It’s my daughter, BabeGT’s 17th birthday today!

Happy birthday sweetheart…

I guess ecological awareness is something that’s gradually been growing in the consciousness of the average joe for the last few years but I think the balance is in danger of tipping too far in the wrong direction due to usual media/government stunt of providing memorable sound-bites that just aren’t true.

An example; the current castigation of the off-road car, a.k.a. Chelsea Tractor, 4×4 etc.

It’s become common practice in the last few months to denigrate the off-roader as being ecologically unsound, with cars such as the Toyota Prius being held up as glowing examples of how things should be. The Hollywood royalty have taken to having a Prius or similar as a public declaration of their green credentials.

For some time it’s bothered me that these cars use a large quantity of batteries and other components that are particularly unfriendly to the environment but no-one seems to have noticed. It also seems to be necessary to point out that your lovely Prius will completely run out of battery power without the use of the combustion engine to charge it up.

However, CNW Marketing Research in the USA have recently completed a two year research project into the ‘dust-to-dust’ cost of a large selection of vehicles, some 96 of which are currently available on the UK market. They have gone through the materials used to build the vehicle, the labour involved in piecing it together, the cost of fuel at the relevant average fuel consumption and the cost of disposing of all the components at the end of the road, if you’ll pardon the pun! The project was not funded by anyone with even a vested interest in the production of cars.

The report is 450 pages long, so allow me to provide an executive summary.

The 10 least energy efficient vehicles over their lifetime:

1. Mercedes Benz produced Maybach ($11.58 per mile)
2. Volkswagen Phaeton ($11.21 per mile)
3. Rolls-Royce (full line average: $10.66 per mile)
4. Bentley (full line average: $10.56 per mile)
5. Audi allroad Quattro ($5.59 per mile)
6. Audi A8 ($4.96 per mile)
7. Audi A6 ($4.96 per mile)
8. Lexus LS430 ($4.73 per mile)
9. Porsche Carrera GT ($4.53 per mile)
10. Acura NSX ($4.45 per mile)

The only 4×4 in the bottom 10 is a ’soft-roader’ Audi which doesn’t really have that much off-road ability! The Acura NSX is known in this country as a Honda NSX and has recently ceased production. The cost in brackets is the total lifetime cost in US dollars averaged out over the lifetime of the vehicle.

So what’s the most efficient vehicle over its lifetime? Well, in the USA it’s the Scion xB. We don’t get them in the UK but have a look here. This is not a vehicle that you’d look at and think, “Yup, that’s going to be economical!”

The most efficient vehicle available in the UK, and third overall in their list is…

The Jeep Wrangler. Yes, a 4-litre 6 cylinder ragtop off-roader costs less than a Toyota Prius in lifetime costs. And the Prius comes below the Cadillac Escalade, Chevrolet Corvette, BMW 7-series, Porsche 911, Jaguar XJ saloon, BMW M3, VW Golf GTi, Mazda RX8, Mercedes M-Class, Range Rover Sport and even the Mercedes Sprinter van! And those are only the vehicles below the industry average cost per mile.

As a confirmed petrol-head I’m REALLY pleased that such great cars as the Subaru Impreza, Nissan 350Z, Dodge Viper, Chrysler 300C, Mini Cooper S, BMW 325, Mazda MX-5 and Ford Focus are all dramatically ‘greener’ than the current load of hybrids on the market.

And for those people who still think the electric car is a greener option, just let me know how you’re going to generate all the electricity necessary to recharge all the cars in the country without the use of coal or gas-fired power stations, or indeed nuclear power. Now there’s something green…

Further to my previous post about gadgets, this is the second in an indeterminate series of blogs about gadgets that I’d struggle to get by without.

This one might come as a bit of a surprise, but when thinking seriously about what’s made a difference in my life I’ve realised that I’m not as young as I think I am!

So, what is this second piece of kit that RobGT enjoys so much?

The car radio.

I’m old enough to remember my dad fitting a Motorola radio with two speakers into our 1968 Morris 1300. One speaker in the front under the dashboard and one in the back with a plastic balance control – no such thing as stereo radio in cars during the early 1970s! These radios looked something like this:

In fact, I’m pretty confident that the second one from the bottom (e.g. not the big black thing!) is the exact model that Dad fitted on that occasion…

Now to the present day! The Mondeo pictured below has a Sony hifi with speakers that would have been considered spectacular maybe 10 years ago. In fact, the whole unit is amazing, allowing six CDs to be loaded through the slot in the front with no bulky autochanger hidden elsewhere in the car. It’s linked to my hands-free carphone and mutes itself if the phone rings. It tells you which station you’re listening to on the FM waveband. It interrupts whatever is playing with a choice of local or national traffic information. You can control most features without taking a hand off the steering wheel using a remote control unit. It even has a socket secreted deep in the dashboard allowing you to plug in an mp3 player and listen to it easily through the in-car speakers. It’s amazing, but we don’t ever consider just how amazing it is.

