Linas.P

Same for both of you... True to some degree, but because points are themselves somewhat arbitrary, then it simply can't be counted as risk factor. It is basically miscarriage of justice. And fairness in judgement and punishment is more important than some stupid private company profits. As well we need to appreciate practical implications of this... young person who already pays £2500 for insurance just because they are young (expensive, but not impossible to pay ~£300 month), misses that variable speed limit on 70MPH motorway changes for 60MPh to 50MPh for 1 section, minor and honest mistake. Would you argue it is fair to give them 3 Points and £100? I would say it is already harsh, but reasonable... I guess it would be better to do it like in other countries where first penalty in 12 month period is discount by 50%, so let's say warning and £50 fine perhaps would be fairer. But whatever we live in the country that hates motorists and we are in literal war against motoring, so the £100 and 3 points it is. Now would you say banning the driver from driving for 3 years is suitable punishment?! Probably not? But that is exactly what happens, because if young drivers get's points then their insurance will triple and now they are effectively banned for 3 years and life is pretty much ruined for 3 years. To contrast that - drunk river who already has 6 points, crashes the car without insurance, no death no injuries, but they get 12 months driving ban... at least that is what we as society deem appropriate 12 month no driving... So young person get's 3 years ban for nothing and older person gets 1 year ban for multiple and repeated offences. Or we saying punishment is variable based on who can afford it... some rock star could happily pay £20,000 insurance with 9 points on license and they are still danger to the society when driving. So is that your solution? Those who can pay can ignore the law?! Look - sure... life is not fair. But this is completely in government control. They can keep 12 points system and bans, they can make whatever they like in fines, but simple solution is not to publish it. Keep the point to themselves and for intended purpose i.e. where repeated offenders are banned from driving. I think that is good idea, just don't share it with private companies to pray on people after they been punished already. Same as they do with driving awareness courses, there is no public record of it, insurance companies can ask if you been on one, but they will never know, end of story. Obviously better solution is to say - this is sensitive private information which is out of your reach, not allowed to know.

No - you been found guilty and punished already. This is the basis of FAIR punishment. It is actually against human rights to be punished twice for same crime. If we say the fine should be £2000 and that is what we agree as society, then it's fine (like Switzerland or Finland has fines based on income), if we agree that fine should be £20, that is fine as well, I got 6 Euro as speeding fine for 11km/h over from Lithuania, similar from Germany I think it was 20 Euro for 8km/h over (although they now increased the fines). In the end of the day - our laws, police and government has to decide what fair punishment is, not some stupid privately owned company. And the punishment money should go back to victims or the society, not the shareholders of privately owned business. So on one hand I get what you are saying and agree - one has to be punished for breaking the rules, but on other hand I disagree - it is not privately owned insurance company who should be carrying it out. Same story with young drivers and old drivers now. In principle it is no longer your driving license that allows you or disallows you to drive, in this country now insurance companies that decides who can and who can't drive. Logic would be that if you passed your driving exam then you should be able to drive, as well if you over 80 and you passed your medical check-up or whatever and deemed fit to continue driving you should be allowed to drive. But insurance companies says NO. In theory you can drive, but in practice you will have to pay £8000 for insurance and nobody can pay it, well maybe some people can, but it is pretty much makes driving no longer viable. In summary I am just saying - insurance companies should not be the ones carrying out punishment, we have public institutions for that.

I like my meat and eat it too... whilst guzzling the petrol nonetheless... As well I don't mind people gluing themselves or chaining themselves - I suggest we leave them too it. I am sure they get bored after the day... and as well if they causing major disruption, then we just need to calculate the cost of it and charge them with repaying it. If we do that we may not even need to charge £40/ton Co2... climate terrorist will generate millions in fines everyday.

No, it is more of the question what problem we are trying to solve? If the problem we are solving is to defraud consumers and extract maximum profit then I am sure it works very well... perfectly logical! You would think so - right?! Little bit pre-amble. I already knew that her insurance will be cheaper because insurance IS cheaper for women, despite insurers saying it isn't... it is just fact. I can actually prove it. But when I was getting my insurance I ran quotes with and without her and as well for her alone. With her my insurance would have been ~£900, for her alone £700 (bear in mind when I was her age AND I already had 12 years of of driving experience my insurance was like £1600 AND on smaller and cheaper car). It costed me 19 BRITISH ROYAL POUNDS to add her to the policy for remaining 10 months. £11 was admin fee and £8 was the actual premium, and I even included no claims protection! Go figure! She literally had driving license for 15 minutes! It would have been £18 to do it next day, but I paid extra £1 to do it same day because I wanted her to drive herself home as surprise! Sure, that is all to do with the "safe driver I am" and her being second driver, but HOW does that make sense? No insurance whatsoever on that car if I am sitting on the side, but £8 for her to drive it alone with 15 minutes of driving history?!

