to run comes apart at the seams. We see it in the £10million-plus cost of keeping a cabal of NHS head honchos in Range Rovers while armies of sick and injured taxpayers suffer endless hours of misery in A&E queues or years of agony waiting for vital operations. We see it in the self-entitled behaviour of the minority of civil servants who must make their colleagues fume as they use pet cats and a lack of fresh air as reasons to refuse demands to work from an office. Perhaps most jaw-droppingly of all right now, though, we see it in the ever-mushrooming scandal of Sandie Peggie, the Fife nurse dragged through the courts because she didn't want to share a changing room with a biologically male doctor, Beth Upton, who identifies as a woman. So far, this travesty of a show trial, this embodiment of a breed of managers too terrified of their own shadows to display even a shred of common sense, has cost £220,000 in legal fees. Gender row nurse cleared of gross misconduct Once the employment tribunal which has been running in parallel with it is done, we can probably double that figure. Yet that's only the financial aspect. What will be so much harder to quantify is the monstrous waste of time and of energy, the positive work all those involved could have been doing all this time, the damage done to the mental health of both Nurse Peggie and Dr Upton over 18 tortuous months. And all because their bosses lacked either the savvy or the will – maybe even both – to sit the pair of them down and talk their problems through until they learned something from them. Not only would that have cost hee-haw, it might even have helped create a happier, more opem-minded workplace; an achievement that would, for me at least, have been priceless. History has failed to teach Israel's leaders LET us die of hunger, it is better. The plaintive words of a survivor after the latest brutal attack by Israeli forces on starving Palestinians queueing for food and water. After more than 70 died over the weekend – taking the total since a blockade on aid was lifted beyond 700 – Tel Aviv leaders claimed its troops 'faced a real threat' from crowds. Sure. When they have all the guns and the crowds barely have the strength left to walk. After the horrors Jewish people endured during World War II, the humiliation and the torture and the near eradication, I can't get my head round why Netanyahu's government now seem so hell-bent on wiping out their next-door neighbours in Israel's name. Does history teach us nothing? Or does it simply turn us into the thing that we once feared and despised? Instead? No sooner had Nurse Peggie been cleared of gross misconduct on Thursday than her employment hearing was re-starting on Friday. And halfway through that day's evidence, NHS Fife had the brainfart of all brainfarts and decided to release a 1,700-word statement that left her legal team without a name. They claim this attack was signed off on by their own lawyers, but not only did the KC acting for them in the employment hearing claim not to have seen it before it went live, it has since been edited twice to remove veiled suggestions that Nurse Peggie's supporters had threatened opponents with violence. Seriously, how do these chancers attain such a level of arrogance that not only can't they admit defeat and rethink their mindset, but they swagger straight back into another unwinnable fight? Paying fortunes to turn a he-said-she-said shopfloor rammy into a national news story has done not one person one shred of good – yet it seems this is the only way our politicians and pen-pushers know how to deal with anything, to lawyer up and chuck money at it. Scattercash attitude They wouldn't dare have the same scattercash attitude were they running a private company, with profits to protect and shareholders to keep onside. Yet as this farrago of a sham of a mockery proves yet again, they clearly see the public purse as Monopoly money. As political analyst Chris Deerin wrote in yesterday's paper, the SNP have long since lived by the motto of 'public sector good, private sector bad', with the people they shoehorn into positions of power within the civil service become untouchable; in return, naturally, for never questioning anything Holyrood does. This is a key reason why Scotland has 14 health boards – meaning 14 CEOs, 14 heads of finance, 14 HR departments and the rest – for five million people, while London has just five for almost double the population. This bloated level of over-management, in turn, is a key reason why hospitals can't afford to provide the the basic services its clinical staff desperately want to. And so it goes, through health and schools and local councils, from potholes to ferries to courtrooms and back again. Bottom line? While you and I struggle along in the real world, the ones calling the shots are drifting along in Unicornland, blissfully unware of the utter chaos they're causing. Or worse still, not giving the teeny-tiniest flying you-know-what. Finally the airline returned my bag! FILED last week's column on Aer Lingus losing my luggage for a week then went straight back into battle. Rang a call centre, asked when my gear was being returned and – as no one who read the previous rant will be surprised to hear - was told that 'once we have an update, you will be informed'. Ten minutes later, they emailed to confirm my bag would be flying the following day to Boston and then on to Denver. Well, dear reader, enough was enough. I googled the CEO of Aer Lingus, copied them into an email addressed to their head of customer services and firmly but politely explained my predicament. Four minutes after that? The phone rings and it's the their head of baggage handling, apologising most sincerely and promising that the wee fella would be arriving in Glasgow at 7.40 that night and would then be sent directly to me in a cab. At which point we'll skim over the fact that it was in fact the following afternoon and an argument with Glasgow Airport before it was finally dropped off. And concentrate instead on these very valid questions: What if the person whose trip had been ruined by a missing bag didn't have the clout of a newspaper column behind them? What if they didn't have the cheek to take their problem the very top of the tree? And why should it take such drastic action to attain such a basic level of service in the first place? Answers on the back of a used boarding pass to the usual address. In Glasgow, that is, not Colorado.
