Archive for the 'Travel' Category

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Le Sigh

Published on 15 June 2009 in Travel. 0 Comments

Not a good day today.

Started off OK with the second flight out to Dublin from London City Airport. As I was about to board the plane, I received an e-mail from the Client asking to postpone our meetng by half an hour until 3,00pm. Not too worrying as I wouldn’t hace to leave site until 4.30pm anyway.

By the time I’d landed, they’d e-mailed to cancel the meeting but my big boss had said I’d go along anyway as I was on a plane!

As it turned out the meeting – further dwlayed by another half hour – went OK and I headed back to Dublin airport, grabbing an expensive sandwich and Guinness when I got there.

Boarded my Air France flight back to London City Airport and off we went: flight due in at around 8.10pm.

As we began to descend into London, the Captain told us it was stormy over London and lo and behold the flight was a bit rock and roll but we gained height again and were told we were stacking due to standing water on the runway.

After a while, we were then told that due to our low fuel and the fact that City was still closed, we’d now be diverting to London Stansted. Ah…

Finally on the ground, we then waited in the Arrivals Terminal for news and were told we would be getting a coach back down to London.

And so it was that at around 10.00pm we boarded the coach. It’s going to be a long night…

Norfolk Traffic Police

Published on 12 June 2009 in AA, police, Syndicated, traffic and Travel. Closed

Thank you very much indeed, Norfolk Constabulary. Thank you for costing my company a day’s lost fees. Thank you for wasting £60 of my money for the hotel room I’m in now. Thank you for doing absolutely sod-all to help the hundreds of motorists your incompetence incovenienced.

What am I talking about?

Today I had a dental appointment in Wymondham at 11.15am, so I left London in plenty of time. By 10.50am, I was 20 minutes away (maximum) on the dual carriageway section of the A11 Thetford By-Pass between the Brandon and Watton interchanges when I had to come to a halt. Why? Some dickhead driving a tractor and towing a trailer of vegetables had managed to turn the whole thing over and blocked the southbound carriageway. Remember, I was heading northbound.

Like a well-oiled team of professionals, the police’s traffic division and the Transport Agency’s Incident Support Unit had mobilised to get things sorted out.

Between then and 11.45am, I sat in stationary traffic and watched as most of the police vehicles drove off having done … er … nothing at all. One police motorcycle went down the southbound carriageway, around the roundabout and then back up the southbound carriageway the wrong way for no good reason at all. Maybe he was getting a bit warm in the summer sun and just fancied going for a spin to cool himself down. Bless!

Traffic announcements confirmed that the southbound carriageway was blocked and that there were long southbound queues. Apparently the traffic going north was slow as people were slowing down to take a look, according to the AA team.

Obviously that was as far removed from reality as the Labour Party are from unity. As I discovered when I did eventually get past the next roundabout, the southbound lane was actually flowing pretty well. And no-one was rubbernecking in my lane – we simply couldn’t get past the roundabout because of the southbound traffic effectively turning it into a lane of southbound traffic.

In the olden days, a policeman or policemen would stand there directing traffic like human traffic lights to ensure that traffic flowed as freely as possible every way, but instead this bunch of lazy idiots just wanted to sit around with their thumbs up their arses doing absolutely sod-all.

And as a result, all the northbound traffic had been at a standstill for almost an hour.

So I missed my appointment thanks to their complete lack of any positive action. Well done you! It’s really no surprise I have absolutely zero respect for them. They always set low standards and consistently fail to achieve them in my mind.

I won’t even start to go on about how South Blunderside Humberside Police have failed to take any real action against a harassing, violent and abusive drunkard (with overtones of child abuse)…

And thanks to the AA’s radio traffic reporters for rubbing it in by reporting absolute crap and insulting those of us who were stuck in the jams the police had caused.

Budget Car Scrapping Scheme Rip-Off

Published on 22 April 2009 in News, Travel and Vehicles. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

So Alastair Darling has announced a new plan to offer a £2,000 discount if you trade in a ten year old car and buy a new one. Woohoo!

Now then, let’s have a little think about this. I drive a 1999 Ford Mondeo ST200 which would qualify in a few months’ time. I bought this second-hand at less than a year old and got a whopping discount off the new price. So woohoo! Let’s go and buy the new equivalent Mondeo.

Except there’s not really an equivalent, but there is a 2.5L 220PS version though not as nice looking.

In 2010, I will pay £205 to tax the ST200. On the basis of the Ford’s emissions figures, I would pay £245 a year on the new one but in the first year, I’d pay £550!

So let’s do the sums: the Government discount of £2,000 is probably £1,000 more than mine’s worth. So I’m up £1,000. Then I would pay £350 more for tax in the first year, so I’m only up £650 now. And that’s around a 2.3% discount in real terms. No doubt the dealers won’t want to add their own discounts on top of this if they can help it and of course buying new and turning the wheels would lead to a huge reduction in value that would dwarf that discount.

And of course every year I’d be worse off because the VED is higher on the new one than the old one.

If I go for more of a performance car then the numbers simply don’t stack up especially as the first year’s VED would go as high as £950!

No doubt the banks wouldn’t want to lend me the money anyway…

Damn You Google!