It is not that I don't see it, there isn't any. Why adding business miles would make my insurance cheaper? why fully-comprehensive is cheaper than third party only? Why being married or having kids would make your insurance cheaper? why particular occupation makes insurance much more expensive/cheaper? Why having upgraded brakes that helps your car to stop better make your insurance more expensive? Why insurance companies do not check tyres despite tyres being pretty much most consequential thing to safety? Why insurance companies punishes the person who is not at fault, when somebody crashes into them? And to be honest... there is LOGIC... that logic is - their algorithm exist to extract as much money as possible, so whereas we looking at it from rational perspective of what makes us "safer" drivers, what makes our car "safer" to drive, because that seems to be important for reasonable person... insurers don't look into it this way, they look into it from the perspective "how to make insurance more expensive without looking like we discriminate people". Let's add opaque algorithm so that nobody know how the highest possible price was generated. Personal example of literally last week... I paid something like £580 for insurance on GS300, but that is European Road Side Assistance which is like £99 on it's own. My girlfriend was learning to drive and wanted to use the car to practice and maybe as well for exam, she could not do it because no insurance would provide learner insurance for her on such car (they happily did on RC200t and IS250, but not GS300). Now sounds kind of fair enough - GS is large car, not most suitable for learner. Anyhow... she passed her test and I wanted to add her to my insurance... could you guess how much it costed to put her on as second driver?

After spending quite a bit of time researching the topic further over weekend... I reached the conclusion this is all about taxation. Basically, just excuse to raise taxes... There is even agreed price £40/ton Co2. I remember we used to joke generally about overreaching taxation "one day they will start charging for air/breathing". Well... we literally reached that day! The funniest thing - they managed to twist it around and brain wash people so much, that some idiots are literally protesting and gluing themselves to roads to basically increase the tax to themselves and everyone else. I can imagine government ministers are clapping their hands and can't believe this is working and people are actually that stupid. Because either way you look at it... it is always about the money, we know that reduction of carbon won't get us to the target, we know that complete elimination of carbon emissions which would mean complete elimination of humans won't get us there, so we just end-up with taxing inevitable, sure it disincentives high carbon emissions, but in principle it becomes just a tax, it does not help environment, it just collects the money. And because Co2 emissions are essential by-product of being alive, this basically just taxes us on... living.

Wow... that is massive undertaking, well done on that! Can't really help you with the issue, I would suspect maybe one of the units is slightly out by one number... and even if they are correct PN they may still refuse to communicate. I believe there should be second step of DTCs for radar in Techstrem which shows connectivity between modules, I just cant access it as my car does not have radar cruise... I would suspect something along the lines "module stopped communicating". I was actually surprised when I discovered that wiring harness for Distance ECU is already there on my car as well. Was almost tempted to see how it would go retrofitting it.

No logic holds true with UK insurers. Most random thing increase and reduce premium, it is mess.

Adrian flux are a bit of joke, to be fair to them they expected particular clientele here (that associated with Lexus ownership) and they serve them well, but when I had issues insuring my RC they got something like £5000-6000 as well from them. Insurance companies almost never check anything until there is serious accident. Bending the truth slightly on things that can't be checked or could be interpreted is fine, for example I had speed awareness course once and I know they can't check it... but points on license is big risk, they can be checked and are checked occasionally. And once that happens they cancel your cover and you will never get another one again (I guess for maybe 5 years). P.S. I find it unfair that insurance companies are even allowed to ask this. We in "democratic" society agreed that speeding drivers will get 3 points +£100, they got their points, they paid their fine, the punishment is served. Now stupid insurance companies rolls along and wants to make money from this. No sorry - the punishment was already served, who are you police, government, why you have a right to alter and obviously always increase the punishment, so I think it is fundamentally unfair for them to be able to access such information. Point should only for the goverment to know and should only be used for intended purpose i.e. when 12 are collected take the license away. That is the sole purpose and should not be used for private companies to profiteer... So I don't blame you, but as it is today that is still big risk not declaring it.

