Watch Reviews 4U - The Longines St Imier Black Dial L2.784.4 43mm Chronograph watch

The Longines St Imier Black Dial L2.784.4 43mm Chronograph watch 

The Longines St Imier Chronograph was launched in 2012, in the 41 or 43mm width case versions, along with a 41mm analogue watch.

                                                   

The L2.784.4 is also available with a leather strap

Featuring a sturdy 43mm case, the L688 movement is housed safely and securely with a nice glass exhibition back allowing you to see the beautiful finished 27 Jewel movement.

With 2 Chronograph sub dials for hours and minutes, there is also a sweep seconds hand and a date window near the 5 o'clock position which some might find quirky. 

However, due to the sub dials layout, the date window has been located there to allow the sub dials to be of a sufficient size - the Bi-Compax chronograph features the date window at the 6 o'clock position which some might prefer.

The rectangular push buttons

The Chronograph case back is really nicely finished and on this version, a metal strap is supplied, though some links have been removed or a previous owner so I will fit the lighter Longines deployment clasp leather strap which will be more comfortable and lighter. The metal strap does make the watch heavier, the substantial case notwithstanding! 

The substantial strap is very nicely finished as would be expected from a watch of this label, this one is a second hand watch but in very nice condition and has a 54 hour power reserve.

Quite a rare watch and obtained at sub £900 so this was a good deal as it had the box with it.

Electric Vehicles, ULEZ and 15 minute cities - is this the start of 'Transport Apartheid'???

 

Does Transport Apartheid - start here?

With vehicles cleaner than ever, is justification for the Congestion Charge or ULEZ zones valid?

Heathrow Expansion - ULEZ for vehicles nothing for the Jets

When the Heathrow expansion was mooted the announcement was it 'would be good for business' but not for the local residents with increased air pollution from airlines or local drivers. Why?

Because the wisdom was to make an ULEZ area around the new Heathrow expansion, but not to penalise the airlines creating the real extra pollution.

Jets taking off and pushing out same emissions of the average of 10 years of average car driving use - equalling 75,000 miles in total in just a few minutes from one airliner.

The joke of it is or isn't, is that vehicle drivers around this new Heathrow zone are being penalised with an extra charge on top of the 80% duty included in the cost of fuel, whilst the airlines pay nothing to pollute?

Or perhaps this ULEZ launch is something to divert attention away from dealing with the real issues Londoners want resolved such as the explosion in knife crime? Any answers?

The Electric Vehicle bubble might be soon bursting

The EU 2030 Ban on Petrol and Diesel vehicles is running into trouble, from German car makers and also manufacturers in Italy. People are slowly waking up to the fact that these EV cars are not viable, are expensive to charge and to buy and are being dumped by many owners back onto the used car market, although car dealers don't want them, before the batteries are only useful for a 20 mile round trip.

Only being able to buy EV's after 2030 is a form of transport apartheid and will mean that those unable to pay for these expensive 'hobby horses' may become unable to travel, or is that parts of some agenda?

Mazda for one company has recently introduced a new Diesel car, it can obviously see the future and it is not volts, but Diesel.

15 Minutes of fame or infamy?

The deal is you walk 15 minutes to do all your business and shopping. So what does this achieve? Not much. 

All these policies will achieve is to restrict people's freedoms of movement, this has been known for some years and now we are seeing the reality of what was only being hinted at by people often referred to by some sections of the media as 'conspiracy theorists' - in other words a cheap and throwaway 'catch-all' slur on people who might have a different and correct point of view, as we may be seeing here and now..

Net Zero is not achievable - humans exhale CO2 for one thing so they can never be truly Net Zero, unless China makes great changes and we become less of a consumer society, all this Net Zero baloney is just window dressing and used to justify policies to restrict the freedom we fought two world wars to enjoy and make us much poorer.

No one voted for Net Zero and the media says nothing about why as a less than 1% emissions contributor that has already cut CO2 output by 40% of 1990's levels, why the UK has to be hobbled by these policies whilst others just do nothing?

On the face of it then, there must be some other agenda for hobbling and taxing the ordinary person whilst at the same time not making other major polluters like China and India do more?

This London Sightseeing EV Bus cost around £450,000 -

It is said to be around two years old and is now in a Barnsley Scrapyard.

Tells you all you need to know about this electric vehicle vanity project.

And you thought that Apartheid was only something that happened in Africa?

Germany to outflank EU 2030 petrol and Diesel vehicle Ban - as I have been saying for ages! Wake up Britain!!

 

We are still in love with Petrol and Diesel Vehicles  -

well maybe not the Allegro....

It has now come to pass that the Germans have seen the light well and truly over the scam that wants us to not buy Petrol and Diesel vehicles after 2030 only Electric Vehicles.

Hats off to Porsche, for having developed a 100% Green and 100% Net Zero synthetic Petrol substitute that can be used in modern and old vehicles, the future of older cars and new ones looks much healthier. The Classic Vehicle sector in the UK is worth £18 Billion a year

Germany wants to exempt vehicles that can use 'alternative' fuels to fossil fuels - i.e. synthetic Petrol and Bio / Organic Diesel fuels from the 2030 vehicle sales ban. 

With Mazda recently bringing a new diesel car to market, they obviously realise too that the electric vehicle folly is going to run out of juice.

Wake up Britain! For too long politicians have been going on about 'sustainable air travel' using 'cleaner, synthetic fuels' but not a single word about synthetic fuels for road vehicles. Why??

Yesterday, I drove 20 miles  to work and I counted every vehicle on the road - over 200 and the ratio of Electric Vehicles (all cars) was 1 electric vehicle to 62 Petrol or Diesel vehicles. 

If that is the ratio reflected across the nation, then it is going to be decades before the EV has taken over and that is at this rate that looks unrealistic. Thankfully.

Italy has also rebelled against the EU as it now realises how many jobs will be lost to the electric vehicle folly, talk of Green jobs being created in the wake of the electric vehicle is unproven.

E10 Petrol said to be the equivalent of taking over 300,000 vehicles off the road is rubbish. Take out the illegally re-wilded wild Boar put back into nature that release captured CO2 equivalent to 1 million cars a year and you are making a more positive move and solving a food problem at the same stroke for some years.

E10 fuel is far less efficient with a car losing over 100 miles of range off a tankful compared to E5  fuel.

As we have seen recently, when the wind stops blowing and the sun isn't out as in Winter, the old Coal power stations are brought back on line, better to burn powdered coal than wet biomass which kicks out far more CO2 only tolerated because it is 'renewable' - so is coal , if you plant trees and wait 350 million years for it to convert. Coal was a tree once. We are told not to burn wet wood in stoves, yet it seems ok in Bio Mass plants. That is a wet wood transported by sea at a cost of ten feet to a gallon of Marine oil burnt. Not very green.

Time for Britain to wake up from its usual complacency and start synthetic fuel production soon. It's about time we had people running this country who actually had some professional skill in knowing what they are doing rather than hapless 'seat hopping' amateurs.