This tells us absolutely nothing because you lumped people doing PhD's with people who are unemployed. I couldn't find the survey you mentioned, but in other years more than 3/4s of those not in full time work are in further education.

That is simply not true, either you or the person who told you the 'fact' misunderstood the data. The fact that you re-regurgitated it without realising that it is clearly no-where near the truth shows that you don't really know what you're talking about.

I would have thought brighter minds than those of us who inhabit the Sin Bin would have thought of this before and so for reasons beyond us decided the new car route was the way to go. Just a theory. EDIT - just been explained by BG.

However that isn't the issue. Under the new PIP rules about 500,000 people will no longer qualify for the equivalent higher rate of DLA which is the point at which you qualify for access to the Motability scheme.

So it doesn't really matter if Motability qualified them for a heap of junk or brand new motor. They aren't going to get either when it comes in. [iThat is the issue[/i.

You never bothered reading my response to Sal Paradise then?

That is all true, I've had the wool pulled from my eyes a few years ago - to be precise, when I started to have to pay for my own car instead of the luxury of having the company pay for it.

It was a blinding flash of inspiration when I realised that none, absolutely NONE of the car mechanics I have known over the years have ever owned a brand new car, not even the mechanis I've known who OWNED the bloody garages have ever had a new car, they all buy them at 3+ years and just maintain them for ever.

I have two cars in the family that I pay for myself, one is an Aug 06 with only 36k miles, its needed a new battery in all of that time and three regular service visits, the other is an Aug 05 with 65k miles and it just reaching the point where what you'd call "major" things are going wrong, I replaced the clutch & had the gearbox reconditioned last year and have had a new starter motor fitted none of which will need doing again in its lifetime, total cost last year around £800 for maintenance, sounds a lot but if I'd been running a company lease car still then that would have been between two and three months non-maintained lease cost.

As regards early years "depreciation" a big chunk is the 20% VAT you incur at t=o. That is the biggest argument against buying a new car. Not sure how it works for Motability but they presumably recover the VAT on the cars they acquire by way of their business? So, their early "depreciation" costs are that much less.