Not sure about RC-F but certainly not the case for RC200t/300h, they cost much more to insurance than equivalent German car. Rarity is double edged sword... on one hand less likely to have "bad history" (I still can't believe how stupid is that - other people crashed car similar to yours, so you will pay more to insure it...), but they will cost more to insure because by being rare they are harder and more expensive to replace.

Indeed when I got RC200t my existing insurance on IS250 declined to cover me, which is just most ridiculous thing ever... one insurance adviser even told me "you an young guy in powerful sports car what do you expect"... and I was like "are you out of your mind... what do you define as 'young' I am over 30 already... and what is powerful car? It is 2L engine in it, does 2 doors makes it sports car...", but it is what it is. Lexus insurance categories, especially RC are ridiculously high. I believe RC F-Sport is like 42 and base model Luxury is 38, compare that to BMW 420i and their insurance category is 26, what other cars have 42... things like Jaguar XKR (XKRS is 46), or Aston Martin Vantage V8... RC-F is 44 if I remember right... I mean again - insurance is retarded in UK. They put RC300h F-Sport 2 categories below as 5L V8 RC-F... how does that make sense?! Although to be fair many things goes into category of the car and perhaps it is not that much cheaper to to repair RC300h in their eyes than it is to repair RC-F. Damage to the car (i.e. existing category) usually reduces the premium, because it has lower value. If you come to claim on salvage car then they will give you the valuation and will take 20% off for D/N or 40% of C/S usually. So that shouldn't affect it. As well I am working on presumption that Andrey previously had insurance and it wasn't £3000, so perhaps something has changed compared to last year?

I kind of specifically said that is discussion for another time, because there are many things that are important here... sure 3 times or 15 times of median income that is oversimplification. Other metric is house ownership, it continuously declining - and that tells us us that housing is generally becoming unadorable. Then we can look at the average house size and homes are becoming smaller. I happen to work with some of this stuff, but again I think that is not strictly related to the topic, shortage and affordability of housing isn't really climate change related. I can summarise by saying that housing in UK is broken and it is broken both because of incompetence of the government, but as well some malice, some corruption etc. I don't think we need to go into the details to agree that is doesn't work for younger generation, or several of younger generations. Housing supply is important, if there would be excess housing then they will be worthless regardless of BOE rate. But Let's just say developers are not idiots, so they always build just short to make sure there is captive market. Look at what is happening today - housing prices have dropped just slightly, number of sales dropped slightly and what do we have? All large developers are putting project on hold. I have large development near me, they bulldozed 1200 old council flats and planned to build new estate with ~1800, so they knocked down the plot in like 2022, did the ground works and it meant to be finished in 2024. Now when they suspect the prices will go down they put the project on hold until 2025 with planned completion in 2027. So they took 1200 homes out of the market, but they only going to put them back in when they think they can get maximum profit. Now sure that is small aspect of housing which is related to climate change and that is amount of council tax that needs to be paid, as well some of the convenience and comfort related things, like piping and taps... in my modern flat the water barely runs at all, because apparently that is more environmentally friendly. Every time I want to boil some water I need to wait a minute to fill the kettle for 2 cups worth. Not a big tragedy, but slightly annoying.

Did you have any claim by any chance? Apart of that I just advise to run a comparison site and review some of your questions, some inconsequential answers can have huge impact on quote. For example in my case adding business miles reduce the quote by £300 (from £900 to 600). Is there anything wrong to say that I will do 2000 business miles and 4000 personal? No... no issue with that, there is no way for insurance to know what part was business and what was personal... and as far as I am concerned I more likely than not do exactly 0 business miles, but £300 saved. Other question is your car stored in locked compound or locked garage or residential car park... well I can answer this question any way I like, because where my car is parked could be all 3 of those things... yet for some reason locked compound which comes under category other is £200 cheaper. As well check the date, the difference for me starting the insurance from next day vs. 10 days later was like 50%... so £1,200 vs. £600 by just moving the day a little bit. Go figure! Although £3000 is not in itself unbelievable, when I was 19 my first quote was £36,000... and my first insurance on IS250 when I was 25 was £2,400 or maybe £2,600. UK Insurance is ridiculous and retarded so I would not be surprised if that is what they decided to charge you for some weird reason.

