Nah - it’s an awesome little jet. Easy to maintain, easy to fly and has an excellent reliability record. Any half decent PPL could transition to one of these on a very short (but expensive!) course.

Can’t belive I forgot the SD1. That’s in my lottery-winner’s garage that accomodates about 40 cars...

You may well be right, but it’s not uncommon for right(ish) wing politicians to espouse left(ish)-wing policies in certain cases and vice versa, in the UK.

I completely agree. An old-school gentleman and one of those rare politicians who cares more about his constituency and country than himself.

I just think we need something new in the UK. Politics in the UK runs in a rough ten year cycle:

I believe I read somewhere that he was consistently ranked as one of the lowest net-worth people in Congress. We need more politicians like Joe, everywhere.

He comes across as one of the ‘good guys’ which is rare in politics. Equally, I think John McCain would do well in the UK - he’s an old-school gentleman as well and, whilst you can find incidents in both of their pasts that aren’t whiter-than-white, I wonder if any of the rest of us could stand up and say the same…

I actually like Corbyn. He’s an intelligent, articulate politican who (I believe) is actually in the business of politics for the betterment of others rather than himself. He’s a rare breed.

And this is the problem with discussing politics - as soon as you nail your colours to one mast, someone will (quite legitimitely in most cases) think exactly the opposite, and not be shy about telling you.

Swap you... it can’t get any worse for either country...

I think the Top Gun parties are (or were) a peculiarly British thing. When we ran one in the desert our USAF counterparts were somewhat non-plussed by the whole thing and, by general consensus, very poor competitors. Too many mis-quotes, not fast enough. Disappointing opponents!

I am ex-military but none of the aircraft I have ever flown have had ejector seats. (Trainers don’t count.) Sadly, I was not good enough, or cool enough (I think my instructors said not good enough although to this day I swear my face doesn’t suit large sunglasses), to wear the mirror shades back in the 90s and join…

As an outsider (Brit) I don’t like to talk about politics here. It’s none of my business and it’s such a partisan issue to the people to whom it matters, but I’m going to break my own rule.

Absolutely - I completely agree with the above and I’m a pilot myself which is why the aero analogy popped into my head.

That’s a bit like saying ‘when Harrison Ford dies, he’s not a big loss to the space and aeronautics industry because he completely misrepresented space travel and the engineers in it.’

Most of the time UK police forces pick fairly standard family cars with good performance. There don’t appear to be any favourites and they’ll often go with who will give them the biggest discount - Volvo fell out of favour as they just got too damn expensive - and it’s been BMW for a while. This is probably a…

Yeah, that’s fair enough. Diesel emissions are responsible for most city’s stone and brick work looking pretty grubby in Europe and if that’s on the street, it’s in your lungs.

True for now - getting scarcer though! I’d avoid the diesel and go for a petrol though. The 1.9s are fantastic engines, but have proven horribly unreliable and prone to wrecking themselves due to water pump/timing belt failure.

Sadly, the 159 is off-limits to you folks until about 2030. If we’re still allowed to drive our own IC engined car then, I think the 156 and 159 are both destined for classic status.

My problem with diesel engines is none of these things. You’re describing engines from around ten years ago when all those things were true. But you could run those old ‘tractor’ engines forever.