Blud's Blog

The news I had been waiting for.....at last no more Spanair!

2012-02-02T18:04:00.004+01:00

Possibly the only downside to living in Barcelona, from a travel perspective was that most of my long haul European destinations had direct flights with Europe's worst airline, Spanair. And having a cost conscious travel agency, it would keep proposing Spanair as the lowest cost option. The penalty for not accepting the lowest cost was a confrontation with our own Ayatollah of our corporate travel department.

Consequently I had to plan my travel very carefully, staying sufficiently late in the Nordics just so I could miss that 3.50pm return with Spanair, and then fly later with a connection the unfortunately meant I got home after midnight. But frankly it was worth it. Have you ever sat in a Spanair seat? This is the airline that has never refitted the interior of its planes. Actually not dissimilar to SAS: Would it surprise you to know Spanair used to be owned by SAS? Irrespective of which cabin you got to fly, your bottom was in for a (mind-)numbing 3.5 hours from Barcelona. "Shit" is the only word to describe it.

Spanair went under because it was trying to compete with the low cost airlines (which notably have newer planes with comfortable seats) while trying to appeal to the business traveller, (by banning the use of the mobile phone). This was, if you can believe it the Mobile World Congress' partner airline for 2011.

Well I am delighted to say it failed in both categories, and not a minute too soon. Do I feel sorry for all those stranded passengers? Actually no, because they helped Spanair survive that bit longer.

I'm off to Copenhagen next week. Did I book a direct flight with Spanair? No, I'm going with BA via London. Did it cost any more? Not any more. Did we book our flights to Seville for summer holiday with the lowest cost airline Spanair? No, we booked with the slightly more expensive Vueling Airlines, and how glad I am I had the foresight to do so!

Good riddance Spanair. The only thing I regret is I never made up an acronym for you, like the other Star Alliance disasters, TAP (Take Another Plane) and SAS (Sit and Suffer). Now I don't have to bother myself.

What have a Bedouin guide and a 3 Michelin Star chef in common?

2012-02-01T22:21:00.003+01:00

The other evening we were watching an episode of "How to cook like Heston", where the man in question (who has the fortune to look incredibly like me) was berating the plight of the roast chicken. Dry, crumbly, overcooked and tasteless....and how we can all relate to that! He then went on to describe the perfect ingredients and procedure for cooking great chicken, and I have to say it did look good. Almost as good in fact as one dish Rosa and I had several years ago while on a tour of the White Desert in Egypt.
We selected our Bedouin guide because of his command of English, very useful when you're stuck in the desert for a few days. He was able to communicate with us very well pointing out where we should "sleep", take "photo", "stop", "go", "smoke"...the latter was more in response to an excess of smoke from the fire he made each evening for our dinner. On the first night he made chicken. He gutted the chicken and diced it in much the same way as Heston, but was light on a fully fitted kitchen to get that just roasted effect, but I have to say he really knew how to cook chicken. We had with it rice, peas and yards of bread, which you use to eat the chicken. No knives and forks for us in the desert. Too much to wash up....if we ever found a watering hole. It was perhaps one of the best chickens I've ever tasted, and I'm sure it wasn't because it was left in brine (60g of salt per litre) overnight in the fridge. We did eat well those few days, a tribute to our chef, who performed miracles with one pot, some firewood and a blunt knife. Oh yeah, and the scenery was absolutely outstanding!

The 4 way stop - how civilized

2012-01-25T17:08:00.003+01:00

I've rented a car in the Bay Area, and on my way to dinner with friends last night I entered a neighbourhood with a number of 4 way stops. For those not familiar with the 4 way stop. It's a cross roads where no route has right of way. Each driver must stop and in turn, give way to the vehicle that arrived at the cross roads first. Its one of those things that's almost impossible to enforce (unlike jumping red lights) yet so incredibly civilized, as drivers impose their own discipline to conform to the rules. I'm not sure what the backlash of non-conformance would be. I guess akin to an able-bodied beating a disabled driver to a blue bay parking point. The scorn and looks of disgust would be far worse than any ticket.

So I was thinking how this just couldn't work in the 2 countries I have most experience of driving, the UK and Spain. Many years ago the UK introduced the mini roundabout, an attempt to relieve restricted flow of traffic from side roads. The principle is that a driver must give way to any vehicle already on the roundabout. The problem with that was on sight of a mini roundabout and a vehicle in the side street, drivers on the major road will speed up to ensure they reach the intersection first; because historically they always had priority. This sort of driving mentality is also experienced at a width restriction where vehicles have to merge to a single lane. There's the "you're not getting in front of me" driver that stares unemotionally ahead and refuses to acknowledge the car trying to merge from the side. The other driver often has the "yes I bloody well am" look about them, and it all ends in tears, verbal abuse, hand gestures and alas sometimes, a bit of physical violence.

But is that worse than the other end of the extremity with the incredibly polite Brit that insists "No, please after you", responded with "No, I'm sure you got here first, please, I insist, after you". Less productive but also less likely to result in a prang.

In Spain the mere sight of brake lights and a reduction in velocity for no apparent reason warrants expulsion of compressed air from the car behind as the driver slams his (or her) hand on the steering wheel. Despite their tendency to dawdle on the pavement, most Spaniards I have experienced exhibit a much more aggressive driving style. Where as 4 way stops are installed in residential areas to temper the speed of motorists in the US, the impact in Spain would be to increase the noise pollution of the local neighbourhood.

The 4 way stop, along with right turn on red are in my opinion very effective traffic measures, but I think there's a civility in the style of driving that makes them work her much better than in my home towns.

"The grass is greener on the other side"

2012-01-21T09:31:00.001+01:00

.....are the lyrics Movistar has chosen for its music on hold on its customer service line for mobile customers in Spain, the music that its customers listen to while waiting (for very long periods) to be answered.

"Wait" is a common theme with Movistar. It seems to have an endless shortage of iPhones, the result of piss poor demand planning, and simply expects its customers that want one, to wait.....perhaps until the end of this month, or maybe the next. Either way, you'll just have to wait.

But of course Movistar isn't the only provider of iPhones in Spain now, and other providers do a better job of demand planning, and have the iPhone 4S in stock, waiting for customers to churn....and that's exactly what they do.

Rosa wanted an iPhone as a chrissy present, so that's what I agreed to buy her. She tried the Movistar upgrade route back in December to be told they had none. We went to Vodafone at El Corte Ingles, where they had several. Naturally she started the process of portability.

What followed was the win back campaign. The chica from South America was able to offer her an iPhone at a discounted price. How can this be when Movistar has no iPhone in stock. Ahh well they hold back a few in the stores for this very reason, and armed with a promotion code, Rosa can go and collect her new iPhone. The win back process spanned the Xmas holidays and into the new year, but we finally managed to get to a Movistar store yesterday evening, to be told that they have no iPhones. Perhaps the end of this month or early next. The same response at the next Movistar store.

As it turns out the win back program is bullshit. There are no phones held back in the stores, the promotion code is just that, and you have to wait until they get stock.

So back to another Vodafone store where they have the iPhone 4S in stock. We would have restarted the portability again but Rosa forgot her bank details. So a return trip there this morning. Let's hope other disgruntled Movistar customers don't get there first.

So the motto of this little tale, like the lyrics of the music on hold at Movistar's call center is "The grass IS greener on the other side".

Why I bought a Mac Mini in the Post PC Era

2012-01-03T21:18:00.000+01:00

I'm going to start the year by dispelling the post PC era myth. In my view it's the post laptop era and here's why.

Several years ago I bought a DELL Latitude 430 laptop. It was nice and small for taking on our travels, for updating Facebook, uploading pictures to Flickr etc. I also purchased a docking station to connect a 23" monitor (because the 12.5" screen is really too small) for working at home, I still needed a DVD writer, USB ports etc. So my DELL doubled as a laptop for travels and a desktop PC at home.

But, since I bought the iPad, the DELL stays permanently docked in the office. I can perform the same functions with the iPad, it's lighter and the battery lasts longer, so there's really no need to take the DELL out any more, and now it functions simply as a desktop PC in the office.

So now I want something to support my new hobby of photo editing. The DELL won't cut it and all the independent advice leads to something in the Apple stable. Interestingly I compared the price of a same configuration MacBook. It was 3 times as expensive as my Mini, doesn't have a 23" screen, nor would it fit in the same confined 20cm x 20cm space.

So there you have it. An iPad for travels and a high powered desktop device for working at home. What's been replaced is the laptop, not the PC.

All I want for Xmas......

2011-12-16T20:31:00.002+01:00

There's a ton of things I want for Xmas, but I thought of the following for a brighter and more prosperous 2012 and beyond....

All politicians worldwide must have lived in at least 2 countries before being qualified to serve.

I once had the great pleasure of listening to Ken Harvey, then CIO at HSBC. In his talk he pointed out how important culture was for a global company such as HSBC. He stated that as a mandatory requirement to be one of his reports, his staff had to have lived in at least 2 countries in the world. I can (now) relate to that. One of our greatest faults as human beings is that we don't take the time to understand other cultures. We dismiss them as extreme, or worse, backward and in need of education, simply because we haven't taken the time to understand them.

Nowhere more is this obvious than in politics, where we have some of the most ignorant people in the world, untravelled, ill-informed and uneducated (outside of the exclusive universities they attended as students). Consequently, totally unfit to serve their incredibly important role representing their respective countries. Ken Harvey has become a very successful individual, running a very successful IT organization at HSBC. Just think what governments could achieve with a similar open mind.

Ban the Bell Curve for Performance Management

I'm not entirely sure who adapted the Bell Curve for measuring performance of employees at work but if I was so unfortunate as to meet them, I believe I would be quite rude, violent even towards them. For anyone who has been subject to this Dickensian form of measurement, I'm sure they too would be quite sympathetic, and perhaps themselves stick the boot in on the unknown theorist. The Bell Curve has to be the meanest, most destructive form of measuring employees, and can only be counter productive in the modern employment age. You only have to look to the Internet to see how people are collaborating, imagining bright new ideas, sharing and innovating, while in the 20th century employer, staff are being measured against each other, in competition, with the lowest ranked performers (even if they've been working their socks off) dismissed for simply being at the bottom of the curve.

Glassdoor has just published the 2012 Top 50 Places to Work. While I don't have an in depth knowledge of most of these companies, I'm pretty certain few of the top 50 use the bell curve for measuring staff performance. I certainly know of several that do use the bell curve, and don't appear here. So why would you or an investor care whether your company was a place to work. Well perhaps the analysis carried out by Russell Investment would convince even the most frugal of investors to start asking some difficult questions at the next shareholders' meeting.

Unrestricted access to media and entertainment irrespective of country of origin

My wife and I have been keeping up with the series Dexter. We're only a week behind the screening on HBO in the US because some kind soul records it then sticks it up on the Internet and we download it via Bit Torrent. Of course this is all highly illegal, but the media moguls have only themselves to blame. The demand for watching series like this on a global basis is huge, and the delivery through the Internet with services like Netflix etc is very simple. All the media companies have to do is to allow cross border access. But do they? Not on your nellie. The BBC for example has a huge following, yet Auntie decides to ban access to its services outside of the UK. Why? Because no-one's paying the TV license of course. The problem the BBC has is that at its core are old farts that have yet to grasp the concept of the Internet and its power as a transmission medium. It's the same at the ITV. Very few people watch TV in real time. It's all recorded and played back at their convenience. But the crew at the independent channels haven't yet worked out that if people are recording, they're skipping through adverts. Alas the advertisers will probably work it out before the TV channels, and as the advertising revenue shifts to other mediums the old media farts will be flapping around trying to work out where it all went wrong.

I don't like breaking the law, and as I would willingly pay to watch episodes of Dexter, I'm offering up my hard earned money for unrestricted media access. In the mean time while the moguls are trying to work it out, we'll continue to stream our favourite episodes from the US...all through Christmas, and into 2012 and beyond.