Sydney Morning Herald
2 days ago
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
It's a picture-perfect English town. Now an asylum seeker war is ripping it apart
'I'm afraid I agree that the government has got to find some other means of housing the people once they arrive.' Also like many in this town, he believes the protests are out of control. In his view, the police should be using their powers to arrest anyone trying to hide their identity at the protests. Six men were arrested on Sunday night for what Essex Police called 'mindless thuggery' – including injury to a police officer and damage to a vehicle. Witnesses saw a protestor kick in the windscreen of a police car. Epping, the last stop on the Central Line for those heading north-west on the London Underground, now looks like a war zone to Britons watching the news. But it is a comfortable town with no history of heated division – until the asylum hotel arrived. At lunchtime on Monday, for instance, the main street was busy with people in a dozen cafes or at an open-air market with arts and crafts. A few Porsches, Mercedes-Benzes and Range Rovers passed along with the local traffic. The jewellery store displayed a Rolex in its front window. But the mood has changed in Epping since one of the asylum seekers was charged with three counts of sexual assault, one count of inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity and one count of harassment without violence. The man, Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 38, from Ethiopia, denied all the offences when he appeared in court on July 10. This has not quelled the concerns among local parents, who began protesting outside the asylum hotel. 'I'm not far-right. I'm worried about my kids,' said one sign on Sunday, held by six women outside the asylum hotel. The sexual assault charges turned a tidal wave of concern into a tsunami, says Epping journalist David Jackman, who covered the region for local newspapers for 38 years before setting up his own news site, Everything Epping Forest. There were at least two fires at asylum hotels in the area in recent years and one man who was staying at the Bell Hotel will stand trial in September, charged with two counts of arson. Jackman, in a written account of the past few weeks, said the protest on Sunday night required police with riot shields to hold the line against protesters throwing plastic bottles, eggs, milk and other objects. 'Video footage now seen around the world shows unbelievable scenes including a protestor jumping up and down on the roof of a moving police van and a man kicking another police vehicle,' he wrote. In an echo of the Australian debate over the past two decades, the UK is struggling to respond to thousands of people arriving by boat. While French police can wade into water to try to stop the boats leaving, they do not venture into the English Channel to turn them around. British authorities intercept the boats to escort them to Dover – a sight that infuriates right-wing critics such as Nigel Farage, head of Reform UK. The arrivals surged to 19,982 in the six months to the end of June – up 50 per cent on the same period last year, according to a tally by Reuters based on government data. The problem is not new; boat arrivals increased when the Conservatives held power from 2010 to 2024, but it has become toxic in local communities because authorities have taken over hotels and motels to house asylum seekers. Some Epping residents simply fall silent when the subject comes up. Others express their anxiety about right-wing activists using Epping to make headlines. Loading 'It is outrageous, irresponsible and preposterous to assert and even suggest that residence of Epping and Epping Forest were at all violent last night,' wrote Glenn Hernandez, a local resident, on the community Facebook group. He and others want the hotel shut down and the asylum seekers relocated to prevent more clashes. For now, the Bell Hotel is closed to visitors and surrounded by a temporary fence. Signs order passers-by not to take photographs. A security guard stands inside the entrance. Holland, who lives close to the hotel and sees the asylum seekers walking to and from their temporary home, believes the protests must be kept away from the Bell Hotel to avoid greater riots in the weeks to come. 'There's no point in protesting outside the hotel,' he says. 'If they're going to have a protest, have it in the town centre and make it an organised protest to keep the thugs away from the hotel.' correspondents .
