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Steve Orme

Trinity Mirror Regionals Driving Force columnist STEVE ORME gives his take on everything from the car with the biggest cup holders (Ford Edge, 20oz) to congestion charges and how your money is spent getting toads safely across the road. It's motoring but not as you know it ...

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January 2008 Archives

That old Ford Focus cluster fcku

Posted by Steve Orme on January 31, 2008 9:19 AM

Still no word from Ford but Rodrigues writes:

Motorshow tickets

Posted by Steve Orme on January 31, 2008 9:16 AM

So that you know, it’s showtime again.

Slapped legs? That'll be rip-off Britain

Posted by Steve Orme on January 30, 2008 3:58 PM

Oil has fallen from $100 a barrel to $90.
Retailers are paying seven per cent less for petrol than in February 2007.
Pump prices are currently at a record £1.04p a litre.

Don't beat yourself up over yawning

Posted by Steve Orme on January 29, 2008 2:46 PM

Everywhere you turn these days there is another warning. To prolong an active life be sure not to smoke, drink more than some ridiculously small amount each decade, eat anything that is remotely enjoyable, check your secretions and deposits,
walk half a mile backwards every day, only sunbathe in a tent and vote Labour.
Now it turns out we have an outbreak of driver dropsy.

Don't blame cars for that sinking feeling

Posted by Steve Orme on January 25, 2008 10:17 AM

tide%20in

This week via the miracle of widescreen TV and a gaggle of thirsty sound engineers, a fat man on the island of Tuvalu in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands categorically blamed YOU for the fact that his shaky coral archipelago is sinking.
He was a member of those hardy south seas tribes that bravely moved from reef to sandbank in search of coconuts and the secret of the Bounty hunters. They also moved on a lot because their islands had a habit of sinking.
Or being called Krakatoa.

Seat Altea Freetrack road test

Posted by Steve Orme on January 24, 2008 2:58 PM

alteaoutside

Statistically this is the week when people are most likely to fall off the post Argostide diet band wagon.
During the next five days around a third of those with healthy January intentions will look down at their tuna fin salad and reach for the phone to request a high-carb visit from Cosa Nostra Pizzas - No Contract Too Small.

Parking tickets not a tax? It just doesn’t measure up

Posted by Steve Orme on January 23, 2008 2:15 PM

cam

Not that long ago slow news days were often enlivened by churning out some survey or other showing that estate agents were thought by most to be the lowest form of human evolution, the very love-seed of Satan and a bunch of remorseless oxygen thieves.
Oddly this ignored evidence that, in fact, the public actually thought that accolade belonged to journalists. Not to worry.

Bio fuel for thought- the 1970s and welcome to it

Posted by Steve Orme on January 22, 2008 1:51 PM

70s

To be frank, I’m getting a bit fed up with people running around like headless Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall chickens finding a reason not to use any fuel source whatsoever.
If we don’t go nuclear or fossil there is little chance windmills and waterwheels will ever provide enough to keep us all warm. And we will need to be warm won’t we when the colossus that is mankind has reversed climate change?

It's a good job climate change is towards less ice

Posted by Steve Orme on January 21, 2008 1:21 PM

maquett

Look at the picture; that’s 7-30am-ish in Marquette, Michigan today, the temperature is minus brass monkeys and there is a good old covering of snow. No problem bud.
At the same time GMT I was listening as the car radio did a traffic advice tour of available stations. Shunt after accident after T-boning.

Vauxhall handbrake problems on Watchdog have me blushing

Posted by Steve Orme on January 21, 2008 10:56 AM

I don’t normally tune in to Watchdog. Nicky Campbell is worryingly thin and I have never got over the days when it was presented by the mad Robinson woman who used to work in this office, and is still remembered fondly if not fondlely.

Global warming is a wet excuse for doing nothing

Posted by Steve Orme on January 18, 2008 3:54 PM

Will they never learn? Year after year the river floods and displaces people who already face one of life’s harshest burdens. Yet they return to face the risk again and again.
No, no not the impoverished folk who live along the Zambezi, the people struggling with their mortgages in Tewksbury.