Editors Footnote....As a case in point this last series of Dexter was watched by more people via illegal download than viewers of HBO. While the fat cats in the Media industry whine about copyright, I'm sure some entrepreneur somewhere is thinking "We're missing out on a massive opportunity".

Blud's travel tips

2011-10-18T19:48:00.000+02:00

It's been a long and busy summer, not least with too much travel, and rather a lot of lying around on my back. The latter was alas caused by a herniated disc, following a long overnight flight sitting upright. While I'm on the mend, my travels continued through the summer, both long and short haul, and have been the catalyst for this entry.

Tip No. 1: If you're fortunate enough to travel in Business Class with your partner, as soon as you receive your flight details, log on to the website of the airline, use your locator to find your flight and reserve your seats together. This will save you the risk of flying in separate parts of a busy cabin, and the slight embarrassment of having me say "no" when asked to move to another row of the plane to accommodate you. One of the benefits of biz class, long or short haul is that you can reserve your seat ahead of flying - SO USE IT!!!

Tip No. 2: If you have a PC or a smartphone with the airline's free application, check in on line from 24 hours before the flight to enjoy a greater selection of seats in any of the cabins you fly. There are very few airlines that don't provide this facility. It's simple to use, it costs nothing and will ensure quality time together in flight.

Tip No. 3: If you fly a lot, and you want to use the VIP lounges at the airports, consider enrolling with a frequent flyer program that is not with an airline based in your country of residence. For example, to enjoy Senator status with Lufthansa, a resident of Germany needs to attain 150,000 air miles, while living outside of Germany you'll need only 100,000 miles. It's even better with BA where you'll need 1200 executive points to retain a Gold card with a UK address, yet only 800 if you live outside the UK.

Tip No. 4: Did you know you can save a ton of money by starting your journey in a different country? So you live in the UK, and your obvious choice to fly to San Francisco is with BA. This, flying from London will cost you £1881.96 in Economy and a whopping £4824.96 in Business Class. Yet, if you started your journey in, say Barcelona, the fare to fly to SFO via LHR would be £1469 in Economy and £2750 in Business Class. Why? Well BA, and Lufthansa are trying to encourage foreign residents to hub through their airports. So not only do they make it easier to attain the premium VIP status, they make it cheaper for you as well. So how do you start your flight in Barcelona? I thought you'd never ask! Buy a £69 one way fare between LHR and BCN. Then on the return leg from SFO, leave the airport rather than fly on down to BCN....unless you really want to, of course.

Tip No. 5: Ever noticed how with some airlines, it's more expensive to book a one way ticket than a return? I had this recently with a late notice change of flight. The one way flight between CPH and BCN (via MUC) was a whopping 800€ with Lufthansa, yet if I selected a date in the future to return it was only 500€. So book yourself a return and don't use it. It will drive those airlines nuts, and it serves them right for not offering sensible prices for one way flight....just like BA does :-) If you're booking with a travel agent, don't tell them that you have no intention of taking the return flight, as they get into trouble with the airlines for encouraging this scandalous money saving technique.

Tip No. 6: If you use hire cars, don't enlist in their loyalty programs. You will enjoy better rates as a "punter coming in off the street" to their website. Also, always select the web page for the country of rental. It's quite amazing how much the prices will differ depending on which country you're from. I played around with this for a previous blog and found that clients from the Vatican are the greatest "at risk" earning significantly higher premiums than average Joe and Josephine.

Tip No. 7: If your hire cars frequently consider taking out a private insurance policy against the excess for the collision damage wavier. Insurance4carhire is one firm that offers this. Policies start from £49 a year, so you can recover the cost in a 3 day rental with the excess charges from the leading companies like Hertz and Avis, and where the excess cost is now as high as the daily rental charge! The only downside is that if you do have a prang, then the car rental company will take as much as the full excess, which is usually £500 to £800. The con however is that as you will see with the state of their cars, they never get them repaired anyway, and so the excess should be about the loss of value, not the cost of repair. You'll have to check around the hire car properly before you leave the depot. But then again if you're a pretty awful driver, I'd go with the CDW and for piece of mind.

What's in a song?

2011-07-31T14:10:00.001+02:00

The other day my niece posted a Facebook update. She's busy preparing for her wedding next year and, just like her mother likes a bit of forward planning.

The question she asked was "Does anyone know of a DJ that can play the oldies like Phil Collins, as well as modern...." I just had to comment that Phil Collins is not old music! But then, as I was listening to him, and Genesis, and Peter Gabriel, Queen etc some 30 years ago, I guess yeah, that makes me old, or at least the music I listen to is!

I do like to listen to up to date music. It's not all bad, but I do have a problem with understanding the words. It's impossible to work out what the theme of the song is. Not like good old Queen, and Bohemian Rhapsody where Galileu is being saved for his "warm sausage tea".

But then perhaps it is a sign of the times. I remember my father saying the same "it's rubbish, you can't understand the words". Well clearly it was an age gap thing, because the words of the pop song I listened to were so clear, so much clearer than those of today.

So I'm wondering what music Michael will be listening to in a few years time. Of course the big difference from my era is that while my parents were always telling me to "turn that racket down", youngsters today go around with ear buds, such that you can't hear a thing, and conversely neither can they, which I guess calling them for lunch or dinner, or to get up for school will be a challenge. Perhaps I'll just have to interrupt his music with a squawk.

If you're wondering what a squawk is, it's the next generation of tweet. I will include audio, video and a vibration sensor where the strength of the vibration will depend on how upset and annoyed the parent is.

You read it first.....in Blud's Blog!

The 3 Amigos and not a cowboy hat, or donkey in sight

2011-07-05T19:15:00.000+02:00

When I got married a couple of years ago, my best man was an obvious choice, and not just because I'd been his best man a couple of years earlier. It's rare for friendship to last a lifetime and while it hasn't yet, I am confident the bond I have with my friends will remain solid throughout our lifetimes.

Colin is the guy on the right of this photo. I've known him for 35 years. We were classmates in both primary and secondary schools, attending similar lessons, the same youth club and Scout group. My few sporting achievements were because of Colin. He encouraged me to play table tennis, then badminton, and while I was never going to be as good as him, we often made a strong doubles pair.

By senior school, we had gone our separate ways, and while that was where many friendships ended, ours remained strong, in fact depsite living in different towns, counties and now countries, our loyalty remains.

I met Sandy as a result of Colin's devotion to Badminton, that dominated his early work years. It was something he was very good at, and excelled far beyond my standard. And that's where he met Sandy, an equally accomplished Badders player. Alas I was never going to be a part of this elite clan. I did go to practice night once, the night that very nearly killed me. The pace of the game, the frequency of the matches was just too much for me. But that didn't stop me joining them after hours for a beer or three, or more at the weekend.

So that's where I became friends with Sandy, and good friends we have remained, all three of us.

When Colin got married in 2007, I was his best man. The gallant Sandy made my job very easy. When Sandy got married a year later, Colin was one of his best men, the other his brother. When I got married in 2009, Colin was my best man, and Sandy, the other witness. Also in 2009, just before our wedding Colin's wife gave birth to their son Jimmy. In the summer of last year, Sandy's wife gave birth to Anika, and earlier this year we completed the triology when Rosa gave birth to Michael.

It's an accolade I'm proud to be a part of. I'll treasure this photo as much as the friendship I have with these guys and their families.

After a break of nearly 3 months, I'm ready to fly again!

2011-06-30T19:48:00.000+02:00

Thursday April 14th as we touched down at Barceona airport I thought "That's it for a couple of months - no more travels!" The self imposed travel ban was at the request of my heavily pregnant wife. Rosa wanted me to be close by for the birth and support for the weeks that followed. Naturally I agreed. This was the most important event in our life, and it was going to take 2 of us.

How ironic it was that Michael was born on the 5th May, in a week when I has been planning to be in Boston, but I willing cancelled that event and several that followed during May and June. We've had our hands full with the wee bairn over the last 8 weeks, and quite lovingly so.

It's also meant that I've been able to focus in on other activities, especially for work which often get disrupted with an intense travel program. So all in all it's been great, no travel in May and June was definitely the best thing to do, I've not regretted it one bit......but here's the thing....I've actually missed getting on a plane.

As a frequent flyer I'm supposed to tell you how much of a drag it is, how at first you'll love it but then after a while you'll get bored of it and how you'd really like a job that keeps your feet on the ground. Well it's actually not true. Of all the people I know who travel intensively, not one of them would swap their frequent flyer card(s) for a telephone and a web camera. Because those that really want to already have.

The thing is for frequent flyers, even with all the conferencing tools at our fingertips (and we use those as well), the best bit about travel is meeting up with people face to face, even with the jet lag, even with the dehydration, even if it is Vegas! After all we are social animals, and we've been communicating for more than 100,000 years.

Sunday 10th July I get on my first plane for nearly 3 months. The journey will end some 18 hours later in Las Vegas, I'll be dehydrated, jetlagged and very thirsty, but I'll still be very glad to see everyone again.

The Sun Newspaper: Never let the truth get in the way of a good story

2011-05-31T22:52:00.000+02:00

"England wins Champions League final" says the headline in the Sun this week. Trust the rag better known for its tits on page 3 to employ tits for researchers.

The premise that FC Barcelona was started by a Swiss, and supported by some English players would never be enough to make such a claim. But that Messi's shirt includes the St. Georges Flag, which is of course the flag of the England team seals it for Sharon Hendry, along with an interview with the grandson of Arthur Witty, one of the initial players. I happen to know Michael Witty (not often I get to say something like that), and I think he'd have been horrified to learn of the story.

This is the flag of Barcleona. This is the origin of the St. George's Cross on FC Barca's jersey. It has nothing to do with the founder players and all to do with the patron saint of Catalunya, which is St. George. The Catalans have been celebrating Dia San Jordi (St. George's Day) long before Michael's grandfather arrived in Barcelona.

None of this changes the fact that Manchester United received a drubbing from the best club in the world, notably the only major club not to be a PLC, and one that has some truly world class players.....but none of them are English.

The thing about football.....

2011-05-28T20:16:00.000+02:00

Many, many years ago before the time of DVDs, movies on demand and the Internet, the Christmas Day "film" was one of the most important times of the year for the (then) single Electricity company. They had the onerous task of ensuring the entire UK had sufficient electricity to switch on the kettle during the commercials. There was such a spike in the demand that every year they had to plan for it.
Today, the Brits are fed up of watching The Sound of Music over and over again, and I'm not sure it's such a problem at Christmas time given the access to so many other forms of entertainment.
In Barcelona there's one form only of entertainment that can have such dramatic impact on services like electricity, and that's football. FC Barça is a religion, and an incredibly successful football club, and because it's so very successful, the citizens of Barcelona find themselves in front of a TV on many occasions watching the important games.
In 2007 when Barcelona played Liverpool at the start of the game there was a significant drop in the level of pollution in the city, from 25,000 nanometers per cubic cm to just 10. Nobody wanted to be in their car at the time of that game. In 2009, and the last final with Manchester United, the water company experienced a huge spike in the demand for water, a doubling in fact just around half time. No it wasn't the filling of kettles for a cup of tea, it was the flushing of the toilet.
The report goes on to say that the emergency services know when there's an important Barcelona match on, because during the game admissions drop 18%. Alas they increase 28% just afer the game is finished, and more when the great Barça is victorious.
Even the police said they get fewer calls during the important games. It seems the criminals are football fans too!
Tonight my money's on the great Barça, even if it does mean we won't get any sleep later. Because football here is a family passion, for the most part drunkenless and void of the violence that seems to dog the English game.
Vamos los Catalanes!!!