Portugal is beautiful country... Funny enough I was rather surprised when I rented executive car in Portugal and what I got was Lexus IS300h. What are the odds of that happening? Apart of that one I have not seen another Lexus in neither Portugal nor northern Spain.

So what period is relevant then? I think quite opposite, the period we should be looking at is somewhere between 300,000 and 3,000,000. It is IRRELEVANT to look at less than 300,000 years and that is kind of key of this whole thread - LACK OF PERSPECTIVE. If we look at any shorter period then we simply can't say we understand the boundaries of what is NORMAL. Why this particular range? Why 300,000 years as the start? Because humans existed for at least 300,000 years, so we can discover what conditions are suitable for our existence, I am not sure it is controversial to say that the reason for climate protection is MAINLY our own survival. Why 3,000,000 years as end ... that is because that is the start of current ICE AGE. So this period of last 3,000,000 years defines the natural boundaries of current climate. All the societies created in last 12,000 years, or the ones that exist in known history of ~2,000 years are IRRELEVANT from perspective of climate, because we know climate processes takes at minimum 10s of thousands, but even 100s of thousands of years. I am not sure where my argument is getting lost, but regardless of our existences we are working with natural fluctuations of climate, if we create more Co2 or less Co2 is irrelevant, we still going to have +6C. It is not about acting or not acting, it is certainly not about reduction. Again even if we not going to stop with BEVs and we targeting ALL fossil fuel, it still makes no difference. How far you want to go before we have "1 child policy", maybe "0 child policy", maybe we should start outright executing every 3rd person alive? Where do we stop this action? And most importantly - even if we kill every human alive today we still going to have +6C, but maybe in 10,000 years instead of 5,000 years. This argument is idiotic in itself, because we saying we should stop living to protect the livelihood we have created, to protect our society, our cities, but with the goals as they are currently defined even total elimination of all humans does not get us there. As well it is simply NOT TRUE that majority of carbon was always stored underground. For last 20,000 years that may be true, but it is not true for majority of current ice age. In fact exactly the reason why ice age started (or so they speculate) was huge and sudden emission of Co2, the theories goes it is was either caused by meteorite impact of by super volcano. Either way - what we know from period of humans existence that the hotter climate is actually better, the glaciation is what we want to avoid. And now to kind of destroy my own argument a little bit - run away greenhouse effect can cause glaciation as well, so there may be reason not to do it, but not because of risk of global warming, but because of risk of global cooling. However, what we know far a fact - we will survive either way, mush less technologically advanced ancestors of our survived just fine... and if it turns into glaciation, then perhaps my snowboarding gear will not be wasted. You say that you not being inconvenienced, we that is alright, happy for you... but do you agree that I am being inconvenienced? And at the same time - why somebody can say it is fine to inconvenience me and people like me to achieve their stupid vision about climate which isn't even realistic. No - I am not grateful for ANYTHING at all for previous generations, BUT nor I blame them for what they did. I am happy to know they lived their lives happily and without stupid restrictions and the only thing I want to do is the same - live my life without arbitrary stupid restrictions and enjoy it, rather than being shackled by climate nonsense. If we circle back to previous analogy - I don't want to spit out what you have eaten, that is not the point, but at the same time it is a little bit hypocritical to tell me I should not eat as much, shouldn't even eat crumbs, because no food is left. In summary - I believe that human comfort, not survival... COMFORT is the most important thing, environment is secondary... environment will adapt to our comfortable living, and we will adapt to environment and that is fine. I cannot care less about animals going extinct when we still have cases of humans dying, just a matter of priorities. And all the rest is hygiene factors - sure we don't want to live around our own turds, we don't want to irradiate our food, we don't want to eat plastic waste, but that weather is few degrees hotter - so be it, it is actually nicer that way. P.S. I know all that sounds very dismissive about the environment etc. But I actually do care about environment, I do work on reducing my own waste, but I do it in the way that matters, not in the way that generates headlines and fake buzz. I am quite confident my personal emissions are much lower than average person living in developed world. I don't buy cheap plastic things, I don't by disposable things, I don't even waste food, I drive 18 years old car which by this point is pretty much carbon neutral, I know that my car is 0.3% of human Co2 emissions, so I take an action on things that are 40% emissions, 30% emissions, not 0.3% emissions. And the reason I am angry is that I am being punished for not doing 0.3% despite already saving maybe more than 50% elsewhere. Yet retards that contribute more than me (not you and not anyone on this discussion) comes and lectures me about how virtuous they are in their 3 tons Tesla Model X disaster on the wheels. If anything I find "climate action" as distraction from real problems, I would probably even say it is conspiracy to control and to extract wealth from people.

