Linas.P

That is only the cash paid from family Trust, excluding the controlling share in the real estate business and excluding bail-out of his failed ventures.

It just shows that he wasn't amazing businessman, building empire from nothing. The main misconception is that he build his wealth from nothing (like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, or Jeff Bezos). It was not the case - he born rich. The comparison with S&P 500 is very valid one, because of how he got his wealth. If he would be like those aforementioned businessman, then sure it is inappropriate, because they had no money just their brain to work with and that can't be invested. He instead started rich and he could simply invest money and don't do any business, but he thought he could make more money himself than letting investments build his wealth. This is not unreasonable assumption is one believes to be very good businessman, because even moderately growing business should outpace market index. I would make such assumption about myself as well, but I just don't have inherited billions. He did have those billions and this was reasonable decision to make - he decided he can beat the market, but now we can see he has failed, not only he has not beat the market, but he lost billions of his father fortune. So again in trumps place S&P comparison is very appropriate, other rich kid could have easily invested and let the wealth managers to look after his wealth, even divorces and scandals wouldn't have mattered. As well trump likes to act as if he is in that £100 billion club and comparable with other billionaires no he isn't. It is like that joke - "can wife make man a millionaire" - "yes she can if he was billionaire"... just replace wife with Trump here and the same applies.

As other explained you can sell it after paying some fees to DVLA... just don't be surprised if the plate is worthless. Most "private" plates are worthless, because they only mean something for the person who bought it in the first place, they are cryptic as well and very few have real value. General trend - the less numbers it has the more expensive it is (most expensive being F1 at the moment), if the plate is just older standard plate with some letters having some meaning they they can be bought for £150 and not even worth selling, because after you pay DVLA fees you will earn total if £10 😄 In short - people incorrectly think that private plates are valuable, 99% of them are not and 1% is mostly valuable only to particular owner. I remember my friend bought £800 and thought he got good deal because plate on it was E5 PUR and seller said that plate alone is worth £1500, by showing that similar length plates "A 0 AAA" are worth £1500 upwards on sites like "plates for less". Now obviously - there is no meaning in the plate he bought, so when he tried to sell it he realise that he needed to pay £80 for DVLA, then pay ~£56 to get original plate to be put back on the car, then pay £99 auction fees and estimated value for the plate was £150... in short the plate was beyond worthless and not worth selling at all.

That trump is poor businessman is a fact. It is estimated that he inherited ~$1.8-2.2billion from his father (New York real estate business) and that was circa 1980... considering inflation that would be worth ~$7.8 billion today. Over the time simply keeping money at the bank would have yielded ~2.3% growth over inflation, but even basic investment into index which doesn't require any sophistication would have yielded closer to 6% growth. In simple terms - if trump would have sold the real estate business interests and kept money in the bank he would be worth ~ $5.77 billion or if he would have asked the bank to diversify and invest his money with low risk/low growth products (what we call "wealth preservation" in wealth management) then he would be worth $27.17 billion. Let's assume he does 50/50 - keeps some cash for pornstars, prostitutes and lavish lifestyle and lets the other half to be invested - that should still leave him with conservative estimate of ~$16 billion after so many years. And importantly he didn't even need to move a finger, just enjoy life whilst money is making money. What trumpster is actually worth today? Estimate ranges between $3.1-3.7 billion and estimate debt is estimated ~$0.8-1.4 billion - so let's say he has net worth around the same as he inherited in 1980s or $2.3 billion... this means his business ventures have lost him like $14 billion over the years in todays money and that is even assuming he had no financial or investment knowledge and just let his bank to invest in most basic and safest indexes and products. If we convert it back to the money he inherited - his current net worth would be equivalent to $0.68 billion in 1980s... meaning he basically lost 69% of what he inherited. Not a single business venture he created was ever profitable in long run, he didn't not make any money and all the wealth was inherited, not only that he lost majority of it's value over the time. I mean he is by no means poor, but is this sign of successful businessman? Or rather spoiled billionaire child who blown his father fortunes? I am sure this is "ill-informed" opinion... right?

...or deliberate tax avoidance scheme - you see if you declare loss, then you pay no tax. It doesn't really matter if it was genuine loss or one buys helicopter. Hence as I said - it is fundamentally better to tax wealth, than it is to tax income.

Probably just another bad investment from poor businessman trump is - why should we prop-up his bad decisions by public tax?

Why don't let the Trumpster resort bankrupt and then let some true Scot to buy it out and make it truly benefit the Scottish people, rather than further enriching the person who is already rich.