The hyphen that travels between Spain and the UK

2011-05-15T10:22:00.000+02:00

Earlier this week I made my trip to the "Registro Civil" to register our new born son in Spain. This is a mandatory requirement that must be done within 8 days of the birth. Note, that's 8 calendar days, even though the office isn't open on Saturday or Sunday, and inconveniently the Friday after Michael was born.

I don't know of a single person here that can say a good word for the Spanish Civil Service. Thus YouTube video probably sums it up.

Anyway armed with the necessary papers, photocopies and staples I headed up to the office with the papers provided for us by the clinic.

We've decided on Michael Antoni Blood Montañà. Actrually we decided this some time ago, soon after we got the test results confiming the sex of the baby.....well it is the 21 century after all.

As a Brit I wanted Michael to have 2 first names. Michael, after my father and Antoni after the brother and uncle of Rosa. When it comes to surnames, the Spaniards retain their family names. Some friends and family were surprised that Rosa isn't Mrs. Blood, but that's tradition here. There's no need for her to drop her family name because sibilings need 2 surnames, the first is that of the father, the second, the mother. It's also very useful for travelling in and out of the UK. Have you experienced the troubles of taking a child out of the UK with a different surname to your own passport? Something to do with the farties in Whitehall that made the rules only for married couples....and only those that conform to the UK marriage naming convention.

As I got to the desk to register, the civil lady behind the desk said that Michael's first names would have to be hyphenated, because in Spain there can be only one first name...unless you're a Maria Rosa, or a Maria Jose. So in the civil register our son is Michael-Antoni Blood Montañà.

Later in the week I sent of the papers to register Michael at the British Consulate in Madrid. Here of course you can have as many first names as you desire, but only one surname. So to conform with UK requirements, and to ensure Rosa can travel in and out of the UK with our son hassle free, the hyphen has moved to the surname; where now he's Michael Antoni Blood-Montañà.

I have to say I'm also a bit worried if the Brits will cope with the ~ on top of n in Rosa's first surname. He could end up being Blood-Montana!

Michael Antoni........grandson of the late Michael George Neptune

2011-05-06T13:00:00.000+02:00

Just about 2 years ago one evening Rosa and I were walking home from one of our compulsory "how to be great Catholics in wedlock" courses when we got around to the discussion of family. Rosa said to me "You don't want kids do you?" to which I replied "It's not that I don't want them, it's just not been high on the priority list"....which I guess is a fancy way of saying "I've been too selfish in my life to consider anyone else".

It's also true that I've had the great pleasure of being an uncle, and have lovingly watched my sister's children grow up. But, as every parent says "It's not the same as having your own". While I could very much believe it, the thing is you never really understand that until you've become parents yourself.

So now that Rosa and I are the VERY proud parents of Michael Antoni (born 5th May 2011), I've been recollecting my thoughts of a couple of years ago, and with the wonderful hindsight of having held my newly born son in my arms.....I've been wondering..... "Just what was I thinking all these years!"

Our son is named after my father, Michael George Neptune, a man who was a huge influence in my life. He was taken from us far too young, when I was only 25. Despite the years, and everyone else who are so important in my life, I still miss him dearly.

This blog is for you Dad. I'm sure you'll approve.

My "slightly political" tribute to the newly weds

2011-04-29T15:20:00.001+02:00

With the wedding event over, it's time for a little reflection. Firstly it's important to wish the future king and his wife well for their future life together. Alas they are not in good company in long and prosperous marriages, at least not in the royal house hold. But I wonder if allowing a young couple to flourish independent of protocol and tradition (Wills is after all marrying a commoner from Berkshire) they will actually succeed where their family before them have failed. So looking to the future I wish the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge a healthy future together.

I've read the frankly rather pathetic excuses for the snubbing of the grubby socialists and former prime minsters, Bliar and Brown. I was very amused and delighted that they were excluded. I can think of no better statement, far better than saying anything. But what is the real reason?

The Duke is not just a royal, but a human being, subject to human emotions like all of us. Let's also not forget that he, and his brother are military men, and that the parasites pictured here are directly and personally responsible for not only sending their colleagues to an illegal war, but also for sending them ill-prepared.

I am quite certain that William was a driver for this decision, and I'm sure he was quite forceful about ensuring his decision withstood the objections of "pomp and circumstance".

To allow these incompetent fools inside the Abbey would have been a slur on the royals' colleagues and their families, particularly those that have died, and especially those that died because they were not provided the necessary equipment, because of the bungling of Bliar and Brown.

I'm convinced of it....and I salute you in your decision.

My Tribute to John Sullivan

2011-04-27T10:33:00.000+02:00

I was saddened to learn of John Sullivan's death at the weekend. He was a brilliant script writer, one the British Broadcasting Company was so privileged to have in its stable. He wrote many sitcoms for the BBC but for me there is one that stands out above all others, Only Fools and Horses.

I forget the first time I saw Only Fools on the telly, but it was quickly addictive. Then when the series had finished, I bought several episodes on DVD...and then the movies. When I moved to Barcelona, Only Fools came with me, and when I met Rosa I shared with her the very best of British humour. John's humour extends beyond the shores of Ol' Blighty. Today we own every single episode ever made....and I can happily watch any one of them time and time over.

If a Brit abroad asks what humour is the UK best known for, they will likely be told "Monty Python" or "Fawlty Towers". While I too like John Cleese and found humour in his work, I also found it a little bit too ridiculous.

Only Fools and Horse is a series that follows the life of two brothers that, despite the motto of "Who dares, wins" and the infamous phrase "This time next year bruv', we'll be millionaires", they never do make it (well not at least until the very end). And because British culture it seems generally scorns success (though everyone in themselves desires it), and Del Boy and Rodders never quite manage to advance beyond the 3 wheeler and the council flat in Nelson Mandela House in Peckham, they enjoyed a cult following.

My most memorable, and the most hilarious moment of any sketch has to be this one.

Thank you John, for Only Fools, for bringing humour to even the most darkest of days, and for your undevoted loyalty to Auntie. I certainly hope you made it a millionaire, because you truly deserved it.

Our thoughts are with your family for their tragic loss.

May you eternally rest in peace.

Mobile operators in Spain could be dangerous if they developed a fulfilment process on the Internet

2011-04-19T17:32:00.013+02:00

Whenever I go past a mobile store in Barcelona, there's always a queue of people waiting to be served. Personally I hate queuing, and this is why I use Internet extensively for purchases. It's simple, it's cheap and I don't have to queue.

I have tried to apply the Internet shopping principles to buying a mobile phone. The first time I decided to support the Brits, and join up with Vodafone. After all, the kings of Internet couldn't possibly get it wrong....right? Well I was wrong. Vodafone.es managed to set up my account, send the paperwork, issue me with a phone number and set up a direct debit to my bank account. They even managed to bill me for phone and internet service without actually delivering my selected choice, or activating it on their network. Despite several calls, emails and constant promises of getting back to me, I gave up. Alas it took a serious escalation to get Vodafone to stop billing me.

Orange.es was actually much better. Everything worked OK except that I had to go to a store to validate my details. Naturally at the store, after waiting in line, I had to argue with the assistant who refused to validate my details on the system. Eventually she did do so, but not before pointing out to me that I could have bought the phone from her, and then at least she would be earning commission for validating my details. And there in lies the problems of channel conflict. The stores are only agents for Orange (Agent Orange??) and since Spain has never grasped the concept of customer service, it wouldn't do to satisfy a customer's requirements without a fight. But while the process of getting a phone almost went without a hitch, Orange lacks that really important ingredient of a good service....network outside Barcelona.

After a year (minimal contract duration) I can finally ditch Orange for an operator with radio masts outside the cities. Unfortunately, that means service with either Vodafone or Movistar, the mobile operator everyone loves to hate, because its owned by Telefonica! Having experienced the disaster that is Vodafone, I took a deep breath and decided on Movistar. I even had a chuckle with the wife about if I should do the order on line or in a store.

Well it was raining the day I decided to order my phone so I chose the Internet route, followed the steps on line to swapping my number to the Movistar network etc; I had to buy a new phone so I decided on another Android device; I got my SMS, email and confirmation - great! Then of course what followed was the several calls from Orange trying to convince me they have great offers, especially for Ingleses (no only kiddin') and I really shouldn't move to Movistar. Naturally I took great joy in telling them I needed network coverage not offers.

Then last week Movistar calls me and tells me it won't be possible to change my phone from the Orange network. The caller wasn't sure why but they had cancelled everything, including my phone and that I would have to go to a store, queue and be subjected to a nauseating nerd with few social skills try and sell me an apple thing when actually I want an Android device.

How irritating......but then I am only a potential new customer.....and who needs those, when you're Movistar??

Carolyn McCall, CEO of Easyjet joins a long list of people that don't give a toss about safety on board flights

2011-04-09T23:15:00.000+02:00

I dunno about you but every time the safety demo starts up, I usually come across all weary and in need of 40 winks, or I find the in-flight magazine incredibly interesting. Anything so as not to watch and listen to the safety demo - the one that if the plane goes down, you're never going to need. Let's face it the only reason its important that you remain in your seat is its easier to identify the bodies strapped into their respectively allocated seats. And maintaining the brace position will help to preserve your jaw on impact, so its easier to identify your mangled corpse from dental records.

So what happens when you travel on Easyjet where there's no allocated seating. Is it because they are so confident that their pilots will never crash and so the job of identifying the corpses will never be required? Or is it because they simply don't give a toss? My experiences would suggest the latter....right to the top of the company. Safety of customers is clearly NOT Easyjet's top priority. Because if it was, I would have at least received a acknowledgement response to my complaint about the breaches of security my wife and I experienced on a flight more than a month ago.

Yes, it's been a month since I wrote to Carolyn's office about my experiences. I've yet to receive a reply. Is it the case that Easyjet gets so many complaints that they have yet to even open my letter? Or is it actually, they simply don't give a toss?

As consumers we often take pleasure in announcing "I'll never do business with that company again". I know I do, and I know I'm as guilty as most in eventually returning, often by necessity to exchange hard earned cash for goods and services. There are one or two exceptions. British Gas.....after writing to the executors of Mr. Blood's estate, I never, ever was a customer again....and I never will be again. Recent additions here in Spain are Barclays Bank....though I've still to finally close the account, Vodafone and Pixmania.

Easyjet was convenient. I've never regarded it as cheap, its flights with extras can often be beaten by BA and I never liked getting trampled in the rush to get a seat on the plane. But I flew with them to Stanstead for convenience, because visiting friends in the Epping, Woodford, & Chingford area was just so much more convenient than risking a accident-induced crawl around the M25 to Heathrow. But it seems while it may be convenient, its not worth risking my safety.

What follows is the letter I wrote to Carolyn McCall about my experiences last month. This is the letter her office has not acknowledged a month after receiving it. I'll let you decide if Easyjet has your safety as their top priority. I for one, will do my uppermost never to fly with them again.

Carolyn McCall,

Chief Executive Officer,

Easyjet PLC,

Hanger 89

Airport Approach Road,

Luton, LU2 9PF

9^th March 2011

Re: Safety Negligence on Flight EZY3035; LST to BCN; 6th March 2011-03-09

I recall from my last safety training course that everyone is responsible for safety, and a person that ignores a breach of safety is as negligent as the person responsible for creating the breach. It would therefore be reckless of me not to bring to your attention two incidents of safety negligence by the cabin crew on the above flight last weekend.

EZY3035 was a packed flight; the overhead storage was full with passenger luggage such that the last few people to board had to check their bags. While I am not a regular flyer with Easyjet, this seems a common occurrence especially perhaps given your hold luggage charging policy. As a consequence, it is an imperative that your staff should be extra vigilant for passengers that create unsafe environments by opening overhead compartments, and leaving them open in transit.

