Linas.P

Statistically cancer death has increased, not decrease in last 30 years as proportion of all deaths. Again I agree that technology has increased, we have better medicine, better diagnostics methods, but service in my opinion became worse. To be fair, I have not used NHS yet, in the time I lived in UK I only been to doctors once and that was privately as I have private health cover anyway, but looking at statistics it seems to become worse and worse each year. As well, I would question if people 30 years ago considered that having private medical insurance was necessity as it is today, so I would put NHS with it overstretched capacity overall in the list of how quality of life became worse.

Is it really? Were there 6 months wait lists 30 years ago? Did GPs gave painkillers pretty much regardless of your symptoms or why you came to see them? The technology became better, I agree, but the service overall?!

That is correct and at no point I have denied human pollution is not contributing, but what I am saying is that we hold ourselves to unrealistic goal and standard. Current target is to limit temperature change to 1.5C... but that is clearly impossible considering that temperature will naturally raise by 6C. What it seems to be the case is that 1.5C limit was deliberately created to be impossible to achieve so that people could be forever punished for not reaching it. I am not suggesting to damage the environment deliberately, but if the definition of damage is anything about 350ppm of Co2, when even natural level could reach 2000ppm, then this is just punishing ourselves unnecessary. I don't think comparison with smoking or murder is relevant here... because climate change this is false premise. Both smoking and murder kills, I don't think there is evidence to suggest that climate change kills, or that human contribution to it does anything that is in itself unnatural. "No-one believes that we can stop naturally occurring climate change" - here you just got me confused... naturally occurring climate change is likely to raise the temperature by 6C and naturally occurring Co2 will get to 2000ppm level, anything below these number is is UNNATURAL, so to achieve them we need not to reduce our pollution, but to completely reverse naturally occurring Co2. Basically a carbon capture of some sort at massive scale. Now to be fair natural increase in Co2 is just about 0.1%, whereas humans are responsible for ~1.5-2% of Co2, so 90% of excess Co2 are created by humans. But then the problem comes to policies - ICEVs are responsible for only ~2.4% of global Co2, BEVs are 30% cleaner. So 30% of 2.4% of~1.5% excess means that removing cars from the roads will have total impact of the policy is 0.011%, whereas what we need is to actually reduce the carbon by 101% until it gets to 350ppm and then reduce by 100% thereafter. That is why I am saying - the goals they have are incompatible with human life on earth. It is not about just driving or eating meat, we can exist because we need not to reduce carbon emissions, but to completely eliminate them and more. "control the climate in such a way that we have a climate that is most suitable for us <...> that's precisely what we're trying to do" No... again, the argument is that pre-industrial period is most suitable for our life. This is debatable, but that is what ecomentalists are seeking and what the policies are trying to get, but again this is impossible, we need -101% to get there, not -0.011%. Air quality benefits can be achieved by better roads as I have demonstrated previously, not necessarily by removal of the cars. In my view - if government charges the people to use roads, then they are responsible for providing infrastructure. If they don't want to provide infrastructure, including free parking etc., or if they outright want to ban people from using them, then they should not charge people for access. We know for a fact that driving is not worse and less accessible than before, yet road tax keeps increasing. So it is less of conspiracy and more of purely bad deal. I am not sure about comparison with horses and I may be just missing something, but I just can't see how BEV car can give me more freedom than ICEV. Let's not forget as well that large amount of pollution is coming from brakes, tyres and road surface wear, so again reduction is minimal. Air quality improvements are as well questionable, because again better improvements could be achieved by simply improving the roads and secondly methodology of how they are calculated is very much flawed, to the point where I consider it misleading. There is no risk of us running out of space for the roads... currently only 3% of land in UK are used, which roughly translates into 1% residential, 1% commercial and 1% of roads and parking. So we can literally double all 3 and still have 94% of land left to use. So the argument of running out of space for roads is simply unfounded. Not to mention that road capacity could be increased vertically, thus not requiring any extra land. For example we can increase throughput of of crossroad by maybe 80%, by making it it into multi-level crossing and this requires no extra land. I agree with your argument that sometimes in the cities there is no space left for road widening. Sure that is bad city planning fault, but you can still increase capacity vertically. And by the way demolishing houses is not out of question, not sure what that would be the problem. Sure perhaps some historically important buildings in old town, but at the same time old town isn't an issue. I think we have different perspective on quality of life, I have clearly not lived as long, but my quality of life has become worse every day since the day I was born, in pretty much all aspects - taxation has increased, real estate became less affordable, quality food became less affordable, driving became less affordable, penalties for minor offenses became much more severe, restriction of all types became much more intrusive, the place overall got much more crowded. The explanation to that could be - we considering different things in our life to add quality. I can't think of a single thing that improved. Okey maybe internet became faster, but that is kind of new thing altogether and it would be hard to argue it actually improved my quality of life. Generally, I don't think it is right to confuse digitalisation and computerisation with quality of live improvement. Sure it is convenient, but arguably it made everything more competitive - somebody with my current IT knowledge in 90s would have been best paid specialist in UK, now I am just about average. So yes we became more efficient, but at the same time expectation became that we should deliver more work, so there is no net positive here. Again I would like to hear - what particularly has improved in say last 30 years?