Fuel consumption was getting suspicious and it thought it could be carbon related, but now I think it was rather related with lazy lambda/o2 sensor. In principle it was waste of money, has not changed anything about how car drove or sounded. Emissions were as always, fuel consumption as well.

Yes Terraclean is hydrogen cleaning I had in UK, not sure if there are similar services anywhere else in Europe.

I would not say it is the best product, but as far as I am concerned it worked, one of the cheaper products on market. So it is not like I particularly recommend it, but I was personally satisfied with how it works: https://www.wynns.uk.com/product/engine-flush/

That is the data I have already linked... I do apologise that data is in "freedom units", but as you can clearly see the temperature in last interglacial period 120,000 years ago was 41F and currently is at ~34-35F. The graph is made by Utah Geology institute, but same data can be found provided by NASA, NOAA... it is pretty factual and to be honest nobody really disputes it. What the climate looked like back then is harder to say, but fossil records indicates that whole planet looked more like jungle, humidity was higher because temperature was higher, not sure if current rain forests will turn into desert, but deserts are likely to turn into rain forests, for example Sahara desert in many places will be below sea level. Yes - I did calculations and it turns out humans are responsible for 90% of excess carbon, despite being responsible for only 1.5% of total. To be honest I was little bit surprised and kind of realised why ecomentalists are so obsessed with human emissions, however it still doesn't make any difference. This is rather simple to work out, because past carbon records shows that in glacial period carbon concentration was just 220ppm and as mentioned predicted level of Co2 in interglacial period is as high as 2000-4000ppm. So if consider that it takes 20,000 for Co2 level to increase by ~20 times, then we can quickly deduct that naturally occurring excess is ~0.09% (I rounded it to 0.1%). As such if human emissions totals 1.5%, then we are responsible for over 90% of excess and we speeding-up climate change. BUT that is the point - it is all irrelevant. You see - we are burning the carbon which was once in atmosphere, but due to various processes turned into fuel we using today. So in principle there is finite amount of carbon on this planet, we just extracting and returning it to atmosphere where it once was. We not making any NEW carbon, it is just never ending cycle - carbon gets absorbed and some of it ends-up under the earth crust, then it get's released in some way. If not for us burning it in vehicles, then there are thousands of other ways, for example one very common are volcano eruptions. So... I am basically saying two things: 1. it is not a problem to release the carbon back into atmosphere, there is finite amount of carbon and dependant on how much there is in the atmosphere we can have either tropical climate or iceage. I much rather prefer tropical climate, but that is as well irrelevant because these processes are natural and contently fluctuates. 2. current climate action just punishes us and wastes opportunity cost to spend our time and resources on more meaningful things. Banning ICEVs just get's us nowhere, because our goals indicates that we want to remove ~1.6-2.1% of Co2 per year to stay where we are (or ~101% of all excess), but we only targeting the 0.011% (which is 0.05% of all excess). The point being - we are majorly inconvenienced for miniscule reduction in Co2 emissions which has absolutelly no impact to climate change. As well we have a goal of no more than 1.5C increase in temperature which is simply unachievable and incompatible with human life on this planet. We are not talking about transition to BEVs, we talking about no electricity, no heating, nothing... but the problem is that modern human is already very efficient with energy. Yes combined 8.1 billion of us contributes that 200 million in pre-industrial times, but individually we are contributing maybe 5% of what pre-industrial humans contributed. If we going to abandon the industrialisation and all go back to being medieval, then we will increase the pollution not reduce it. So the only remaining option is - we need LESS HUMANS. And even then we still have not found the way to reverse the climate change, just slow it down a little bit. Remember - our goal is over 100%, so even by reducing it by 90% we still going to contribute extra excess Co2. This is battle that cannot be won, unless we find the way to capture and store the carbon. It is not about whenever you drive ICEV or BEV, not about heated pools, it is about removing more carbon from atmosphere than we together with natural processes produce. I could expand into explaining how houses were much cheaper despite 15% interest, it is rather complicated topic for another time. As for why older person needs to explain benefits of change to young person, that is again very complicated topic, I would over-simplify by stating that basically previous generations had an opportunity to benefit from the changes, whereas later generations did not - hard to explain, so it is time for another analogy. Imagine we are all invited to dinner with buffet - you are invited at 6PM, somebody at 7PM, I am invited at 8PM and generation after me at 9PM. So you arrive at 6, fill-up your stomach and are happy, somebody arrives at 7, not all the food is left, but it is still plenty, so they fill-up their stomach and sit happy, I arrive at 8 and there is only crumbs left... it try to find something to earth from those crumbs, but I am told to be mindful of people that will arrive at 9. The problem he is that I will be hungry either way, because crumbs were never enough to fill me-up and people arriving at 9 likewise still be hungry. You may sit by the table and say - well it is good there is little bit of change and people are being told off not to take too much, but that is because you have already eaten... And this is paradox of false scarcity. The solution here is not to prevent from eating crumbs, the solution here is to make more food for everyone. To say that we need to stay below 1.5C is arbitrary and false target. To say that we should not drive, or better not own cars because of excess Co2 is false goal. The true problem is that we living on the planet that has natural changes in climate, not all of them convenient for our existence and therefore we have desire to control it, but WE CAN'T. At least not yet. Because to control it, does not mean just reducing our emissions, it does not mean completely eliminating any emissions, it means we need to artificially remove more emissions that we produce and some more. The total global emissions are ~2.45Tt (terra-tons), human emissions are 0.036Tt (36 giga-tons), if we want to keep current environment as it is (assuming it is ONLY Co2 that contributes to climate change, which is NOT the case), then we need to find the way to capture say 40Gt of Co2 per year. No eating of grass, not amount of cycling, no amount of staycation will get us there, we not only need to stop emitting, we need to to start actively taking carbon out of atmosphere. OR alternatively we can accept that our cities will need to move 10miles away from current shoreline in 5000 years time and that we will live in tropical climate around the world. Sadly, I will need to find different past time activity rather than snowboarding if I plan to live 5000 years from now.