Published on 19 February 2009 in Cellcomms, Google Apps, Kewl and Travel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

{shakes fist}

The other day, I turned up in Birmingham and realised I hadn’t packed a tie, so I needed to wander off and find one. Not knowing the area, but having found a likely shopping centre on Google Maps, I decided to fire up Nokia Maps on my Nokia N95-8GB and use its built-in GPS to give myself walking directions. I had been using this application quite a lot since the start of the year whilst wandering around Birmingham staying in different hotels and having to find my way on foot to a Client’s offices.

So I was disappointed to realise that my subscription to the navigation element of the app. had expired, so I reluctantly renewed it at the cost – whatever it was – and used it to find me way there and back.

Now I prefer the Google Mobile Maps application to Nokia Maps, but that only had driving directions and public transport … except that a couple of days after renewing, I saw an article which mentioned the directions on foot facility in the latest version of the software. Now downloaded to my mobile and yes, indeed it does have foot navigation. And it’s free…

Bugger!

Kota Kinabalu Photos

Published on 29 October 2008 in Travel. 0 Comments Tags: .

I didn’t get much time to do much touristy stuff, but here’s a selection of photos I took:

Kota Kinabalu

Published on 26 October 2008 in Travel. 0 Comments Tags: .

For the last few days, I’ve been in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia staying at Shangri-La’s Tanjung Aru Resort.

The pattern has been hot and humid mornings before wet, pre-monsoon afternoons although I’ve been in meetings or dinners every day so I have not been able to enjoy them. But today I had the chance to enjoy the facilities as the conference ended yesterday and my flight isn’t until early this evening.

Except the weather deteriorated yesterday such that there was rain all day … and today has been the same. Being British, of course, I enjoyed the pool for a couple of hours this morning before coming back to my room to shower, change and pack.

Yesterday’s dinner was attended by the local Attorney General and the Tourism Department stepped in to sponsor the event, so it was a glittering affair.

So what are my overall impressions of Malaysia? Well Malaysia Airlines’ website suggests that its airline code, MH, stands for “Malaysian Hospitality”. And for once it’s not an idle claim. The airline was superb, its staff friendly and helpful and I have found that to be the case everywhere I have been. Excellent service, always with a genuine smile and talking to some local lawyers, they confirmed that was the Malaysian way.

Simply outstanding! I will be back…

Gran Hermano

Published on 23 March 2008 in News, Travel and WTF. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

So it has been revealed that BAA, owned by Spanish construction company Ferrovial, plans to fingerprint all passengers at Heathrow’s Terminal 5.

Why?

Well apparently:

“Under the security measure, prints will be checked at the gate to try to ensure the person who checked in is the same person who is boarding the aircraft.”

I would have thought the person’s passport would do this just fine, wouldn’t you?

So why are they doing this? Who knows: maybe it’s just a commerical decision to push their miSense product following their earlier trials. Certainly the Home Office is quoted as saying there’s no requirement in terms of security for fingerprinting to take place and the Information Commissioner is apparently looking into it. There’s also the question as to transmission of the biometric data within the EU (and who knows where else).

The trouble for someone who wants to travel by air on international as well as domestic flights is that with BAA in such a dominant position in terms of airport ownership, you may effectively be forced to be added to a database. Once on there, who knows how long the information will be held and by whom.

What’s the next step? RFID tagging for everyone?

The Trials of Trustees

Published on 19 March 2008 in Kewl, Travel and Work. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

It appears that this October I shall be required to attend a couple of meetings here at Sabah in Malaysia. I’ve yet to find out of we’ll be insisting on business class travel or choosing to travel economy for the benefit of the members…

Now to me, that looks like a little bit of paradise, but I will be mainly sitting in some conference room or attending some semi-formal dinners whilst I’m there. It might be nice to share the trip with my partner, but it may well be a tad expensive for a short break… Still, at least they’d be able to relax in luxury, so we’ll see.

Pretty in Pink

Published on 13 March 2008 in Travel. 0 Comments Tags: .

The problem with having a girlfriend who likes the colour pink is that when you have to borrow her car – and she owns a white Golf with pink pinstriping – you’ll look absolutely fabulous driving it to work, like the bloke I saw this morning. Not one for guys who aren’t secure with their own sexuality…

SatNavs Compared

Published on 21 February 2008 in Hardware, Kewl, Nokia, Roads and Travel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I had a journey to go on today: Google Maps reckon the outward leg should have taken 3 hours. The Garmin i3 (aka Psycho SatNav Bitch as ‘she’ tends to taunt me with unrealistic targets, even the way I drive) reckoned around 2¼ hours. My Nokia N95-8GB with Nokia Maps, on the other hand, reckoned 4 hours. Something of a disagreement.

In the end, the combination of the time of day, the occasional spray and muck left over from gritting (even though it hadn’t been icy) and the way I drive meant it took 2½ hours.

The routes themselves were almost identical, the only difference being the route in or around Grantham.

And the other differences were:

  1. the Garmin had the speed camera database to warn me of “accident blackspots”;
  2. as the Nokia was on the cradle and connected to the car kit, every spoken direction muted the radio which is a tad annoying when the voice prompts get a little frantic; and
  3. the Nokia’s display also shows the current speed (good) and the time left rather than the ETA (bad).

Looks like there’s still no ideal solution for me, but the Saga-driver Nokia is closest as it’s so nicely contained within the phone.