Theoretical sea level if all the ice melted would be 70m higher than now, so yes - London would be pretty much no more. However, that assumes no water in solid state anywhere on earth and it kind of ignores the fact that warmer atmosphere can hold more humidity in it, because the higher is temperature the higher is condensation point. Looking back at what happened last time when all the ice melted in the interglacial period (which are common occurrence), the water level was ~36 metres higher than now. Still most of Thames delta would be quite deep under water. But most importantly, again - this is what will happen, regardless if we cycle, walk or drive 9.2L V10 lifted pick-up trucks! Question is just how quickly. If our climate would continue heating up as it does not, meaning - no environmental action at all, then it is estimated to take ~5,000 years for all ice to melt. So we have quite a lot of time to move all the settlements inland.

Although we have different views I still enjoy the civilised debate, I agree it is somewhere "in the middle" I just don't think we at the moment agreeing where that middle is. I am kind of cherry picking on things you said, but that means I agree on the rest of what you are saying, so just to be clear - I am only picking on parts that I don't entirely agree with. My point about climate 20,000 years ago is that it changed without human activity, I totally agree that some seaside settlements will go under water if sea level continues to raise, basically I accept the future without Netherlands... However, my point is - if we look at the history, then this is inevitable either way. Sorry Dutch people - you just chosen wrong place to settle in and which will inevitably be under water few 100 years from now. This will happen regardless of what we do. I appreciate people can disagree with this, but they disagreeing with facts here. Why do we think we can stop something that has happened dozen times in the past. At least 5 times in the time of our own existence (i.e. last 300,000 years). And I mean we can all commit suicide today, all 8.1 billion and this will happen anyway if the past is any indication of the future, so why even try something that is going to just inconvenience us now for no result in future. Sure again... you can say this is "just a theory" that it will happen, but I think what I am trying to convey here - based on facts from the past climate it is reasonable enough to assume it is more likely than not it will happen. If somebody want to prove this wrong, then they need to come up with damn good evidence. It is like investment - "past performance is not indicative of future performance", so based on history we can't say it will 100% happen again, but it is more like 95% chance for it to happen and 5% chance of it not happening. It is still much more likely that cycle repeats, than that we will see exception to the case. So I am just pointing out into fundamental misinformation and confusion here. Currently, widely accepted view in public is that "we are causing climate change and we can make it stop", whereas facts shows that "climate changes is natural and periodic warming is inevitable and we CAN'T stop it", at least not by just reducing our carbon emissions, so we starting from fundamentally wrong assumption and we arrive to fundamentally wrong conclusions. I am not saying we should do nothing, I am not saying that maybe economically it is cheaper to find solution than to move all Dutch people into Siberia once it turns tropical, but we need to take fundamentally different steps to get there. So what we talking about here is that instead of trying to prevent our pollution impacting the climate, we want to develop technology to control the climate. So we not helping the planet to be "it's natural self", NO - we rather want to prevent the planet to follow it's natural cycles and instead keep it in the conditions that is most suitable for us... And HEY - I am fine with this, but let's be honest to ourselves what we want to achieve, we are not some sort of naturalists here, instead we want to control the climate and terraform the planet, perhaps we want to start refrigerating the poles to slightly reduce sea level or at least keep it constant, perhaps we want to capture and store Co2 and other gasses so we can control the climate... great! But transition to BEVs and veganism is not getting us anywhere! It is like saying that you want to be best body builder in the world and setting out the plan to achieve that by only eating spinach and doing nothing else - that is just not going to work. It could work with the realistic goals and suitable training regime and diet, but not by just eating spinach! I am still waiting for examples of how current plans are improving our life? I could probably extract from what you said that not getting seaside towns flooded and less traffic in cities are