As we boarded, I was careful to pack my heavy camera bag to the back of the compartment. As a very frequent flyer (more than 170,000 Km annually) I am all too aware of the impact of turbulence on storage. The last thing I would want on my conscience is an injured passenger as a result of my negligent packing.

Some 20 minutes into the flight a passenger sitting in the front row opened the compartment above my 28 week pregnant wife and began to rummage inside to retrieve personal items. I don’t recall exactly how long the door was left open but I was shocked to witness my camera bag fall from the compartment and hit my wife on the arm while the passenger was meddling with her telephone.

My initial reaction was shock. I’m not sure how loudly I shouted at her as I was wearing earphones and listening to music, but I was distressed that my heavy camera bag came so close to hitting my wife’s stomach. In my exchange with her she started to laugh which infuriated me further. At this point, one of your staff (described as the crew member with brown hair tightly tied in a bun) interjected and started to criticize my behavior. I reiterated what had happened and that I was concerned for my pregnant wife. She told me that it was “an accident” and the passenger didn’t mean for my bag to drop or hit my wife and that I should calm down.

Through this incident neither this crew member nor any of her colleagues asked my wife if she was hurt, or if she needed anything. Irrespective of any dispute with a partner, your employees were grossly negligent in not considering the condition of my wife. I find this inexcusable.

I regard your staff negligent in not preventing this incident. This was not an accident as your employee believes. It was an incident caused by the inexperience of your passenger and the negligence of your staff, for not having the vigilance to account for the mistakes of novice passengers. I accept your passenger didn’t do it on purpose, much like a novice driver doesn’t mean to crash into the car in front, but the driver would still be negligent.

The fact that your passenger moved my bag from the back of storage to a precarious position where it could fall goes to highlight the stupidity of your passengers, and why your staff must be so vigilant. There was no exchange of “Please be more careful” between your crew member and the passenger, or advice not to leave the door open. So your passenger, vindicated of any wrong doing will again be responsible for further alarm the next time she flies with you.

In my many hours of annual travel I frequently see crew members on competitor airlines closing open compartments, looking out for the inexperienced of some of their travelers and the safety of all aboard. How about your staff being trained to meet the same high level of safety standards of British Airways and Lufthansa?

The second incident occurred half way into the flight as your crew was re-arranging the food boxes in the galley at the front of the plane. I’m not sure how for how long the safety catches were left open on one of the upper boxes, but it was some 10 minutes from the time I noticed until one of the crew (identified as the flight manager) returned to the galley to apply the catches. Again, I have witnessed what impact falling food containers can have when left unsecured. For other airline in question, the galley was separated from passengers by a wall. On your planes, the front row of passengers has no protection from such an event.

After the second breach I decided to approach the manager at the end of the flight, for the incident book. I felt it necessary to record what I had seen, because I regarded this crew as highly negligent of the safety of its passengers. The manager informed me there is no incident book on board, which I have to say I find strange. How do you record incidents for health reasons, or occasions of injury? Does all this not have to be recorded at the time in case of repercussions? Or was it a just a simple way of fobbing off a difficult passenger? After all no-one wants to offer up an opportunity to record criticism.

As I explained to the manager the second of the two incidents I wanted to report, her colleague standing by the exit (described as having long blond hair) shook her head and said “I find that hard to believe”. Once I confirmed with the manager the course of events, and the manager confirmed she did have to close the safety catches her colleague just shrugged her shoulders in response. Was that a “couldn’t care less” attitude, or an embarrassing response to a passenger that had proved her wrong, especially one that was “so difficult” earlier on in the flight? I’ll let you decide.

In your annual report of 2010 you write “The safety of our customers and people is easyJet’s No.1 priority; it is part of our DNA. From the boardroom to the flight deck and the check-in desk to the maintenance bay, safety informs everything we do and is the starting point for every decision, at all times”. My experiences suggest your vision of safety is certainly not a reality in the cabin.

I sum up by highlighting 2 key safety violations by your staff which could have had huge consequences both personally for my wife and I as well as for the airline. I regard your crew on this flight as both ignorant and complacent, and I fail to see how you could also regard this any different. Perhaps the saddest part of all is that in the past I have had the opportunity to be very positive about your airline, especially in comparison to some of the companies I fly with for business purposes. It is a tragedy though that while they also have their faults, their approach to passenger safety leaves Easyjet on the tarmac.

Sincerely,

S J Blood.

Could Paypal be my next bank......please?

2011-03-22T18:41:00.000+01:00

I just carried out the simplest of transactions to a work colleague collecting for a retirement. I logged into my PayPal account, added her email address, the amount of money I wanted to send, in sterling, and Paypal debited my Spanish bank account with a transaction fee of 0.13€....yes that's 13 Euro cents. My colleague received the money in her Paypal account within minutes.

Now if I was to send this modest deposit from my bank account to my colleagues, I would need her bank account number, an IBAN, BICC and her inside leg measurement. Added to that, being a Spanish bank Barclays would likely charge me a fee equal to or greater than the sum I sent for the collection and take several days for it to arrive in her account.

If Paypal can do this in a matter of minutes, is there really any justification for International transfers to cost so much and take so long.

Paypal gets my vote. I might require a little more security on the front end before I was prepared to deposit my monthly salary with them, but they're definitely on the right track.

Bye bye Barclays!

2011-02-24T20:16:00.000+01:00

There were two good reasons why I signed up with Barclays when I arrived here in Barcelona. The first was they had an English service - English speaking staff and an English website. Very useful when you arrive with little more than "Buenas días" and "Hablas ingles, por favor?" Secondly....well it's an English Bank right? You can't go wrong with an English bank.......right?......Wrong! Especially if that English bank is nothing more than an English name on Banco Zaragozano, a very Spanish run bank.

My woes of dealing with Barclays here in Spain are well documented most recently in this post. But the best (or worst) was yet to come, when I went to terminate my aval, a banker's guarantee for a landlord that I don't trash his property.

The deal was that Barclays would renew the aval with the agency on behalf of the landlord, charge me 200€ a year for the service, then at the end of the 5 year term, I recover the paperwork from the agency and Barclays releases my money. So imagine my surprise when it comes to light that the agency didn't renew the aval for the last two years. Yet Barclays still charged me 200€ a year, and in fact went further than that and even charged me the first 3 months (50€) of a not-agreed 6th year of aval.

With 450€ of my hard earned money at stake, naturally I argued profusely that my bank owed me a tidy sum (in Castellano I might add. The English speaking service is no more). Alas my bank manager disagreed with me. For some inexplicable reason, it seems the renewal of the aval has no impact on what Barclays decides to charge me. Only when I return the papers am I released from the aval (I knew that bit) and the 50€ a quarter commission. The only obvious answer she could give was that it was the same at all the other banks.

I was furioso. I've never been smiled at quite so much while facing total inflexibility. Finally I hit her with the bit Brits just love. "I don't need this account. I have accounts with 2 other banks, and I find their approach to charges much fairer". It was as if I'd called her "puta madre". Despite the autocation in front of the rest of the bank it seems Spaniards would simply forgive their bank manager, and carry on being screwed like this.

My Spanish teacher, who is actually Swiss says that Spaniards are far too forgiving, and was delighted that I'd opened "una cuenta nomina" with a different bank. Note, if you will it's not a traditional Spanish bank, nor did it buy into Spain. It's one that relies of "Fresh Banking" to win over it's customers, one that relies on the Internet and phone lines to do business. "Can it possibly be successful?" you might ask. Well I see no reason why not. I am still a customer of First Direct in the UK. Never have I had such great service from a bank, and never will I have reason to change.

I believe I might have started the customer service revolution in Spain. Anyone care to join me?

Just as half the World is arriving in Barcelona...I'm leaving

2011-02-12T19:50:00.000+01:00

I knew Mobile World Congress was close, because this week leading up to the event, my Internet starts to slow down, I wait for minutes to access website that would normal refresh within a couple of seconds, and glitches in the network drop my VPN connection, VoIP phone calls and pretty much everything else.

Now you'll never get Telefonica to admit it, but it's funny how it only happens once a year, and it's always around the time of Mobile World Congress. So I think that's good enough justification for accusing them of STEALING MY INTERNET.

As an avid home worker, who's productivity relies on web pages taking less than 5 minutes to refresh, I'm escaping, on a plane out of here on Monday afternoon.....and I'm not coming back until Thursday when it should nearly all be over.

I'm now even wondering if I'll be able to check-in on line and print my boarding pass! What did we ever do before we had t' Internet.

Bebe a Bordo!

2011-01-28T23:08:00.000+01:00

I noticed one of these signs in the back of a car as I pulled along side the other day. When I saw a "Baby on Board" sticker in the back of a car window in the UK I always assumed that it meant "I've got a baby on board buster, back off a few yards".

But, since announcing the expected birth of our son in May, every parent has been reminding me how little sleep I'm going to get.

I've recently returned from the West coast of the USA, and having taken several days to recover from jet lag, I've been a bit cranky, and not totally in control of my senses or actions. The same people have been kind enough to remind me that this is an example of what's to come, and how the sleepless baby night will seem a little like jet lag.

So I've come to realise that the "Bebe a Bordo" in the rear window isn't actually a "back off buster, I've got a baby on board" but actually more a "Don't drive too close to me, I've not slept for days, I'm not in control of my senses and if you don't want you car damaged, give me a WIDE berth".....s'cuse the pun!

It's my money but I can't get at it when I want it!!!

2011-01-28T22:52:00.000+01:00

We've been exchanging our hard earned money for expensive goods and services recently. The difference is these services involve manual labour and so we encounter the "en efectivo" culture. Cash is preferred by the labour intensive markets because it helps with the avoidance of paying tax. If you've read the papers you will note that Spain's unemployment rate is running at 20%. And it's true, but even in the good times it hovers around 10%, thus indicating a problem with an underground economy.

Most recently, we moved home. Jack Pinto, the legitimate removal firm supplied us with 4 men, an invoice and a demand for 998€ in cash. This we found out about an hour before they finished, and I had to rush to the bank to draw cash. This worked without a hitch, but we decided not to tip their work, especially since we're paying for their tax avoidance!

Two weeks ago, we got a quote for a new water heater. Unfortunately the existing one which hadn't been used for some time, was well passed its sell by date and a date was confirmed for an installation. The quotation had the dubious "Al Contado" as the form of payment.

Unfortunately, I'd had a busy week and visiting the bank was something that got passed by. But imagine my surprise when I went to the bank at 4pm to withdraw the necessary 1200€ in cash to pay the plumbers, to be told "The cash facility is closed. It's only open in the morning until 1.30pm".

This left me "gob-smacked". I've never been told I can't get at my cash during normal working hours before. OK so it's a rare occurrence that I need to draw such a large sum of cash. In fact the bank employee asked me why I needed such a large sum, and when I explained she just rolled her eyes.

I managed to draw a mere 450€ on my charge card and a further 450€ on my credit car. This is the point I found out I could only draw poultry sums of cash each day. AS I returned home and relayed my woe to my wife about just how crap Barclay's is in Spain, she told me it's quite normal that the banks only allow cash withdrawal in the morning.

I guess I stupidly thought that Barclays, a UK based bank might actually bring some of the more advanced banking procedures to Spain, rather than retrench to the archaic principals that leave España in the dark ages on financial matters.

It doesn't stop there. How about being charged the price of a stamp for making an electronic transfer (in addition to a bank charge). Why? Well if you sent a cheque in the post you'd need to put a stamp on it, right? How about having 24 hour access to the Internet but only being able to carry out transactions during normal working hours? Fees for withdrawing money from a cash till other than the bank's network is always a gotcha, but how about 6.8%!! Yes 6.80€for taking 100€ out of an ATM of another banking network.....and we complain about roaming charges between mobile operators?

It's another one of those culture shocks. Simple procedures that I'd come to take for granted in the UK that reset your expectation of just how backward the banking system is here in Spain.