Bizarre accidents are hair raising stuff

Posted by Steve Orme on January 17, 2008 9:46 AM

According to the annual report on accidents in the home,three dozen people were sent to the hospital for injuries associated with teapot covers, about 165 for injuries from placemats, about 330 from toilet-paper holders, and about 13,000 from vegetables. However, sponge-related accidents fell from 996 the previous year to 787.
And every year over 500 people are killed by their trousers
One man, run over by his own Mercedes blamed his accident on three giant baked potatoes smothered in tuna mayonnaise and cheese.
He fell under the car as he leant out of the driver's door to be sick because he had eaten so much - and the Mercedes rolled over him.
Now it’s death by hair.
Eye-skimming fringes rages on are putting women drivers at risk. Almost 190,000 admit that they have had an accident, ‘near miss’ or made a sudden manoeuvre as a result of their vision being limited by their hair whilst driving.
67 per cent of women have a hairstyle that can fall in their eyes whilst driving. But only a fifth secure their hair off their face. More than 9 million female motorists say that they never secure their hair back before driving.
The most common reasons include: not believing it necessary (33 per cent), not remembering to bring a hair tie (8 per cent) ,not wanting to ruin an existing hairstyle (8 per cent) and spots.
Next week: we reveal exclusively the threat posed by people who let their old Englsh sheep dog drive them back from the pub.
hair
Often there are good reasons for not tying hair back. But remember that mobile phone should not be used on the move

Road test Volvo V70 D5 SE Lux

Posted by Steve Orme on January 16, 2008 9:30 AM

Even before the last hardly known verse of Old Lang Syne had rung out, the one where Lang tells Syne that if they play their cards right the Scotlanders could be running England by 2008, the nation was apoplectic about rising train fares.
What has kept public transport disproportionately cheap compared to car ownership is a political will to have more people use it. A fine idea but so far as I can see, always doomed to failure.
The problem the train is not the lateness, or dirt or murderous gangs of hoodies. It’s the chattering:“Well I turned round and said he turned round and said that she said and then I turned round and told her….” Madam, you have now turned round so often to have screwed yourself through the carriage floor and bolted the train to the underside of Christmas Island.
At one station on my local line someone regularly appears to tip a lorry load of hens on board.
To drown out the incessant clucking other commuters turn up their personal music gadgets so now it’s broiler day at Bernard Matthews’ to a background of Take That.
Furthermore the train is exacerbating the current retail slump. There is only so much you can carry onto a train And that does not include a 36 inch television or flatpack Welsh dresser. For that you need the Volvo V70.
Volvos generally, especially the low-emissions five-cylinder diesel, are socially acceptable.
Firstly let there be no misunderstanding, the £30,745 V70 SE Lux is huge. A full size family really is needed. It would be quite feasible to hold a wedding reception in the passenger cabin while training a Labrador to retrieve in the load area. To that end there is even the option of a factory-fitted drop-down dog guard.
In fact bright spark ideas abound and while we are used to the notion that a crash in a Volvo is like waking up in a balloon dance, the brilliantly simple blind spot indicators that light up on the A-post when you are being overtaken are new to me.
There’s been some messing about with the interior decor but the V70 is till simple and practical.
There is a concealed tray below the boot floor that locks when the tailgate shuts, a forward-folding front passenger seat and rear headrests that dip automatically when the backrest is folded.
Considering it is almost as long as HMS Vanguard, the V70 is a surprisingly sprightly handler with a floating ride that’s slightly old-style Citroen. Without the bonkers bit. And it is quick, too reaching sixty in 8.9 seconds.
In manual or automatic the D5 pulls with enthusiasm and still manages over 40mpg. Unfortunately, though, you will come to notice this is not the quietest of diesels. Memo to Ford, speak to Audi.
So there it is. A practical family-friendly car so comfortable it’s almost worth getting pregnant for. It should prove most acceptable with the chattering classes.
v7rear
v70%20front
v70cabin
v70split

Size matters in Norwich missus

Posted by Steve Orme on January 14, 2008 4:35 PM

Yes, size really does matter and biggest, as kinder women have always made clear, is not always best.
Norwich City Council is proposing to charge drivers for parking permits based on length. Of their cars, that is.
Cars measuring less than 3.92m would charged the lowest price, between 3.92m and 4.45m would be charged a little more and owners of cars longer than that would have to pay top whack.
All, of course, in the name of lower emissions.
Good lord is nothing sacred. Why don’t councils just get on with the core job, emptying bins?
As if it’s not bad enough watching stunted jobsworth parking diversification officers strutting about with their hand-held computers, now the flat-hatted morons will be entrusted with surveyors tape measure. Or perhaps they will be allowed a theodolite so long as they don’t think it’s a Greek table lamp.
Alan Partridge may have to relocate from the travel tavern over this one.
And on that bombshell...

Subaru reveals new Forester

Posted by Steve Orme on January 11, 2008 1:36 PM


SUBARU is aiming to take advantage of the current trend for crossover vehicles by introducing a new Forester.
The company is predicting that the new Forester will quickly become more popular than the current favourite Subaru, the Impreza, as crossovers grow in popularity.
Based on an extended Impreza platform the new model is due on sale in April.
A car more popular then the Impreza? That's a rare old boast. At least from the pictures it's not as plug ugly but somehow I don't see this one becoming a favourite in the retail outlet car parks late at night.
forrester