examples? But I think first one as explained is just inevitable to fail long term and second one can be achieved in other means. Specific examples would be good! And yes I agree some of our live improvements caused environmental change and some even caused damage. Examples of such - farming changed habitats for other animals, that is not damage, it is just change... when invasive species of asian hornets kills bees that is as well change not damage, species migrates, they create their own habitats at the expense of other species, just natural but sad reality. However, plastic pollution is damage, we don't have to throw it to the water, it does not have to end-up in the oceans and our food, so that is bad. In short - as long as something made our life better I just see it as natural way of human species adapting environment around us to suit our needs, all the species from bacteria, to birds, to insects, to other animals does that. However, some things are unnecessary and I have already listed many examples, I think fast fashion is unnecessary, I think we can deal with our rubbish better, ideally we shouldn't drain our shaite into our beaches either, not that it is environmental damage, but it just isn't nice to swim in human excrement, but this is just hygiene factor, tidying-up the mess around us. I disagree with you on motoring example - because it is not the amount of cars that is the problem. Amount of cars can NEVER be a problem, because each of those cars are heavily taxed and generates excessive surplus of fund. It is like saying - "damn, we have too many orders, too many customers, too much money and too much opportunities to grow". I often like to give analogy of cinema here... Imagine UK is cinema with 500 seats, our government just sold 10,000 tickets and they are blaming people attending to watch the movie for standing in the theatre and in corridors, and even outside because they can't fit. Whose fault it is - people who bought the tickets (i.e. paid road tax and fuel duties, and tax on car)? or is it a fault of cinema operator for overselling capacity? The answer is more and wider roads. Most of UK roads are of 1950s design and with capacity for 1960s, in 1960s smart people started planning roads for 1980s, but those plans were cancelled. So what we have today are 1950s roads designed for 1960s needs and number of people and the cars of 2023. Who is surprised we have problems? I am not surprised. Our government consistently failed to maintain the road infrastructure and plan capacity for future needs for 60 years.. and we are surprised we have traffic?! Seriously? We as drivers fund the roads 10 times OVER, 10 times! There is shaite loads of money to build perfect roads for you, for me, for cyclists, infrastructure for pedestrians and we still going to have shaite loads of excess money for public transport subsidies... that we have corrupt and inefficient government that does not mean the number of the cars is and issue. And why there is noise pollution and fumes in the city? Maybe because we have standstill traffic? Maybe if we had more efficient road network and more free flowing traffic we wouldn't have such problem. Good example is our cars MPG... mine can do ~40MPG on motorway, but if I go to London centre it will be 10MPG. So in simple terms I am polluting 4 times more because of BAD city roads, it is roads that bad not my car that is bad. And let's not forget that NET saving on BEVs compared to ICEVs is ~30% over lifetime. Yet we can achieve 75% saving by making the roads right! No you may be surprised, but I actually like cycling... I just thing cycling on the road is fundamentally wrong solution. So I want more cycling infrastructure, good network of clean, smooth paths going trough the parks and forests, far away from roads and cars... sure that would be perfect. But current cycling plans are less about cyclists and more about "sticking it to the drivers", basically what our government is trying to do is to make traffic humps out of lycra clad cycle warriors, they using humans as "traffic calming feature"... wake-up guys - you being used! And you thought drivers are your enemies!? Finally when it comes to economic crisis, I partially agree with you... so what that we waste money now, it is just another mistake of which we had plenty in the past. Key difference here however is that usually EXCESS has caused the crisis... so basically somebody lived too good to the point where rebalancing was needed. However, in this case of climate expense it is opposite - we wasting money to punish ourselves and to make our lives worse, so that we then get to the crisis and it will become even worse?! It is like double whammy - I have no issue taking penalty for living in excess and understand the need of putting things back in balance, but I don't agree to pay penalty now, to then be further penalised again in future!