That is very good point - lifetime CO2 saving on BEV is about 30% compared to that of ICEV. I am not sure if Hybrids or PHEVs achieve 30% saving, because extra batteries adds pollution and they are not CO2 free when running... but even if they can achieve 20% reduction... that is certainly better solution, without any downsides of BEV and with most of the benefits. This is why I have considered PHEV - I would have been able to drive it to work on electricity alone, so for all intended purposes it would be just as good as BEV, despite having tiny battery in comparison, yet saving most of tailpipe emissions where it matters (in the city) and it doesn't have huge polluting battery, yet if I need to drive further I ca just put petrol. And all this as well can be charged from 220V domestic socket overnight, doesn't require any fancy 7kV or 50kV charger. That is as well the reason why I said BEV battery sizes should be limited and aimed at ranges of 50-100miles at most, BEVs should be city cars for short distances, because that is the only place where they are actually really beneficial. Long range BEVs with large batteries are not that environmentally friendly and long range driving is already 5 times less pollution than in urban environment, so I doubt BEVs saving any CO2 there at all. Really optimised BEV could be something like BMW i3 with "range extender" - basically PHEV, but with ICE engine being extremely efficient generator rather than driving the wheels directly. Again - small battery for the city, some sort of ICE for long range.

Michelin PS4 (if they are PS4) drops out very noticeable blow ~7C and feels almost like you need to warm them-up.

if you put it in S, then it goes 4th gear limit automatically.

RWD car in wet maybe 😄 It won't change to 6th at 70MPH if you limited it to 4th... maybe you have accidentally switched PWR mode?

When you move gearstick from D to S, it limits the range to 4 gears automatically as Colin explained. So if you were driving in 2nd and moved the stick to S, it will show 4th, but you would still be driving in second, but if you continue accelerating eventually it will changed-up to 4th. However, if you were in 6th, then it would downshift to 4th (say if you want overtaking that is great). Gear position on the screen shows the gear you are actually in, the screen with just a number shows S limit. As per your first picture, you are in first gear, but you have limited range to 4. Then you are in 1st gear on D, and then you are in the 1st gear, just now not limited on S mode (selected 6th).

Good example of that is £2bn paid as subsidy to bus companies! This is literally tax money being given to privately owned companies which makes profits and then they claim they spent £4-7bn on the roads - clearly at least £2bn of that did nothing to improve the roads! My understanding is that money was subsidy paid for "unprofitable" routes, but they allowed the companies to keep profits from other "profitable routes". This is good example as to why public transport probably should be publicly owned, because this is clearly bizarre.

I think this is probably key point of discussion here - is the system flawed enough that goverment should do something about it? I think it is flawed enough and was like that for way too long. When it comes to corporations not paying their due, then I know the answer why government would not be wiling to do anything about it - there is army of lobbyist and many MPs have conflict of interest because they have business association or their families has, so they won't be removing any tax loopholes, in fact they may be adding more. Looking at changes to tax code, the only thing they did was to make "barrier of entry" higher for tax avoidance. Simply said if in the past somebody earning £200k/year would have been able to avoid tax and corporation enring £1m, then they made sure that cost (barrier) of entry just doesn't make sense to avoid paying taxes. However if anything for somebody earning £1m/year or for corp with £10m/year it actually became easier and there various schemes... If you ask why that is - they don't want that tax avoidance would be obvious on the surface, but they really really want for the loopholes to exist, because £ billion business demands this via lobby, or even direct association. I consider this corruption, but as long as it is called "lobby" it is apparently legal. I don't have an answer why they fail to make rules fairer for poor - perhaps poor = stupid = easy votes? Universal credit meant to be that update, but for anyone who seen it... I am sure they don't want to touch it even with barge pole - system is a mess, no more effective and just causes more mistakes - poor being left to starve and freeze, whist there is still army of people using various loopholes to exploit it. As well just to be clear - I didn't say that people on the dole are the only burden, or that all 42% are burden, same as you I think burden is on both ends. What is kind of annoying that if you are somewhere in the middle - a fair person, working hard and building your life, then you are exploited from both ends.

I have long said myself that taxation has to change in principle, I am sure we would have different opinion on those said principles. but it seems we agree that current system has to change.

yes... just as example - in 2014 I got 2008 IS250 with 120k miles, drove it for 6 years to 200k miles and sold it still in great shape, bodywork in good condition (bar few stone chips) leather is nice and no mechanical faults. In comparison recently got one IS250 from auction 2006 and with 102k miles... and it is just horrible all around, probably 4 times as bad as mine one was at 200k miles. So one should not assume good condition on the mileage alone.

The best overall value for IS250 are in high miles but well maintained cars - high mileage depreciated the car, but if used on motorway doesn't really wears it out - so could be great purchase. So to get best value for money I would look at the service history rather than mileage. Buying lower mileage cars on Lexus are just not as important as on other makes, where at 60k is about where they start to fall apart.

Not making them a villain - just stating the fact that corporate tax in UK is 19%, but in certain cases could be lowered to 10% (for patents and similar). Whereas most of large international corporations pays well below 10% and some even below 1%. I don't support progressive taxes (i.e. taxing success and hard work), nor I am proposing some silly punitive taxes -I would be completely happy if they would at least pay their due of 19%.