Blud's Yule (B)log 2010

2010-12-23T10:00:00.000+01:00

What a difference 5 years can make! This time 5 years ago I was viewing the flat that we're just moving out of. Ironically I rejected it initially because it was "too far from the center of town, and there didn't seem to be many restaurants in the area". The good news was it did have a taxi rank nearby for my frequent trips to the airport, an El Corte Ingles supermarket, and the all important terrace, something that I, my wife and our many friends have come to enjoy....with the BBQ and the views of Montjuic at night. Fantastic memories to retain, but alas we had to move on, for the most important reason, that while the wide variations of temperature are something an adult can cope with, it's not something we would dream of doing with a baby on the way. Like I said....what a difference 5 years can make.

Our new apartment in Les Corts is much more residential, lacks the restaurants of Avda Sarria (yes, there were plenty - I just needed to look for them!), still has a terrace but one which will be less impacted by the sun in summer, and inside has a complete heating and cooling system we can control for our comfort, and that our our wee bairn due at the end of May. It's also well placed for Les Corts market. My wife has introduced me to the delights of fresh fish and meat, far superior to the plastic packed stuff of El Corte supermarket! There's a nursery nearby and a small playground, parks, plenty of space in the car park for getting a baby in and out of the car......in fact so many different considerations this time around. What a difference 5 years can make.

Perhaps moving home at Christmas wasn't the best idea, I still have yet to clear a space of boxes to put up the tree. Fortunately we're invading the in-laws for Christmas Day, since we've still not fully unpacked the kitchen and it would be difficult to be creative without the right utensils. We also don't yet have any hot water, because the boiler's "up the spout". We're hoping for a replacement next week. We're then "hoping" very much to fly to the UK for New Year, very much hoping that another dump of snow won't delay our departure as it has disappointed so many travellers this Xmas.

Then it's into a New Year, with a new home, a big change in lifestyle for both of us by May, and hopefully some more positive outlook for the Spanish economy. I wonder what a difference the next 5 years will make?

Merry Christmas, festive greetings and prosperity for the year ahead.

Planes, trains, automobiles and dirty, filthy bastards.

2010-12-04T15:11:00.000+01:00

It's been one of those weeks I'd rather forget. As a regular traveller I tend to expect delays, particularly in airports, but I also, not unreasonably expect airlines to keep me informed. "There's never a problem, so long as I know about it" was what my dear old Dad used to say to his workers....and how true it was.

Monday afternoon I was due to fly to London City for a meeting one the East side of the city. When I arrived at Barcelona airport, I discovered the flight had been cancelled, and I was rebooked on a different flight to London Heathrow. Getting across London shouldn't have been too much of a problem, but Monday was no ordinary day, as Communist Crow had decided to call the "bruvvers and sisters" out over....well, any old excuse to screw up the travel plans of the people that are the reason they have a friggin job in the first place.

During the Paddington Express and a painfully slow, and expensive taxi ride across London's clogged streets later, we decided I wasn't going to make the meeting at a reasonable time, so we cancelled it. I don't know how inconvenienced by clients were, but I find in incredibly inconvenient that BA didn't provide any advance warning, especially since they have my mobile number to send informations. In fact they specifically requested it, in order to keep me informed. BA - you're a waste of space.

The return flight on Wednesday was equally eventful. Unbeknown to me the weather across much of Europe was about to take its toll on my travel plans home. I actually arrived early at the airport, so much so that I was in time for the on-time departure of the 4.20pm from LHR to BCN. Naturally I enquired as to the possibility of changing flight. There were seats available, but I wasn't going to get on without an obscene ticket change at £300! So I waited in the lounge for the 6.15pm. At 5.45pm as I approached the gate, the plane was delayed for take off until 7.57pm, some 45 minutes after the next scheduled on-time departure to Barcelona, the 6.15pm, but guess what, I wasn't getting on that one either.

Perhaps the most incredibly irritating thing was that at the time BA told me I couldn't get on the earlier flight, the plane that was due to take the form of the BA482, the 6.15pm departure for Barcelona was actually being de-iced in Vienna (as we discovered from the pilot having boarded the flight). So BA had a pretty good idea that the 6.15pm was going to be delayed, and the fact that they didn't even consider offering alternative flights for (may I suggest some of their more loyal customers) is frankly scandalous. I was bag in hand, and ready to switch, run if I had to. There was a time when BA would have considered its customers a little more. I'm not sure if it's a change in policy or staff that no longer want to go the "extra mile" to delight their customers, but it sets a miserable expectation of the future.

My arrival home at 1am was preceded by a row with a taxi driver, who with a guiri in the back of his cab, decided to extend the journey home just a little, to bump up that night time fare. When he finally realised that I didn't want the hotel in Avda Sarria, but the apartment in the block on the corner, it dawned upon him that he was trying to rip off a local (of sorts). He was very sorry....and even more so when I asked for the receipt, with all his details.

Friday, I could put all this behind me, as we set off in the taxi once more for the airport, and a mini "puente". The 6th and 8th of December are public holiday in Spain, and its customary to bridge (puente) it with the 7th, and have a nice long weekend. We planned to fly off to Lisbon along with the other 300,000 or so Spaniards looking to get away by air.

30 minutes or so before we were due to embark, all hell let lose. Information at first was sketchy but before long it was clear that the skies over Madrid were shut. The dirty filthy bastards that control the air traffic over Spain had decided, at one of the busiest times of the year, without notice to leave their posts at work. It seemed everyone had come down with something, perhaps it was something they ate, or something their union planned. A walk out to cause massive disruption, pain and disappointment to passengers such as us looking to get away.

The action was an illegal act, and the Government was furious. By 9pm the entire skies over Spain were closed to air traffic. Finally, Vueling agreed to cancel its flights and we were able to collect our bags and leave the airport. 6 hours after leaving, we returned.....counting ourselves lucky that we weren't already abroad and trying to make our way home.

Over the last 12 months we've seen some seriously selfish acts by workers, who frankly I don't know how they live with themselves. We nearly got caught up in the Unite strike last Christmas which was eventually classified as illegal and couldn't go ahead. They did the same at Easter. And like the dirty filthy controllers of Madrid they claim they don't want to disrupt the plans of the passengers, but that they were forced into it by "the management". It seems "the management" of Aena, the government of Spain is partly to blame, since it chose yesterday to introduce some new working practices on air traffic controllers, which sparked the illegal walkout. So, no more votes for Mr Bean and his transport minister. Why is it that socialists can't manage a piss up in a brewery, let alone a country? Oh yes of course, they're not used to elections.

Mr Bean has ordered the controllers back to work. He has created an "alarm state" which requires the controllers to return to work under the rule of the military. Failure to comply means prison...which is where most of Pain wants them right now.

Personally, I'd not let those dirty filthy bastards back to work....ever!

When Government knows when to "butt out!"

2010-11-14T21:00:00.000+01:00

Last night over dinner I asked what had happened to the Chandlers. The new media and the country seemed to have forgotten about them, at the hands of the Somali pirates.

It was therefore quite ironic that this morning I switch on the news to hear that a ransom had been paid, and the couple where close to freedom.

This is of course not the first time that a ransom attempt had been made for the Chandlers. I blogged about this earlier in the year when the previous government intervened in the attempt to free them.

Fortunately of course Comrade Brown went on to lose the election, retire to the back benches and do some charity work while his sidekick Miliband thew his toys out of the pram when he lost the election for leader to his younger brother (Yes Gordon, an election for the leader of the Labour Party!)

While it's perfectly reasonable for a government to maintain that it doesn't support paying ransoms to terrorists, it is refreshing to see that the new administration knows when to "butt out" and let goodwill of the followers and supporters of the Chandlers take its course.

I was tippex'd pink with this bit of marketing.

2010-11-02T18:59:00.013+01:00

Recently I received this little funny in email, with the header "Time to retire?"....and it got me thinking "What ever happened to Tippex?"

I remember using it at school nearly 30 years ago to correct errors in written school work. Like me it's that old....so old that the Firefox dictionary doesn't recognize it!

A fresh bottle of Tippex was great for painting over spelling mistakes. With that fine brush you could neatly erase your errors and write in over the top....but it did have to be a fresh bottle with a fresh brush!

A bottle that had been open too long would go all hard and crusty. Even the Tippex thinners you could buy didn't help, and after it dried, your corrections with the ballpoint pen would meander around craters and lumps on the page. Sometimes it was difficult to make out what the correction was. So you had to paint over it again!

But what of today. Don't students write everything in a word application and print it off for teacher? Is there really still a need for Tippex? I had no idea, so I Google'd it and this is what I found.

A hunter shoots a bear!

Enjoy yourself with this one. A lot of effort has gone into making this series of adverts. I'm STILL not sure what I'd use it for today, but it makes me want to go out and buy some.

The French are Revolting....again!!

2010-10-16T21:22:00.000+02:00

The headline in the Spanish newspaper today was "No queremos vivir peor que nuestros padres". For the non-Spanish speakers that translates to "We don't want to live worse than our parents".

This is of course in response to the Government's plan to increase the retirement age from 60 to 62, still one of the youngest retirement ages in Europe, but the young French aren't happy with that. They want it better than their parents had it.

I guess most of the revolters are too young to remember that Mitterand REDUCED the maximum working week to 39 hours in his first term of Goverment some 30 years ago. Holiday was also increase to 5 weeks. They would probably have also forgotten that the maximum working week was reduced even further to 35 hours in 2000. And the key reason the minimum retirement age needs to be increased to 62 is that today's generation IS living better than its parents, healthier, longer and more expensively.

To quote Harold Macmillan....."Let us be frank about it: most of our people have never had it so good".

Now get back to work. I've got a palne to catch to CdG tomorrow!!

10-10-10

2010-10-10T21:17:00.000+02:00

I don't actually have anything to say, but I just wanted to record a blog entry on the 10th day of the 10th month of the 10th year (of this millenium).

Blackberrys have the same social characteristics as Smoking, but are probably better for your health.

2010-10-09T20:58:00.001+02:00

As I left home the other day I popped the Blackberry in my the top pocket of my shirt. Outside in the street I saw a man perform a similar action, but with a packet of cigarettes....and that got me thinking.

I've never been a smoker, but there were many times when I though how a cigarette helped to pass time. I would see people hanging around, passing the time with a cigarette, where as I would be, well passing the time watching them pass the time. It was also quite a social thing too. You could break the ice over asking a complete stranger if they had a light. People even got married over the need for a light or the scrounge of a fag. Later as smoking bans started to take effect and laws were passed, smokers would huddle outside in the cold, reaffirming the allegiance and defiance of a minority.

Today smoking is not so socially acceptable, and as a smoker I have to say quite right too. So as a replacement for the cigarette, we have the Blackberry, or any other smart phone come to that.

If you're ever stuck for something to do, or have a spare 5 minutes you can reach for your top pocket and pull out the Blackberry, log in to update Facebook, or clear a few emails. You can often be outside a building in a huddle with other Blackberry user searching for a better signal. Then there's always the icebreaker....."S'cuse me, have you got network?"

We certainly believe, and the mobile network provider would like us to believe that all those radio waves buzzing around close to your head are not dangerous. Having worked closely with radio I kinda hope they're right. But then as a colleague once said, we are actually a generation of guinea pigs.

How to stretch loyalty..but keep customers coming back for more

2010-09-17T16:02:00.001+02:00

As I sighed for the umpteenth time in the aisle of the "more than an hour delayed" BA flight from Edinburgh to London Heathrow last night, I said to myself....yet again....."never again". Over the last week I've taken three flights with BA. All of them have been delayed by more than an hour. In contrast I flew once with BMI, which took off on time and landed early. It's the same with flights with Vueling, Lufthansa and even Easyjet - they all manage to leave the gate either on time or with a respectable few minutes either side of the planned departure, so why can't BA? Is it really in such a mess, are the staff really that demoralised that they care not about customer service, or is the company cutting back so much on services that it can't cope with shortfalls else where in the service chain. Last night for example, we waited on the plane 30 minutes for a bus. This was because they had only one bus to ferry passengers from the plane (at a remote stand) to the airport terminal. Is BA cutting back on buses now?