That is exactly what I would expect to see - 3% difference in economy/performance split in half between slight performance reduction and slight mpg reduction. In practice it is probably more than 3%, but it is not significant to worry about. I am in pretty much same mind as above... sure E10 may ruin your fuel pump over time, but on 10+ years car fuel pump is likely to go anyway and replacement pump (especially if it was already replaced) will have seals with new compounds. E10 does not hurt engine, injectors etc. In fact ethanol itself could be used as additive for engine cleaning, so it does not hurt any mechanical parts of car. Rubber hoses apparently are not an issue, because they have not changed in 2008+ cars despite them being compatible.

I agree with you, but as well what I think is best example of it being early technology is that they keep bragging about range... which frankly speaking is irrelevant. Rather than focusing on much more important charging time. So I think analogy to the previous technology is very timely - at first they are trying to increase capacity without considering how big the damn thing is or how long it will take to charge, next steps will be to reduce the size and to make it faster, but we are not there yet, companies are not even talking about it yet, because they haven't even got past the first hurdle.

Yes - I know France has just as much if not more problems that UK. Although it is amazingly clean and tidy compared to UK (or at least parts of it outside of Paris), coming back to UK as you said it is immediately obvious how everyone are squeezed in and stressed about everything. I guess it could be said - grass is always greener on other side, but I have real issue with what is going on here and I can't see any reversal of regressive policies anytime soon.

It can be done, but it will require some knowhow e.g. finding where the fuel pump is located, figuring out which is positive/negative pin, which is primary and which is return fuel line and applying 12V to the correct pins. It may still take a while, because it is certainly not high flow pump in Honda Jazz. So I guess the question is - what tools do you have and how much time you want to invest into doing it? As well Mick is right - salvage yards don't use the fuel, they just punch the hole into the tank and dispose of it (not that makes any difference for your or makes it better in any way).

That is why I am contemplating on leaving, the only problem is that within Europe there isn't much better choice. Recent pandemic kind of blown my bubble a little bit when they were talking about force vaccinating people. Have nothing against vaccine, but it can't be administered against the persons will, not to mention list of problems related to this particular case. Must be said - UK was one of the most reasonable countries in this aspect, no "freedom" passes etc. but driving situation in UK is becoming unbearable. I was thinking maybe Portugal/North Spain... or Slovenia/Slovakia/Croatia sort of place. Like I still want to live in developed world where rule of law still applies, but where government is not too invasive into personal live, nor where government has clear agenda... Now they are talking about penalties for 1 mile over the speed limit and make driving accidents comparable to attempted murder... just ridiculous what lobby groups are trying to achieve.

I would say it is not worth the effort... people who know how to steal the fuel will defeat any system, but you always risk ending-up with mouth full of fuel. There would be an option to access fuel pump which I assume in Japanese style is under the rear seat, but then you need to use some sort of pump to pump it out. Perhaps you can cut the fuel supply line and attach 12V to fuel pump? Obviously, this will burn the pump overtime, but as car is scrap anyway I doubt you care. I have brake bleeder which can be used to "vacuum" out the fuel, but 2L at the time it would take forever and I am not sure it is rated for petrol, nor I would like to contaminate brake fluid in future... Another option - drill the hole in tank... I mean there obviously are ways, but I still can't see how it is worth the effort and inconvenience and risk dealing with flammable liquid which stinks... how much of fuel is there? Full tank? Is it at least fresh? Because if it was sitting there for 6 months, then again is partially off already. I know it seems like a waste, but you need to ask yourself if it is worth it. So I am sorry to say, but this time maybe it is better to write it off?

Pretty much exactly that... But then if E5 was bad, then me using E85 should have blown everything in an instant! and yet I have probably like 40k miles on the stuff!