I would have done if that would have been possible, but that was absolutelly not an option... it was gated with security and if you don't have permit then you don't get it. That said I have seen security guard parking his Aston Martin there... yeah security guy in Aston Martin! As for housing... which is to be honest not climate related, just another failed government policy... it is simply factually not true that such issues existed in the past. Median house used to cost 5 times median annual salary, now it is 14 times... and trust me I am not on median salary. Likewise "median" house price is kind of meaningless in London... so obviously that is more of London issue, but still even after adjusting for inflation housing is like 3 times more expensive now than it was in 90s and 8 times more expensive than it was in 60s and 70s. That is not 8%, not 80%, that is 800% more expensive after already adjusting for inflation. I am pretty sure the same would apply to parking, to road taxes, to car insurance... and obviously there are brand new taxes that didn't exist at all, like congestion charge and ULEZ. The public transport is as well much more expensive. And again we just talking about the costs here, but soon it is going to be NOT about the cost, it is actually becoming outright impossible. It is coming to the point where is does not matter that you can afford £20 a day parking, there simply not going to be parking space at all, it does not matter than you don't mind £12.50 a day ULEZ, soon there is simply not going to be the road which you can use to get to your destination because of stupid LTN. I don't think paying £100 fine could be brushed off as "just a costs of living". We getting to the point where just earning more and paying is not enough, because we will be prohibited from having the car at all. And this is particularly true about BEVs and charging... all is good if you can afford BEV, but if you don't have where to park it and where to charge it, then there is no utility in it. And I guess unlimited amount of money could resolve it, but we getting to the point where it is not just "little bit more expensive", we talking that you have to move to another area altogether get £800,000 house which has off-street parking, and we are not living in magical world where money does not matter, in reality it does matter and it is getting to the point past "charge it until it hurts" and to the point where the charges are simply impossible to afford.