So "never again" I said, as I contemplated the alternative airlines that could transport me between home and the many destinations I find myself travelling to on an annual basis. I'd love to do that, but there's one key service BA provides its frequent flyers that I wouldn't get with Vueling or Easyjet......lounge access....and free seating.....and free showers......and priority boarding.....and the occasional upgrade.

But then again there's an irony here in that if BA could be relied to take off on time, all the time, I wouldn't need to camp out in its comfortable lounges with sandwiches, and free drinks.

Is English restaurant service going the way of the French?

2010-09-13T23:32:00.000+02:00

As you may know I'm not a fan of service in French restaurants. While the quality of the food and presentation is generally outstanding, I find waiters rude, arrogant and lacking in that quality that adds to your overall eating experience.

Today Rosa and I visited Kew Gardens, and after our stroll of what seemed like all 300 acres we stopped off at the Orangerie for lunch. It seemed like a nice enough place, self service but still the food looked well presented.

I ordered a fish cake, and Rosa decided on the Chef's salad. My fish cake would be another 5 minutes the server told me, but if I would like to pay for it with the salad at the cash till he would bring it out to me.
So we did just that, we sat at a table over looking the gardens and Rosa tucked into her salad before it went cold.

15 minutes went by and still my fish cake had not arrived. I returned to the serving stand to be told by a different guy that he was sorry, but the fish cakes were literally on their way, they would be with him in "just a tick" and he would be happy to bring it out to me. For the second time I returned to my seat, lunchless and to see Rosa finishing up her salad.

I waited a further 10 minutes, enough time for the red mist to settle just above my eyelids. I returned to the counter for a confrontation. "Where is my fish cake? I asked. "Your colleague said that it was just coming 10 minutes ago, and you told me 25 minutes ago it would be 5 minutes". "They're coming" he told me, "They're coming soon".

Fortunately for me, another customer who was also waiting for his fish cake, stepped in to suggest that our server bring the manager. Several more minutes passed. The server disappeared through the kitchen doors, leaving the counters empty with no one to serve the other customers. After "a while" the manager appeared, and to my surprise it was the "different guy" who said my fish cake was just coming, some 15 minutes previously.

I asked him if he remembered what he said to me all those 15 minutes ago. He seemed confused so I helped him recall the conversation, prompting him to fill in the blanks. "I said it would be 5 minutes".....then he added "at least". "No you didn't" I said.....raising my voice so that everyone in the queue would hear. "How about setting my expectation correctly". "I can't control the chefs" he told me, "they make food in the order they want to". "But I thought you were the manager" I said, even more exasperated.

At this point, another manager, the manager's manager turned up....and so did the fish cakes. "And what is the problem?" the manager's manager asked me. I relayed my fish cake woe to a young man who seemed to think that as the fish cakes had now arrived, my frustration could be resolved with a fresh cake and a refund of our lunch.

I hate it when they do that. As if our inconvenience of eating separately can be resolved by eating for free.
I suggested he spend our refund on a time management course for his staff. I don't think it was something he appreciated, as he returned to the kitchen he responded "Well I still want to refund your meal".

We did wait a few minutes more, but as the manager's manager was fumbling at the till, trying to work out how to extract our £21.80, we quietly slipped out of the Orangerie, out of Kew Gardens and headed for Costa Coffee, where a latte and a muffin were produced in a matter of seconds.

I discovered I can't relax on holiday if I'm not connected

2010-08-29T20:32:00.000+02:00

A great holiday is one where we're totally disconnected from the outside world, where we can have a couple of weeks of total relaxation, not worrying about what's going on back home.......or is it?

This year the wife and I decided on a road trip to Northern Spain, taking in Navarra, Pais Vasco and La Rioja. I decided I wasn't going to take work with me, I intended to relax. So the company Blackberry was turned off (yes it has an off button) and left in the drawer at home.

But the kit bag was still stuffed with the personal laptop and personal mobile. We like to upload our photos to Flickr so friends and family can follow our travels, and I've become just a little bit addicted to Facebook, and keeping in touch is almost essential. WIFI in hotels for our holiday used to be a bonus. Now its more like a prerequisite.

Our journey started out OK, but as we left the major cities and headed for the villages and mountainous regions, I started to realize the shortfalls on my selected mobile operator.....it just didn't have coverage. This meant that Googlemaps navigation didn't work properly, and I could just add in my updates as I wanted, as I would do at home. More annoyingly so Vodafone and Movistar had network coverage in practically every location we went to, even at the top of the mountains. So there are only 3 operators in Spain, you can pretty much guess which isn't going to be my provider for much longer.

Opportunities to use WIFI at our hotel destinations didn't help much either. We were staying in really old stone build "casas rusticas" where the 802.11 signal didn't make it across all of the buildings. Added to that, the first time I tried to use the personal laptop to upload some pics to flickr, it decided to blue screen on me, my wife and anyone that went near it.

The failings of my choice of technology and providers this trip was really starting to irritate me, which is ridiculous. I'm supposed to be relaxing, I was on holiday!!

Perversely, I have little problem boarding 10 hour international flights for work in the knowledge that, at least my favourite carriers don't support Internet connectivity.

A Bullish Victory in Catalonia

2010-07-30T15:46:00.001+02:00

This week the Catalan Government voted overwhelmingly to ban bull fighting. "Catalonia is not Spain" we are reminded by the graffiti in the center of town, (except when Spain wins the World Cup of course) and what better way to reinforce that message than to do exactly the opposite of the Spaniards.

On a personal level, I find bull fighting one of the cruellest sports in the world, and I'm delighted that the Catalan people have taken this important step.

However, just as the Bulls come up trumps in Catalonia, it's also good to see the few that manage to fight back in the ring. Just as I would watch John McEnroe at Wimbledon to see him argue with the referee, Formula One for the big crashes and Ice Hockey for the punch ups, the only reason I would watch bull fighting is to see the matador get one stuck on him.

I appreciate there's something cultural here I don't understand, but I have a similar contempt for bull fighters as I have for Tony Bliar, or the wide mouthed frog.

Seeing a matador strutting around the ring with his enormous hampton tucked down the side of his spandex, flirting with a bull and teasing it to a slow death makes my skin crawl almost as much as the wide mouthed frog herself. So I cannot contain my glee when the bull fights back and wins a victory for the bovine herd.

This is Julio Araricio in a rather compromising position, impaled on a bull's horn in the way any good matador should be (in my humble opinion) earlier this year. It took 6 hours to reconstruct his jaw throat and tongue following this little bit of payback time.

I see this....and I can't help but smile. Does that make me a bad person?

When positive discrimination really is a good thing

2010-07-09T20:21:00.000+02:00

I’ve never really been in favour of a positive discrimination approach. I think it undermines and patronises the talents of the individuals that secure senior level positions as a result of merit, being good at what they do. And of course it is a policy that is applied selectively, which only goes to reveal it as a farce. Let’s pick on Ms Harriet Harman, (Deputy and Acting Labour Party Leader) who strongly believes that the Labour party should field only women candidates for constituency seats….except when her husband is gunning for a safe seat.

But, contrary to my political leanings, I am going to contest that there is one job that should be subject to positive discrimination. Discrimination even, on the grounds of race. It is of course the job of Manager of the Country’s Football Team.

The best run businesses in the world are run by people who excel in leadership. I am honoured to have met several in my industry sector that are quite amazing. Their companies thrive, as do their employees, shareholders and local communities. But to achieve this, you have to have serious passion, passion for your company, your people as well as your share holders. And what’s more you have to be able to infect your staff with the same level of passion for your business as you have…..and passion is what has been seriously lacking in the selection of England Manager in the last decade.

I don’t believe that a foreign manager can ooze the same amount of passion for a country team as a home grown national. Let’s briefly examine the success of the World Cup teams…..and their managers that reached the quarter finals

Netherlands: Bert van Marwijk; Born: Netherlands

Germany: Joachim Löw; Born: Germany

Uruguay: Óscar Tabárez; Born: Uruguay

Ghana: Milovan Rajevac; Born: Yugoslavia

Brazil: Dunga: Born; Brazil

Argentina: Diego Maradona; Born: Argentina

Paraguay: Gerardo Martino; Born Argentina

Spain: Vicente del Bosque; Born Spain

Is it any surprise that the teams that slugged it out for a place in the finals were all managed by nationals?

So when are the old farts at the English Football Association going to realise the way to consistently win at a national level starts with a manager that can exert passion for the country first, then passion for the team, then passion for winning. Consistently England has faired in the International game when managed by nationals. Bobby Robson was THE England manager of my generation, Brian Clough was the best Manager England never had, and El Tel was…well El Tel.

The board of directors of the FA reads like a list of nobodies from 2^nd rate English football clubs. How is it possible they are charged with assigning the most important job at the country level.

It’s good to see these “business men” are starting to feel the pain of failure, as companies no longer renew their executive boxes at Wembley, and as Nationwide reviews the sponsorship of the jersey. Collectively they have failed the country, and the English squad in their selection of England managers.

Capello may be a great manager, but he’s never managed anything north of Madrid, and never at national level. The English league has some of the best foreign managers, with teams that play the most exciting football….but without any disrespect to their talent, they cannot possibly be as passionate about managing the national squad…because they’re not English.

When the FA has finished paying off Ericsson’s contract and the country is done with Capello, how about a look at the talent that was born a little closer to home.

Harry Redknapp for England Manager!

The Benefit of Indirect Flights

2010-07-03T15:22:00.000+02:00

Several years ago, after having returned home from time on the road, one of my colleagues recklessly (it seemed at the time) sent an email to all of his colleagues with the subject line "You know that you travel too much when..."

What resulted was a barrage of responses from like-minded regular travellers...and the thread went on for days. The responses were all very funny, but there was one that was outstanding. It read....."You know that you travel too much when on the journey home in the back of the taxi you are aware of this awfully bad smell, and before long your realise it's you".

This is one of the downsides of landing from a long flight in your country of residence. You're only 40 minutes form home so you put up with the smell. For me it's impossible to make it home directly, particularly from the West coast of the US. I have to connect, there is usually a gap of a couple of hours for the connection, and so it's a great opportunity to freshen up.

Today our 9 hour overnight flight landed mid morning in Heathrow. As soon as I awoke, all I could think of was standing under the shower. To make things worse, the air bridge wasn't working, there was a traffic jam around the airport and the bus took for ever to reach Terminal 3. But before too long I was shaved and showered and after a change of clothes, and a bit of brunch, I'm relaxing with a coffee writing this waiting for my (delayed) flight home.

None of this is feasible if you fly direct. When that plane lands, all you want to do is to get home, so you put up with the "odour de travel" and hope the taxi driver does too. But when our plane lands in Barcelona, there will be only sweet smelling yours truly in the back of the taxi.

Unfortunately though, it will be over powered by the smell of what's sitting up front.

Who needs Acas when you have your's truly?

2010-06-26T09:20:00.000+02:00

It's my birthday today and I've come up with a great plan to resolve the BA Cabin Crew dispute. Between them, Willie and the Trotsky twins have reached some agreement whereby BA gets to run its airline, with minor concessions so Unite can show its members that it really is worth £11 per month.

The stumbling block still though, is the discretionary benefits of free and discounted flights, which Willie Walsh TOLD the cabin crew he would remove if they went on strike, and so they should have been under no illusion that when you follow your red army's call for strike action, there will be consequences.

Understandably Willie is holding firm, but Trotsky wants those benefits returned, mumbling something about intimidation and bullying. Well, fear not I have a solution, and it's actually quite simple.