Ohhh please! People DO NOT USE halfrauds for MOT, you are 100% to be stitched-up, they will always try to fail you for profit. This is literally worst possible place to take your car for MOT. Halfrauds in particular is massive NO NO! I am sure kwikfrauds similar... Just rule of thumb - if you could find MOT centre that doesn't work on cars, then it is ideal, because they have no incentive to fail you, but you at least have to use centre that you trust to be honest with the repairs. Since when halfrauds and honest belongs in one sentence? I am glad you found the part you need, but to be fair you were kind of asking for trouble here. Don't want to repeat the stories about halfrauds for nth time, but the people there can't even tell the difference between front of the car and rear of the car (literally, they advised my front brakes, when the rear needed replacement). And even if we assume you want to find out whenever your car is safe to drive (which I advise shouldn't be done during the MOT), then halfrauds is still horrible place to do it, because they will miss genuine faults and point out something stupid like ball joint rubber. So I would not even trust them to if they say I have passed.

First of all, I would like to separate these two groups clearly. Ecomentalists are not experts in anything, they are activists, they are pressure groups, they are lobbies - in short, they neither know the facts, nor they care about facts, their job is not to know the facts, but to persuade or recently FORCE other to take an action. Secondly, Scientists do not agree that there is climate "catastrophe/emergency", but they generally agree that there is "climate change". There may be few outliers, but even the most pessimistic predictions are that it will take thousands and tens of thousands of years for meaningful change to happen. There is still a lot of debate and science itself is not clear and conclusive. So scientists may say things like "2C increase in temperature based on our models would mean these things". One of things often mentioned - melting of ice, other thing is extinction of some species (sometimes it is as well referred as destruction of habitat, but it is not necessary same as extinction), or increase in the level of oceans. Without context this is very hard to say whenever that is bad or not bad, for example extinction of species sounds bad on the surface, but if we consider that new species constantly appear and other species constantly goes extinct, then this is likely just normal. Same for sea level and ice melting - it may seem like undesirable thing, but context is easily lost, why it was normal for earth to have no ice 20,000 years ago, for temperature to be 6C higher and for seal level to be much higher, but now suddenly it is not okey. It is simply based on misconception that climate should be stable and remain the same, but historic evidence is showing that last ~6000 years of near constant climate is in itself unusual and outlier, a lucky coincidence and that we simply need to learn to live in changing climate. It goes back to my previous point - people make wrong conclusions because they lack perspective. They don't asks "since when" this temperature is "record", they don't understand that is completely normal for ALL the ice to melt, for sea level to rise, for animals to go extinct. Third thing, there is no conclusive evidence that "climate change" is caused by human activity, so just to be clear climate change is real, temperature is rising, humans are emitting excess Co2, these are facts. BUT it is still theory that climate change is either caused or even impacted by this activity. I am not saying it is not, I am not saying that it is, I am just saying - this has not been proven. It is one of many hypothesis. There are some inconclusive evidence to suggest it maybe the cause, but not sufficient to say it for a fact. Most important evidence against it - Co2 level for a fact (this is not speculation, it is a fact) was higher in the past, temperature was higher in the past, sea level was higher in the past, earth was free of ice in the past and there was no human activity. So why was it? And if it is not human activity that caused it in the past, then why now it is ONLY human activity that is causing it? Clearly we need to do a lot more research to answer these questions. But the problems is that activists are taking hypothesis, or they taking partial conclusions from research and treating them as facts. And by the way some of those things may be facts, but in the subject where 10,000 things can impact the conclusion looking only at 3 of them isn't conclusive. So it is not enough to say "temperature is rising for last 150 years FACT" to prove humans are causing it, yet it is fact, but just one of thousands of facts. As for "quality of life catastrophe", this is as well dependant on perspective. For example as I said - not being able to eat meat, or not being able to drive is end of life for me, literally not worth living. Quite seriously, so much that I am considering where I should go-to live next, because in UK it is getting to the point where I am uncomfortable, because my ability to drive is increasingly restricted, government and all the institutions are hostile towards drivers and I consider it absolutelly unacceptable. Heated