Why aren’t we amazed by the development of the in-car hifi? It’s become invisible because of the fact that everyone has one.

Mrs G-T’s main car has a CD player with a removable face and whenever I drive the car without first locating the face I’m struck by how much I miss having the radio or a CD playing while I drive.

I enjoy music immensely and sometimes journeys in the car are the only time that there’s sufficient time and space to really listen.

So, finally, what’s in it at the moment?

1. Pink Floyd – Echoes disk 1
2. Jamie Cullum – Catching Tales
3. OK Go – Oh No
4. Corinne Bailey Rae – Corinne Bailey Rae
5. Gareth Robinson – You Alone
6. Oral Roberts University Live Worship – Extraordinary

At last, it’s here!!

First impressions from the 5 minutes spent sitting in it setting the seat, mirrors etc and the 12 mile drive home in the dark and in the rain. Nice!

Not as slow as I feared (whew!) and having climate control is nice.

It’s the only one of its colour in the car park which is nice (easy to find at the end of the day).

I know most people think Mondeos are ‘Sales Rep’ cars, but this is a really nice car with lots of toys to pass the most tedious of journeys (M40 anyone?) and it’s good to drive. I’m happy!

I have a bit of a reputation as being someone who “loves” gadgets. This is, I suppose, true to some extent.

I enjoy reading about other people purchasing high-end gear at ludicrous prices, but really I prefer to live up to the Scottish stereotype of spending less and getting more. This is why generally I buy stuff when it’s been out for a while, most of the initials bugs and limitations have been overcome and the actual cost of the item has been reduced as the intial research and development costs have been paid off.

So when a colleague asked the other day, “which items couldn’t you live without?” I started pondering.

Obviously, on a relative scale none of these things would actually cause me to die if they disappeared or stopped working, but I think you know where I’m coming from…

The most obvious gadget is my Palm Treo 650. Truly, this smartphone travels everywhere with me. It has TomTom satnav software on it, plays videos and music, keeps my address book and diary, allows me to check my email from anywhere with a Vodafone signal, has a couple of irritatingly addictive games, two calculators (don’t ask…), a program to track my business mileage and fuel fills, web access, the full text of the bible, three episodes of Little Britain and one Top Gear DVD on it. And no, I’m not kidding! Oh, and you can send and receive text messages and take photographs too. Finally, it makes phone calls too, although the hands-free function seems to be a bit flakey in that the microphone doesn’t seem to be sensitive enough to work a couple of feet away from my mouth.

Faults? Apart from the handsfree thing the only stuff I’d like to improve would be more internal memory (I could then get two versions of the Bible on!) and wifi would be nice but not vital. Future upgrade might well be the new Treo 680 which has more memory, no wifi but has also lost the aerial thus making it a tad more compact. Wonder how much they’re going to be…

A huge thanks to Andy for doing me a deal on my old mobile to get this Treo, as he knew how much I missed my old Treo 600 (it got slightly broken in an accident involving the tailgate of a Ford Mondeo – no further comment necessary).

More gadgets later…

..but what is going on with the story on the news this morning about MI5 keeping 1,600 people under surveillance and tracking 30 terror plots?

For one thing what are these statistics relevant to? How many people do MI5 normally track? How many "terror plots" constitutes a high number?

I have a sneaking suspicion that these statistics have only been released to worry the UK public into ultimately accepting restrictions on our freedom that will do little to stop terror activity.

We need to be praying actively for our country and our government whoever they are. We need to bring back common sense into our rules and regulations and regain some value in human lives and attitudes.

Witness the story this week as reported by the BBC about a fish and chip shop in Yorkshire being inspected by environmental health officers after a written complaint being received stating that the shop "smelled strongly of fish and chips." Instead of having the common sense to write back to the complainant advising him/her to stop wasting everyone's time they had "a duty to investigate."

I feel like I'm becoming a grumpy old (ish) man - recent birthday may have been a contributory factor - but what is this country coming to?

Just discovered why no-one’s comments have been appearing. Switched moderation on, and then haven’t moderated anything.

And I thought no-one was reading any more…