Willie can offer to reinstate the travel perks when the money he has saved by not giving them to the staff reaches the amount the staff have cost him in strike action.

I would estimate that the benefits are probably worth about £1000 per employee per year. There are 12,000 employees on strike, so that's £12M a year Willie is going to save. The cost of the strike so far is £150M, therefore after 12.5 years, the striker can have their benefits back.

I remember reading somewhere that Woodley was bemoaning Walsh for trying to turn BA into a low cost airline. "BA is a quality airline" he said (or something like that), "we think it's wrong that Walsh is trying to turn it into a low cost competitor" (or something similar). Well Tony my Trotsky friend, there's only one way you can change that. Buy up a majority interest in BA, then implement your own business strategy. Until then, it seems the shareholders are with Walsh in his strive to turn the airline profitable.....and chico, there is absolutely nothing you can do to change that. Isn't it time you retired?

Once a Guiri, perhaps always a Guiri

2010-06-16T21:15:00.004+02:00

After filling the car with fuel the other day, having paid for it, and after a chuckle with the cashier inside about loyalty cards....all in Spanish of course, I nonchalantly returned to my car, opened the door and thought "Bugger me, I've only been gone a minute and someone's stolen my steering wheel".

It's very difficult to recover your credibility at this point, having strolled up to the car and pressing the remote seconds before opening the passenger door to get in. It's amazing that having lived here for nearly 5 years and quite accustomed to left hand drive vehicles, I can still make this humongous error of trying to get in the wrong side.

But then I still do very much look like a Guiri, and I'm unlikely ever to not look like a Guiri. I found an article recently which indicated the obvious signs of being a Guiri.

1. Sock in sandals. I have to say that's a classic sign of a German tourist, but it's also common to see guys wearing those short little "pop" socks inside trainers, particularly in summer. Only real men and Spaniards wear shoes without socks. If you buy a decent pair of shoes like Camper for example, moccasins without socks are very comfortable in the summer months. I hate having to put on a pair of socks when I leave for client meetings.

2. The other footwear oriented sure sign of a tourist is that they're more likely to be wearing shorts with trainers, while locals will wear typically jeans with flip flops. I've found that walking long distances in flip flops takes some time to get used to, but again is incredibly comfortable.

3. Speaking very loudly in English. I guess it's an obvious sign, and thankfully the standard of English, especially amongst the younger generations is quite excellent. I believe native English speakers are incredibly fortunate, and I take full advantage every time.

4. Eating out at a very non-Spanish time. Lunch starts at 1.30pm at the earliest. If you can find a place open before then it's going to be a place especially for tourists, which means the food will be terrible as well as expensive, and where beer is always served in half litre jugs. It still amazes me to see how many people eat on Las Ramblas. I feel for people who come to Barcelona and go home thinking actually the food isn't that special. Eating is an art form here. Spain is recognized as having 4 of the World's top 10 restaurants, 2 in Catalunya and 2 in the Basque region. That's more than France and the USA. It is THE country to eat out in, and you don't have to go to a 3 Michelin star restaurant to be presented with great food.....but it's not going to be found on Las Ramblas.

5. Reading a large map and travel guide: Well I don't quite buy this one, as my wife has lived here for more than 20 years, and we still use guides when we go out. Googlemaps on the mobile have proved really useful but you've gotta be a guide or taxi driver to know where every street or shop is.

6. Skin a painful shade of pink. This one gets my wife every time. We were out walking the coastal path in Costa Brava a couple of years ago and there was this guy, sparko on his towel on the beach in the sun. He was already looking seriously like a "gamba" (Prawn - the Spanish term for a sunburnt tourist) but was still out there for more. I had to explain the English obsession with holiday and skin colour, and that the worst response a holiday maker could hear on returning home was "you don't look very brown". Ironically my wife uses more suncream than I do when we're out. I keep telling her I have "good skin", especially since I get at least one new layer every summer!!

Gaga rules......for the gaga media industry.

2010-06-03T23:42:00.000+02:00

OK so it finally got to me. It was one of those tunes I couldn't get out of my head. I heard it on the radio, thought it was a bit catchy, so started hummin' in, and now I had to find out who the artist was. It turns out I've been bitten by the Gaga bug. Sure enough "Speechless" by Lady Gaga had me hooked, so I decided I had to get the Album, Monster.

Now I'm usually one for buying the CD - I like a hard copy, just in case I lose both the PC hard drive and the back up. But you gotta move with the times, and armed with the Amazon shop on my Nexus One, it couldn't be simpler to search the album, and join the many other listeners that have made Lady Gaga famously the most legally downloaded music of all time.

No need to pop along to FNAC to buy the CD, no need to rip it to MP3, and for less than the price of the hardware version, I've got the Lady on my phone in time for our weekend away. Couldn't be simpler...right?

Wrong. First of all despite logging into my Amazon account, it wouldn't let me pay for Monster from the phone, not even after I enabled one click with Amazon.

A close inspection of my web site account and this is the message I get when, with a registered address in Spain I try to buy and download the album on line....

I've said in a previous blog that there is no way the media industry can control distribution across the Internet, but this is another example where they're still having a go. I'm not quite sure what little game they think they're playing to try to restrict entertainment but it's not going to work. I am listening to Lady Gaga right now! I have both Monster and Remix, and I got them free of charge through the Bit Torrent network.
I find it quite ironic that I can order books, DVDs, music and tons of other stuff on line at Amazon, and have them delivered to my door here in Barcelona, but when it comes to leveraging 21st century e-commerce, it turns out the music industry is still in the dark ages.

I recall Handy Mandy having dinner with media moguls last year, and shortly after announcing the communications bill, that would go to war with the Internet pirates, one of which I guess is me. Ironic was it not that he didn't do the decent thing, and force the hand of the fatties on the yacht and insist on equal access for consumers. Since the Internet has no boundaries, how can they be allowed to maintain theirs?

Sorry Stefi, but you're going to have to wait for your royalty.

Observations of travels, perhaps too much travelling....anyone want to add any?

2010-05-31T20:47:00.000+02:00

Why is it when someone goes through the metal detector at the airport, they always stoop down, as if to prevent themselves from banging their head? It's more than 2.5m tall!!!

Why when a lone traveller checks into a hotel with a single room tariff, the front desk always programs 2 key cards. Is it because they love to hear the "just in case I get lucky" response 100s of times a week (and there was me thinking I was the only person that came up with that wise crack). It's not as if the spare key comes in handy if you leave you master in the room....because its also where the spare is?

Why is it hotels care more about respecting the environment (by leaving only dirty towels in the bath), than they do for providing plugs for the basin?

Why do cabin crew get to take on board 3 times the amount of luggage passengers are allowed....and why do they always put it above where I'm sitting?

Why is it people find something extra interesting to read in their newspaper, or decide it's time to fall asleep just before the safety demo?

Why does Gideon keep leaving his bible in every room. And why is it the only thing guaranteed to not have been stolen?

Why have hotels stopped providing letter headed paper and envelopes.....and can we please have some decent quality pens?

Why do the hotel room cleaners always leave extra shampoo and bath gel, even when you've not finished your existing supply?

Who makes those ridiculous ironing boards?

Why is it if you watch a movie in your room, it's always assumed to be a porno?

Why do drivers in the UK always slow down when there's an accident on the other side of the road?

Why do airlines insist on filling up my on-line printed boarding pass with colourful adverts. Do they not know just how expensive printer ink is?

What exactly is the point of those teenagers in London airports wearing yellow vests shouting "liquids, got any liquids" each time I pass through security, and why is it they don't exist in any other country?

Why is it on landing at LHR from Barcelona, the pilot always greets us across the tannoy by saying "I'm sorry to say that this time, we've stopped at a remote stand, and we'll have to bus you to the terminal". BA ALWAYS does that with flights to and from Barcelona!

My tribute to Gordon Brown

2010-05-11T22:00:00.000+02:00

Since so many people are busy kissing ass, and making tributes to Jonah Brown, I feel compelled to make my own tribute....

I'd like to thank Gordon for having the foresight in 1997 to apply the windfall tax to the privatized energy companies, for having the foresight to recognize the opportunity to swell his purse by £5 Billion. I'd like to thank him for realizing this was a great way to generate income without actually seemingly to squeeze the UK citizens.

I'd also like to thank Gordon for his foresight in the same year for removing the tax credit for private pensions, which while generating some additional £6 Billion income for the Government annually, has cost pension owners more than £150 Billion to date and counting. I'd like especially to thank him for giving me the incentive to work for at least another 3 years before I have the opportunity to retire, and for all the money I have lost personally.

I'd like to thank Gordon Brown for selling UKs gold reserves in 1999, that cost the country at least £2 Billion, particularly for not listening to the experts that told him this was a bad move, and for lying about it afterwards.

I'd like to thank Gordon Brown and the Labour government for charging mobile operators £22.3 Billion for the 3G mobile phone licences, an action that caused several companies sever debts, and one which caused those same British companies to lose their global leadership position in innovative cellular services, something that came about because of the privatisation of the telecommunications networks by the previous administration.

I'd like to thank Gordon Brown for his energy as Chancellor, his shrewd financial acumen and intelligence in allocating funds such that despite pouring Billions into the public sector, the country still has a shit health service, some of the poorest performing schools in Europe, and escalating crime.

I'd like to thank him for finally relieve the UK of the huge burden that was Dr. James Gordon Brown.

"I wont quit" said Gordon Brown......only two months ago

2010-05-04T15:12:00.000+02:00

On March 15th this year Gordon Brown stated in an interview on Woman's Hour program he wouldn't quit politics if he didn't win a majority......

Q: Do you owe it to [Labour] to quit as leader if you cannot get a decent majority?

Brown: I owe it to people to continue and complete the work that we’ve started of taking this country out of the global, financial recession. To be honest, going around the country, I feel there’s more to do to improve the health service, more to do to give people better opportunities, more to do for women on maternity pay and equal pay, more to do against the discriminations that still exist. We’ve got this campaign to get more women in the boardroom as well.

Q: Will you resign if you don’t get a majority?

Brown: I’ll keep going

Q: You will not quit?

Brown: No, I’ll keep going because I want a majority. I’ll keep going.

Less than 2 months later and he's change his mind. If he doesn't win this week he's going to quit politics and set up a charity with his wife. "I don't want to do business or anything else" he said on GMTV this morning.

Oh Jonah, so soon to make a career changing decision. You wouldn't be sensing defeat by any chance? Or is it the same level of indecisiveness that helped you to so poorly managed your term of office.

"I don't want to do business or anything else"....so that wouldn't include the business of government then? I can't imagine there are any businesses out there that would let him lose with their cheque book, gold reserves or credit card.

Or is he hoping that stating he wants to work for charity he will appeal to the public more, a bit like the contestants for Miss World? Ironic isn't it that the only time he actually has to compete for the office of the premier, he wobbles at the knees, offends the old party faithful, and is rendered free of any new ideas by brighter, younger and more charismatic opposition. So what's the advice now Gordon? Vote for Nick to keep David out?

Whether you support that proposal or not, he's sunk a long way from "I owe it to the people to keep going".

Yes Jonah, the British people really are in your debt. In your debt to the tune of nearly £30,000 per living man, woman and child.

To quote your man in Norfolk "Gordon Brown is the worst Prime Minister this country has ever had"

Let me have men about me that are fat.......

2010-04-29T08:54:00.000+02:00

.....so said Caesar to Mark Antony in Scene 2; A Public Place "Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights: Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous".
What I remember from this in my learnings of English literature was that Caesar regarded fat people as contented, while lean people were more likely to conspire against him. Is this why Bliar kept Prezza so close at his side?