pool is exageration and a joke, but driving isn't. And although so far I could afford it (so it comes to the point of money), it is not outright banned, but it is behind pay wall and I am still increasingly aggravated by extortionate duties, road taxes, parking charges etc. And it is becoming notably worse every day, there is increasingly aggressive rules against the drivers, bans on driving in certain areas, destruction of necessary infrastructure (lanes being converted in to cycling lanes, bus lanes, pavements, flower, benches), LTNs/15minute cities etc. So it is not some sort of scam or scare mongering, it is happening, same as air is warming-up is a fact, the quality of my life is decreasing with each passing day is also a fact. As I mentioned recently I paid like 65% of holiday costs just in taxes on flights, good for me I can afford it, but we may came to point where people won't be able to afford holidays just because of how extortionary they are taxed for sake of "climate catastrophe" fallacy, or you may have to take 8 hours train and 10 hours boat instead of 1h 20 min flight, which is huge degradation of quality of life and just generally regressive. And we as well have factual upcoming bans, to ICE engines which will be significant destruction of quality of life, as EVs simply do not offer same level of quality and they are much more expensive to own overall. So again I would not say it is "catastrophe", but it is continuous degradation and it has possibility of becoming catastrophe - for example in 2045 we may come to point where there are rolling black-outs and our "smart-meters" will block us from charging the cars considering it "not a priority need". I think evidence is clearly there - in UK we have now 15 "clean air" zones with massive detrimental effect, anyone who has petrol car older than 17 years, or diesel older than 8 years cannot drive them any longer if they happen to be near these stupid zones. And whereas at the face value it seems reasonable and I happen to have compliant car... there are literally hundreds of cars that I consider desirable, future classic or outright classic that have to either pay £12.50 A DAY, even just to be parked or else government suggest they should be scrapped. Please elaborate on the point of how this will "improve" our quality of life as I just can't see it. Nothing now prevents me from eating heathy diet, or exercising and generally doing everything to have good physical health, I don't need to be forced to use public transport, cycle or most likely walk, nor I need to be grass-fed to avoid being obese. I don't need to be banned from doing things I like to live better, this just assumes we are treated like animals or adult kids as if we can't figure-out for ourselves what is right for us. And I actually do not agree that "Politcally, economically, and technologically, no one is striving for that [i.e ruining our lives]". I think ban on ICE is either extremely negligent or short-sighted thing, or it is deliberate policy to take our cars and therefore freedom away. Sure "never assume malice when incompetence suffice", but it seems like malice here... our politicians may be incompetent to announce such policy, but it is likely that whomever lobbied for it did it maliciously knowing that we not going to have parking places, chargers, network capacity nor even electricity generation to charged BEVs... and only alternative is not to drive AT ALL. Remember scarcity = profit, make driving and owning the car, and charging difficult and suddenly you have captive market. Finally, if all these restrictions would be result of genuine emergency, then even I would support it, but they are not - the yare just an empty attack on lifestyle which is deemed undesirable and unnecessary. And I think the battle here was already lost like 30 years ago when we have allowed grass eating communists to have an idea and even dear saying it out load that driving is dangerous and undesirable. Now we live in the society where people no longer even questions this notion, for them driving is not freedom, not convenience, not necessity, it is just dirty and dangerous thing which needs to be reduced or better eradicated. And once something is accepted as unnecessary, then suddenly it is alright to say it is undesirable, and when it is undesirable, then we can move to the point of calling it dangerous... and finally we can have a policy of stamping it out altogether. This is kind of similar reason why americans are fighting so much for their gun rights, often irrationally... but that is because they are afraid this will be taken away from them, so they fighting the even the most basic notion of saying "owning guns is unnecessary", because they don't fight now, then later the question will be come whenever it is undesirable, then whenever it is dangerous altogether and outright ban in the end. Obviously in UK we have long lost this option of having guns and defending ourselves, but now we going in the same direction on cars. I have even seen some communists on Guardian promoting the idea that home ownership is undesirable and suggested looking at Singapore model (just as note all houses in Singapore are 99 years lease, nobody owns anything, state owns it). How dystopian we want to get before we start fighting for our rights?