The Age
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Age
It's a picture-perfect English town. Now an asylum seeker war is ripping it apart
'I'm afraid I agree that the government has got to find some other means of housing the people once they arrive.' Also like many in this town, he believes the protests are out of control. In his view, the police should be using their powers to arrest anyone trying to hide their identity at the protests. Six men were arrested on Sunday night for what Essex Police called 'mindless thuggery' – including injury to a police officer and damage to a vehicle. Witnesses saw a protestor kick in the windscreen of a police car. Epping, the last stop on the Central Line for those heading north-west on the London Underground, now looks like a war zone to Britons watching the news. But it is a comfortable town with no history of heated division – until the asylum hotel arrived. At lunchtime on Monday, for instance, the main street was busy with people in a dozen cafes or at an open-air market with arts and crafts. A few Porsches, Mercedes-Benzes and Range Rovers passed along with the local traffic. The jewellery store displayed a Rolex in its front window. But the mood has changed in Epping since one of the asylum seekers was charged with three counts of sexual assault, one count of inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity and one count of harassment without violence. The man, Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 38, from Ethiopia, denied all the offences when he appeared in court on July 10. This has not quelled the concerns among local parents, who began protesting outside the asylum hotel. 'I'm not far-right. I'm worried about my kids,' said one sign on Sunday, held by six women outside the asylum hotel. The sexual assault charges turned a tidal wave of concern into a tsunami, says Epping journalist David Jackman, who covered the region for local newspapers for 38 years before setting up his own news site, Everything Epping Forest. There were at least two fires at asylum hotels in the area in recent years and one man who was staying at the Bell Hotel will stand trial in September, charged with two counts of arson. Jackman, in a written account of the past few weeks, said the protest on Sunday night required police with riot shields to hold the line against protesters throwing plastic bottles, eggs, milk and other objects. 'Video footage now seen around the world shows unbelievable scenes including a protestor jumping up and down on the roof of a moving police van and a man kicking another police vehicle,' he wrote. In an echo of the Australian debate over the past two decades, the UK is struggling to respond to thousands of people arriving by boat. While French police can wade into water to try to stop the boats leaving, they do not venture into the English Channel to turn them around. British authorities intercept the boats to escort them to Dover – a sight that infuriates right-wing critics such as Nigel Farage, head of Reform UK. The arrivals surged to 19,982 in the six months to the end of June – up 50 per cent on the same period last year, according to a tally by Reuters based on government data. The problem is not new; boat arrivals increased when the Conservatives held power from 2010 to 2024, but it has become toxic in local communities because authorities have taken over hotels and motels to house asylum seekers. Some Epping residents simply fall silent when the subject comes up. Others express their anxiety about right-wing activists using Epping to make headlines. Loading 'It is outrageous, irresponsible and preposterous to assert and even suggest that residence of Epping and Epping Forest were at all violent last night,' wrote Glenn Hernandez, a local resident, on the community Facebook group. He and others want the hotel shut down and the asylum seekers relocated to prevent more clashes. For now, the Bell Hotel is closed to visitors and surrounded by a temporary fence. Signs order passers-by not to take photographs. A security guard stands inside the entrance. Holland, who lives close to the hotel and sees the asylum seekers walking to and from their temporary home, believes the protests must be kept away from the Bell Hotel to avoid greater riots in the weeks to come. 'There's no point in protesting outside the hotel,' he says. 'If they're going to have a protest, have it in the town centre and make it an organised protest to keep the thugs away from the hotel.' correspondents .