We are talking about the person who is on ~£250,000-300,000/year himself and who religiously cycles into work every morning and looks like damn homeless in the office with creased shirt and suit... and sneakers. And I wasn't in his face or anything, but there were few occasions where I said something about cyclists in the pub and few times during townhall there was like anonymous question board... and I put something along the lines "can the parking places be made bookable in the basements for those who drive"... and he was like "what the hell, nobody drives where, who would want to park anyway?!". Isn't it funny thought - there are 10 parking spaces not used at all, but they would not make them available to be booked on the system... what they are afraid off? that somebody bursts their bubble?! So when it came to the end of the year - it was like "exceeded the expectations as always, great job, here is you bonus, but no promotion and no pay rise"... "thank you very much for bonus and feedback, I will send you my notice tomorrow".

That would suggest either stuck oil control rings, or cylinder wall wear, because that is excessive. Basically, you would burn all the oil between the services and hence that explains why dipstick was dry... Obvious it has happened 60k ago, so it is kind of worrying when thinking about what is condition of engine now. 1L/3000km is "within Lexus spec.", but that is because their spec is ridiculously "generous" for these engines. I think official allowed is 1 quart per 1000 miles or maybe 600 miles, something ridiculous like that. Anything better than that and they refuse warranty claim for "oil burning", but obviously this isn't healthy. My old IS250 was burning 2L between services when it was ~130-150k miles (209-241k kilometres), as well it had common VVTi rattle on cold start. However, what I noticed was that all burn started after 5000-6000 miles and cold morning VVTi rattle would start around 6000 miles as well. So first I tried engine flush, made no difference to oil burn, but it would not rattle until 7000, maybe 8000 miles, and the oil was noticeable cleaner. Whereas without flush the oil would already be dark after 3000 miles, with flush even at 6000 or 7000 miles it would still be relatively clean. So what I started doing was simply changing oil twice a year with flush every other time. So basically get service at Lexus once a year and in the middle of it did one oil change and flush myself... as I was doing ~12,000 miles a year, this worked out nicely to oil change every 6,000 miles. Since I started doing that I have never topped-up oil again and never had rattle from VVTi... all the way to 200k miles (and probably more if car wouldn't have been stolen). Stuck control rings could get unstuck with some luck, will probably need few flushes and some sort of carbon removal service (I tried hydrogen, but can't say it worked...), but if there is already wear on the cylinder walls than nothing can be done.

Seeing LS400 would brighten my day to be honest! Don't get me wrong - I don't have depression or something, but knowing economic realities is kind of my job, or at least those that I manage nowadays, so I greeted with large dose of reality everyday. I guess it could be as well related to worldwide squeeze of what was known as "middle-class", poor people were always poor and had horrible quality of life, rich people likewise were always rich and got all the spoils, but it is middle class that was aspirational for many working class people and that is what is disappearing nowadays. It is no longer an option of getting good education, getting into desirable field, working hard, better than all your colleagues and getting yourself from just hard worker into middle-class and getting little bit more relaxed. I am fully subscribed to the model - "work hard and play hard", so I am not afraid of hard work, for all of my years in employment my appraisal was "exceeded expectations", the problem is that nowadays if you work hard, you just going to pay excessive amount of taxes and when it comes to "playing" you are told that 99% of things you can't do anymore. So it ends up just being work hard for sake of working hard and never play. I myself came basically from poor family in poor country, but I am nowadays firmly in what would have been classed "middle class" in 90s and the quality of life is much worse than it was. Important to say - arbitrarily restricted, so it is not like middle-class has less money, simply said that money provides lesser quality of life (and I don't mean it is just inflation), you are simply not allowed to enjoy your wealth anymore. So in 90s poor struggled because they were poor, today poor still struggle because they are poor, but middle-class are not struggling because they are poor, but because they are arbitrarily restricted from enjoying their life with all sorts of excess taxes and rules etc. I guess I would summarise it as middle-class nowadays having quality of life of what used to be working class, and working class is even worse off - we have terms like "working poor" nowadays. And I am not even joking - 30 years ago, person in my position would have had corner office, dedicated parking space and would drive 911 into work (this is quite particular position we are talking about and I am not exaggerating, I know exactly the people who did this work in 90s and their life-style)... however nowadays it is all virtue-signalling, specifically related to climate scam. Nowadays people in same position are either cycling or using public transport, not because we can't afford 911, but because we are not allowed to show-off. For example our new office building came without parking spaces at all, they had like 10 in the basement and all of them were empty all the time, because it is simply embarrassing or not fashionable to drive anymore. I have tried all possible ways to get parking there, but it is simply impossible, because once I get parking space then climate facade falls down, because everyone pretends they don't want to drive, or that others don't want to drive, but when suddenly one person drives then everyone are like "why is he driving and I am cycling in the rain like idiot"... basically it is wide spread psychosis where everyone pretends they like punishing themselves so much, talking how they had another puncture and how they £4000 carbon bike got stolen again and walking with brown line of shame on their back... but it only works as long as everyone are doing it. When somebody come and says - "fff it I drive"... suddenly everyone pulls the knives out. Again, not even a joke, part of the reason I had to change the job was that I didn't get pay rise and promotion, just because I was vocal about parking and new manager didn't like it so much. Now that is good for me and tough luck for him, because with single e-mail I got job doing less and with 30% higher salary, but the whole move was predicated on him hating me because I drive to work and he cycles...