I have always run mine on E10, even E85 and there were never any issues. Majority of Europe that has E85 as default cheapest fuel would be as well running these cars on E85 and there is no widespread reported issues. So at least in my opinion your worries are unfounded. One member here looked trough the list of all parts and found that difference between pre 2008 and post 2008 models are few o-rings that costs like £2 and £6 respectively, the rest of parts are identical and Lexus advises that 2008+ can run E10. As well that is not to say those o-rings are the reason, just that they are only different part in fuel system between compatible and incompatible cars. I think people are just being too sensitive about it. When living in another country I have always used E85 and didn't even know there could be an issue, nobody knew, we simply never had big switchover, E85 was simply much cheaper and that is what everyone used... although back then I had 2012 IS250. But even now when I go to France for example I just get E85 and I was doing it for tens of thousands of miles. Either way - you get my point, if E85 does not cause issues, then I can't see how E10 can cause issues with 7-8 times lower ethanol content. The only thing about E85, you should not leave it for long time in the tank, because it absorbs water. To some degree same applies to E10, if you could leave pure petrol in the tank and it would still be good after 12 months, then E5 is probably only good for 6 months, E10 for 3 months and E85 for 1 month. To answer your question shortly - nobody knows if damage would have been done, because nobody have ever seen ethanol causing damage to these cars.

Ok - so parking brake is fixed, I checked it and it was lose, locking nut just finger tight and that is all. Removed the locking nut turned the adjustment nut maybe 15 times, handbrake clearly engaged but was still quite weak, another 15 turns and now handbrake is rock solid! I must note - I am really not impressed with Lexus centre, it is just 10mm nut and 2 minutes fix. Now sure that is just me and I am picky and entitled, and horrible person, but for £306 they can certainly spend 2 min adjusting the handbrake and avoiding the situation where car fails MOT and is undrivable due to "dangerous" fault. Am I expecting too much?! Ohhh and by the way continuing on my whinge... I thought that £306 will include filters and oils, but it turns out that is the price pretty much for the oil and oil filter only. The air filter was obviously not changed and before service I thought I will check cabin filter... in fact it was so nasty I didn't even bother to put it back in, so I just left it on passenger floor. When I picked-up the car the same dirty filter was still on the passenger floor. They did advise me that maybe I want £180 wheel alignment, £150 A/C service, £30 fuel cleaner, £2850 middle exhaust pipe, but they didn't find it appropriate to advise that car maybe needed £2 worth of cabin air filter, or UNBELIEVABLE - maybe replace it FOC as a show of appreciation of my customs and for the continuing business in the future. Just to be clear - they not forgotten it, it is simply not included, so it is not centre fault it is Lexus GB pricing. I would say their service is "alright", but I just don't feel like they putting that "effort" to give satisfactory service and care. And £306 is just extortion for oil change on 10+ years old cars (and this is already with complimentary 10% off!). Certainly, "essential care" was the right product to keep the clientele engaged.

I am concerned that presenting it as climate change argument distracts us from finding right solutions and risks making outrights wrong decisions. In short - I believe that to make right decision, one has to have clear facts in front of them. Likewise I would question how realistic is below: So far the products offered have huge downside, but it is downplayed with moral-virtue or avoiding "climate catastrophe". Basically, if we would correctly believe that that there is no actual "climate catastrophe" coming and environment protection is matter of comfort and luxury, then I am sure we would be much less willing to sacrifice other comforts and luxuries in our lives. The statement that people are supporting "environment protection" in my experience is only true as long as they don't have to make personal sacrifices. However, they are currently duped into believing that supporting "environment policy" will not have negative impact on their quality of life, but it will. Secondly, I think people are more willing to sacrifice depending on how serious is alternative, if we believe the "climate catastrophe" is imminent and life threatening then I may even give away the heated swimming pool. Let's use this analogy - if somebody says "we will cut-off your hand, because you have very bad case of of burning, beyond saving and not doing so will result in your death" I am sure our answer to that would be very different if we are told "we will cut-off your hand to feed little bloodthirsty flesh eating monster girl from Sweden called Greta". Sacrifices should be worth it! Yes, some people are "pro-anti-climate change", because they are lied to and they don't understand real risks... imagine what this girl is willing to sacrifice if she believes there are 6 years of life on earth left:

Although, it needs to be noted that most of energy cost are either taxes or excess profits... Fuel actually costs like 70p/L at the moment, and much less in times of peace. If not for OPEC cartel I think prices as low as 20p/L would be possible. The electricity, heating etc. is only high because of decades of failed policy on building up the capacity (compare it for example with France and how cheap the energy is there, compared to UK or Germany, despite all being similarly sized economies, populations, wealthy nations). Where is shortage there is profit and there is clear conflict of interests when it comes to building capacity anywhere - housing is one good example, roads is another good example, railroads is third one and energy infrastructure follow the same route. We failed to build enough houses, what happens then? House prices, pardon the pun, are trough the roof! Failed to build road network sufficient for 20th century, nevermind 21st, traffic is horrible... and what is solution? Let's prices driver out of the roads, because somehow it is drivers fault, despite government raising cool £30Bn+ every year! Same story for trains - when trains were frequent enough, fast enough etc. the tickets were cheap, now when there is shortage suddenly train to the airport costs more then the flight abroad! And same with energy... I have recently seen the article of France rail executive complaining that they can't compete with cheap flights because apparently they have to pay taxes whereas Airlines don't have to... which I thought is odd, because flights are highly taxed - recently booked the holidays and from £1300 flight tickets for two £856 were taxes, meaning the flight themselves were just over £400. How about radical theory - railroad is failing, not because of high taxes, but because of inherent lack of competition. And flights are cheap, because it is inherently competitive market that basically anyone can enter. I found this lovely graph... which to large degree puts massive question mark about "human caused climate catastrophe": Yes sure - compared to "pre-industrial" level of 280ppm we have gone up to ~400ppm, but it is very very far from 2000ppm that can clearly support diverse life on this planet. As well we can see that CO2 concentration in atmosphere does not corelate with temperature... well I guess it does, but baseline is not 0C.

Not much surprise here - in the end of the day LS430 from ~2000 is considered pinnacle of Lexus quality. There is whole series on "Car Care Nut" channel on rebuilding one 600k miles example. I am pretty much stuck in similar age of the Lexus cars 2006 GS and 2006 IS, 2.5 years and they both will be 20 years old. Sad truth is - Lexus in my opinion just lost it after that. There are exceptions obviously, I believe LC500 and GS450h from 2012 are other two all time greats. But IS from 2013 is clear step down in quality, RC quality was picked from IS, so the same, LS despite being very good, they were still not the same as the cars before 2005 in terms of lasting quality. ES... don't get me started. I guess there were improvements in the SUV segment, but I just don't care, not interested in SUVs. So again - I completely understand th e feeling where 20+ years old Lexus still feels fairly fresh inside and when compared to even decade newer car isn't missing any features, and at the same time still feels in better condition after double the miles driven.

You can certainly disconnect the battery for like 45min and let the ECUs to reset fully and see if it makes difference, but all in all nothing obviously is wrong with the symptoms you have described. That does not mean there is not issue, just that symptoms are very mild so far.

That is what happens - I refer to that as "lazy sensor", usually applies to things like Lambda or o2 (but IS250 is literally sensor minefield, as are most of modern cars), so basically they are kind of late to react and not working optimally, but not so far out that it would cause the code to appear. This makes it extremely annoying to diagnose.

That actually is precisely what it would be. IS250 torque converter lock-out 2-6th gear on A960E.

Not sure about SCV operation, but if tit does not operate properly it would cause all sorts of issues with engine. But at the same time you would get engine light if it would simply be faulty. As for RPM speed, sound about normal for gearbox to do that, depends on how long it takes from RPM to settle after gear change, what you doing with pedal, if the car is going up/down hill. Nothing immanently wrong with what you described. Sure if it takes like 10 seconds to settle after shift of perfectly level and smooth road then it could be a gearbox issue (sticking solenoid or something along those lines, low ATF could cause it as well), but again for just 100 RPM and maybe for a second or so, that is tiny problem.

Isn't it ONLY MOT? As well I think this applies only to minor faults. Cars with dangerous fault cannot be driven at all if I understand correctly.

The other option could be Lamda/o2 sensors as they usually last ~160k (75-100k miles). So you are just at the time they need replacing. This could be checked by looking at live data and fuel trims. Just to be clear - these all suggestions are little bit speculative, so take them with pinch of salt. So far what you have described doesn't point to any particular problem related with the engine. 950RPM isn't abnormal to the point where it should cause any issues. For example maybe engine fan is running when you drive a car for a bit and stop? There is just so many possibilities of why it would be slightly higher than normal.