Seems like Lexus is not going to be brand for me in next decade. Design looks alright, but in practice it is not much better than paperweights for me if I can't charge them. Solid state batteries sounds good, but not revolutionary enough to remove the need for home charging. One thing I like stylistically is the use of " lift backs" - this is quick win when it comes to car practicality, without sacrificing much. I have always thought that it would have been amazing if RC and LC would have been liftbacks, or even IS and GS. Many cars have reasonable size boot, but you just can't use it because of loading restrictions. IF one can open the boot with whole rear glass, this now make very usable space which is easy to load to the capacity.

Great - and as I said I am sure there were several cars like that, but you said as it is was the rule and all cars were like that, which is simply not the case. I do agree that leather was actually rare - but not because it was not desirable material, but rather because it was expensive, so only the richest and top of the range cars had it. So it does not surprise me that it is still to this day considered choice of absolute luxury. Not that not only the interiors were leather, but Bentley, Royce's and Jags even had lambs wool carpets! Once we look in the modern form of cars, where driver sits inside, they often have leather interior. Now the issue I have with copying some pictures are that many cars are resorted and you can make an argument that they were not originally leather and whoever restored them chosen leather (which may be true) - so I tried to find cars with still surviving leather interior and that is more difficult:

What is the code for vsc?

I would definitely stay away from such car as far as possible 3000 miles in 10 years just means it was siting around a lot and that can't be good. Maybe at £6k and compared to 100k miles car this would be viable alternative - one car would need some TLC due to being driven 100k, the other one due to sitting too much so all in all it probably would be nice to pay a little bit extra to have what is basically never used car, for thing like paint, leather an steering being in good condition. But paying almost double for the car just because it was sitting makes no sense. That is unless somebody can prove it is like "museum piece" - started very week, warmed-up and dry stored all the time.

Just simply not true! Yes some cars at some points in time had wool/velvet for passengers and leather for drivers - but this is rather exception than the rule. Velvet was as well used as upgrade on low end car brands - like Ford or Renault which were not "luxury" cars offered velvet over plain cloth, so some people incorrectly attributing velvet as being "high-end", but that is only true for cheap cars and not for all cars. In either case this statement is not at all the case for all cars all the time. You just need to look at most luxury car brands throughout the years and you will see that leather was always at the top of the range - Roylls-Royce, Bentley, Cadillac, Jaguar etc. From the beginning of the time offered leather option and that was optional extra (an upgrade). Velvet was in particular short lived fashion in late 60s to early 80s, again I have explained that in detail in my previous post - simply because it offered more colour options and stylistic choices as affordable price (leather being just to expensive to process).

I agree that not all of 42% are burden, that is correct and I am just quoting the number provided without really knowing the detail, so it relies on original post being accurate. For example I don't know if 42% includes all people i.e. kids or elderly who have retired... or it only includes working age people who can work, but for some reason doesn't, or don't earn as much as threshold - in which case it is different story altogether. That said I still think that there are too many people who rely on benefits rather than trying to earn their living. And to say that working is always better than not working isn't true either. When I was studying I work as a waiter and although this does not quality as I was studying at the time, I just realised it doesn't make sense to work at that job. I think if I would have worked full time it could have earned £14-18k a year before tax, before paying expenses for travel, before paying for my own uniform and it's maintenance, before paying other expenses of being employed - like getting the coffee and sandwich during break... etc. All in all it could have lived better from unemployment benefits than working actually hard job (sometimes standing for 10-12 hours and walking upwards to 50-80k steps per shift). I may need to look at exact numbers again as I don't exactly remember ranges of when an where one would "break-even", but it was along the lines that if one ears between 12-20k a year, it is better to live on benefits, 20-25k is about the same, or if it is family (or single woman) with kids actually better not to work and only over 25k is when one really starts making more than they could get from benefits.

That is on individual level, but does not include corporations. I think I agree with Philip here - 42% of people are burden, so we can't make it work before we fin the ways to empower 42% to contribute at least something, that is definitely one way to make system fairer for everyone. And I am not saying just cut all benefits, but we need to make sure that working will always remains better option than sitting on the dole. Other issue - we fundamentally tax people incorrectly (and most countries do as well). We tax people on their income, not on their wealth. So we disincentivising earners and incentivising hoarders - as such it is possible to be high earner, but comparably poor (say earn £100k/year and being largely unable to buy home, with exception of taking mortgage for 35 years) and it is possible to just own land and houses for £8 million and pay no taxes at all. My favourite bad guys are for example are Grosvenor family - estate worth £35billion, pays **** all taxes. And what is even more annoying - where they got this estate? Have they build business empire, created some amazing technology? No Hugh Grosvenor was simply given the land by Queen, just because... basically it was public property which was given to private owner and that is how Grosvenor family is rich.. and they don't pay taxes either. The modern equivalent would be something like Boris giving £35billion worth of public property to some Tory party member... it would be outrageous... ohhh wait... government handled £37bn to failed Track&Trace programme which mostly benefited friends and associates of Tory party and their private consultancies- Dido Harding at the front of it. Has anyone lost the job - no, gone to jail - no, faced any sorts of consequences - no! And we continue to try to justify taxing motorists until it hurts and beyond, despite wasting more money on stupid project which fails.