I am glad you feel that way, but I honestly don't believe statistically that adds-up, at least not for me, not for people born in 90s. Not for those that finished the school in 2008 during financial crisis. I think there was strong growth from 70s to 90s, so generation before me kind of had it better. There was as well strong growth and improvement of all aspects of life after WW2, sort of 50s-70s. Some issues in mid 70s, but to be fair worked out into everyone's favour. Whereas since 90s we just have crisis after crisis. Leaving London is indeed on the cards, although it would be the same amount of effort to just leave UK altogether. The issues in UK are way beyond just London. I have changed job last year and probably will do again soon, unless the pay rise surprise me somehow. At least in that aspect I have no issues, but I am more of exception here. I have covered healthcare, I don't think it has improved in UK, but at the same time it isn't relevant for me. Economy is way way way worse, not even comparable, everything today is much more expensive than it was 30 years ago if we compare like for like, Freedom is definitely worse - nowadays you have to be careful what you say, because almost anything could get you cancelled (jokes aside I was even banned on this forum for suggesting IS300h is not fast car, so forget saying something more seriously politically incorrect), Employment is much worse, not for me in particular as I am jumping from enormous pay rise to another enormous pay rise and I have head hunters standing in the line to offer me new role, but the job market overall is trash nowadays. There was short period last year where after covid there was sudden shortage and it set back the clocks for maybe pre financial crisis days, but compared to 30 years ago is horrible. Especially for new graduates now trying to find first job is thought, I have hired many graduates, I did mentoring... it is unbelievably competitive and the career opportunities are junk. Companies really do not promote people anymore, so the only solution is jumping around from competitor to competitor and getting on the career ladder that way, but forget the times where one could join junior position and in 10 years become MD... those times are gone. Salaries are generally speaking jokes as well, or at least if you compare it with real estate prices (although this is more British problem), but somebody in my position in 90s would have been buying houses in cash every year, nowadays I can barely afford 2 bedroom flat on 30 years long lease. Air travel... not sure... I think first time I was on the plane was in 1998 and back then Ryanair had food included in price and normal size luggage... certainly it was overall more expensive and less common, but quality itself I would argue was better. Sure now you can have weekend city trip and flights for less money than the bus to airport, but you treated like animal on low cost airlines and even on normal airlines quality has degraded. All in all, I reckon that the problems is with me being born on the downturn, for somebody who lived longer it may not be so noticeable as the life got better and worse many times, whereas in my case it was only getting worse and there were no periods of it getting better. I wish it to be true, that this is just period of temporary down-turn which will be followed by 20 years growth... but again it seems to me it will be double whammy with all this environmental nonsense and "self-censoring", I think life is bad as it is now and if there is crisis to follow on top of that it will get very dire.

Not necessarily... if the car had stuck oil control rings and had excessive blow by and burning oil, then it can quite easily burn trough quite a lot of oil. 1L per 1000km is not unusual, in fact they get much much worse. Oil mixed with coolant/water is quite specific failure mode - that would be head gasket failure and 4GR-FSE are not known for head gaskets. The only way this happens on this engine is if water pump is not replaced in time and coolant leaks out (quite be quite rapid as well), then engine overheats and it could throw the gasket, but this is not common. The oil control rings issue is more common, so I would not expect issues with HG, nor coolant, I would rather expect excessive oil burn, hence why it was low. As result of oil being low I would honestly be most concerned about crank bearings and how they look, I would look for "forbidden glitter" in oil pan. That would be my main worry, not head gasket. How is you oil burn is looking? do you need to top-up often?