I couldn't find a picture of Sue Nye on Google, but I'm expecting her to be a lean, mean fighting machine, dangerous enough to put "a real member of the public" in front of Jonah Brown, which sent him into a spin of panic yesterday. "It's Sue's fault" said Jonah, clearly expecting that he would only have to meet with converts, that could only be nice to him in front of the camera.

It says much about this entire election campaign. The mas-debates between the 3 leaders is totally staged, with pre-vetted questions from the audience, just as with the weekly Question Time on the BBC. It's become quite rare for a politician to be asked a question that they haven't already had their researchers investigate thoroughly for the most appropriate answer.

It's a bit like entering an examination, already having seen the question paper. We can all appear very clever and knowledgeable....and pass with flying colours. Just wondering if the captains of industry will be afforded such luxuries at their next shareholders' meeting.

The knives must now be out for Jonah in this election campaign, with far too many lean and hungry men and women looking to commit his disastrous term as Prime Mentalist to history......and not a minute too soon.

Handy Mandy for leader of the opposition anyone?

So helpful it Hertz

2010-04-21T01:29:00.000+02:00

I just got an email from Hertz Rental showing that it's doing its best to help customers during the volcanic ash crisis. As a result of the no fly zone, it has a rather large number of cars at airports and ferry ports as people have taken extreme action to get home.
For a Brussels citizen, a one way rental from London would have cost about an additional £600. This cost includes the inevitable expense of either sticking it on the back of a trailer and taking it back to the UK, or paying a student to drive it back
So now Hertz has taken the step of offering to waive the one way drop off charge if customers take the cars back to their country of registration. You can see a listing and their locations here.
So let me understand this. Hertz has accumulated the fees for one way drop off, and instead of using them to return the vehicles to their rightful place, its going to charge customers to return them!!
Some companies go to extremes to fleece customers during a crisis.

Dedication and Ingenuity: Those that go the extra mile, or 1000s of Kms at times of crisis

2010-04-18T21:10:00.003+02:00

This past week has been a bit of a challenge. I was oblivious to the volcanic cloud hanging over the UK until I got an email from a colleague based in France who was stuck, and probably still stuck there. My travel plans for San Diego were very nearly obliterated as well this week. The original plan to fly with Lufthansa to San Francisco was scuppered when on Friday morning the flight from Munich was cancelled. I could still fly to Munich that day, but didn't see much point in that. While most of European airports where closing, Barcelona was still open, especially for international travel. The travel agent rebooked me with Delta via Atlanta, and yesterday we took off......a mere 12 hours before Barcelona was also closed by the danger of volcanic debris.

Not surprisingly the flight was full, not just with tourists to Barcelona, but also families that has travelled south from France to avoid the disruption to Charles de Gaulle. But for me the best story was of the Delta passenger that drove from Finland to Barcelona, just so he could make the flight to the US, for his wedding today. I know no more of this person. In fact I'd already alighted the plane by the time the announcement was made, so my colleague relayed this. Serious kudos to the guy for making that journey, at such an important time.

The second is of 3 colleagues who were travelling back from Greece when their plane, bound for London landed in Paris. Rather than haul up in a Paris hotel, the three decided to hire a limo from the company our French office uses to transport us between meetings, office and airports, and drive to Dunkirk where they could board a ferry to Dover. While booking their tickets they were told that foot passengers were not allowed, so they duly took the limo driver with his car on the ferry as well, to then be collected by another car in Dover, and arrive home at 4 in the morning. One or two comments on Facebook questioned the cost, but as Andy rightly pointed out, while an expensive option, with hindsight it has turned out significantly cheaper than 3 people hauled up in a hotel in Paris waiting for the cloud to clear to fly home again.

For me I'm wondering if the cloud will have passed for my return flight next weekend via Amsterdam, while checking the frequency of Cunard's cruisers from New York.

My thoughts are with everyone stranded by this rare experience, and just before we get all comfortable about the thought of this lifting next week, 300 years ago a similar volcanic experience in Iceland caused a fog that lasted for more than 3 months!!!

Travel safely.

My worst ever golf shot.......

2010-04-13T21:20:00.004+02:00

I'm struggling to not to fall into the trap of adding to election fever, despite the urge to comment on some of the incredible gaffs. So I thought I'd change the topic completely and talk about golf. After all, Phil Mickelson has just won the open, and I always have modelled myself on him.

"Why" you might think.....well he's a lefty too. I've always seen it as a bit of a handicap...and always a good excuse....can't get the right size glove, I don't have the range of clubs available.

Golf has been a key sporting challenge for me for a number of years......actually any sport is a challenge for me. I'm just not gifted with the hand-eye co-ordination, and combined with a terrible lack of patience, and lack of confidence....actually I'm surprised I ever bothered to get up early to play.

I haven't swung a club for more than 3 years. I guess that means I don't play any more. But I have my memories, and some great ones, but then some not so great ones. When it comes to my worst ever golf shot, I expect my former golfing buddies will come up with many, but the worst for me had to be the 18th hole at Chingford, in NE London.

Chingford golf course is carved out of Epping Forest. This makes it tight and the changing ground conditions can make it short or long. The 18th is quite a long hole, especially in wetter conditions, and even more so since they changed it from a Par 5 to a Par 4. Then they went and dug out the small ditch in front of the green, which made it difficult to roll up to the green. So to hit it in two, you need a long drive and a lofty second shot that stops quickly on the green....particularly as the club house is right behind....as you can see here.

My game plan was never to go for the green....frankly I wasn't good enough. I preferred a lay up short of the newly created duck pond and a short wedge over the top. If I was lucky, it would land close.....well that was always the intention.

Sounds easy enough eh? Well I thought so, but this one Saturday afternoon I had the heebie-jeebies on that hole. I hit my second shot far too close to the ditch, which meant I had to be so much more careful with my lay up. I couldn't go with my 3/4 pitch with a wedge....that would end up in the club house. I had to play something much lighter....but how much. I had a soft lie, it was wet, I had to pick this ball off the turf, I was thinking about the club house and as I swung low through the ball, I took a huge steak of turf, which ended up closer to the green than the ball. The latter was in fact in the ditch, and being muddy, it had plugged nicely. So as I'd dropped a shot already, I decided to take several paces further back before dropping the ball....so I could have a go with that 3/4 pitch.

This time I decided the lie was much tighter and so I could be much bolder, but as I brought the club down on the back of the ball again, I decided I was wrong about the pace, and so quit on the shot.....which meant the ball landed back in the ditch again.

As I dropped another shot and another ball, this time I took out my sand wedge, opened the face and stared menacingly at the back of the ball. To ensure I didn't quit on the shot, or lift my head, I continued to stare at that little spot on the back of the ball, long after I'd hit it, long after it sailed over the duck pond, and long after it cleared the green and landed in the club house gardens.

I don't think I ever played it again!

The Bliar is back....

2010-03-31T12:13:00.001+02:00

Frantic about the possible loss of the next general election the most unpopular, never elected Prime Mentalist has turned, desperately for the help of the UKs most corrupt, most self centered ex Prime Mentalists that ever served the British people. Perhaps the most bizarre perspective of this alliance is that Brown, divorced of any charisma himself actually needs to call on damaged goods Tone, presumably because he can find no other parliamentary colleagues on which he can entrust the potential of winning his first elected term in office. The prospect of his Tonyness returning to his former constituents of Sedgefield, possibly with the wide mouthed frog, is surely something to behold. Carefull Tony you may be in danger of exceeding your 90 non dom days....or has your new mate done you a deal this time. My only hope is that the majority of the electorate see through the facade that will be the Brown and Bliar show and will have the sense to put their cross where it will do some good. I have a very fine Codorniu bottle of cava especially for the occasion where I will be toasting the recovery of the £, the reversal of the horrendous taxation of pension schemes initiated by Chancellor Brown, and the abolition of the bus lane on the M4. The latter is of little consequence to me as I don't use it but it is a symbol of just how pathetic this government really is. Happy voting.

BA seems to be coping admirably without half of its cabin crew

2010-03-23T23:20:00.000+01:00

It's not clear how many cabin crew are out on strike, but if the impact is as "big" as the Trotsky Twins would have the public believe I actually think BAs doing a great job at keeping the business running. It almost makes you wonder how many fewer cabin crew BA actually needs.

This actually reminds me of the last time British Telecom staff went out on strike. In the face of predictions that the network would crash without the highly trained technical staff, after several days it was clear that management were doing a fine job without them. It didn't take long for staff to realise they needed to quickly return to work....before management noticed!

I'm sitting pretty for our trip to London over Easter. I didn't quite believe Trotsky Tony when he suggested that Unite wouldn't disrupt customers over the Easter break, so we booked with the competition, and even though I'll be trampled in the rush for a seat, it will be in the knowledge that at least I have one.

I expect that one day the members are going to work out the Trotsky Twins are only really in this for themselves. They need their £11 a month. How else can they afford to pay themselves their 3 figure salaries?

Unite......you're shite!

Perhaps we should have country crippling recessions more often.....

2010-03-22T19:32:00.000+01:00

The economists tell us we're existing the worst recession for more than 70 years....and perhaps that's part of the problem. For the majority of the people in and out of work this is the first time in their lives their financial security has been rocked to its foundation. Those with jobs cling on to the fact they still have one, can pay the mortgage while those that have not, search in vain for something new, in the hope that the markets will offer a new opening or career change.

Then there are those greedy bastards that work for large multi-national companies that, with the strength of unions and workers councils believe this is the opportunity to squeeze even more from their debt riddled employers. The travel industry must employ some of the meanest, most short-sighted, selfish, miserable excuses for human beings on the planet.

I can quite understand why an employee would chose to strike if an employer was doing exceptionally well, and didn't share the benefits of success with its creators. But that's not when they chose to strike (s'cuse the pun). So happy they are to share in the successes of their employer, but not so content to share in the failure, or the down turn. At a time when some are crying out for a job, there are others that believe their contribution is so important they can hold the company, and its customers to ransom.

Personally, I'd fire every one of them.

The Disgusting Double Standards of Comrades Brown and Miliband

2010-03-19T14:46:00.000+01:00

It's great to see that young Sahil Saeed is back with his family, and kudos to his family and the community that raised the £110K ransom demand.

But wait, I was under the impression that the UK government was against meeting ransom demands for kidnappers. Only last month Miliband's office refused to give the go ahead for negotitations over a ransom. The statement from his office was "Although there is no UK law against third parties paying ransoms, we counsel against them doing so because we believe that making concessions only encourages future kidnaps."

While Sahil is back home, the Chandlers remain in captivity, and with the press seemingly regarding it as old news.

If the Labour party wants to boost their popularity for the up and coming election, Miliband could stir his stumps and do something positive to help the Chandlers' release. Because you can be sure if this shower of two-faced shit had tried to block the ransom payment for the return a small boy, it would have have surely driven home the final nail in their collective coffin.

Come fly with Spanair....but you can't catch up on email, or listen to music on your phone

2010-03-18T12:50:00.000+01:00

I just flew back from Sweden with Spanair. I got into an argument with one of the (shop) stewardesses for booting up my NexusOne to listen to music. "Ez not allowed" I was told. "It's Ok I said, it's in flight mode" thinking that perhaps because she'd not seen a Nexus One before she didn't know what it was. Alas no, Spanair in its regulations bans the use of any mobile phone on its planes, in flight mode or not. I have to say I was almost speechless. I frequently use my mobile to listen to music....and I've never had a problem with other airlines. "Ez Spanish regulation" she told me, as she moved into school teacher mode and started to "tick me off"...in both senses of the phrase.

Ironically, throughout the flight Spanair, desperate for business to survive, was advertizing its regular service between Barcelona and Madrid, in competition to Iberia on its overhead monitors. So let me understand this. Spanair wants business customers but isn't going to let them catch up on email on their blackberries for the 80 minute flight between the two cities.

At a time when regulators have now given the go ahead to offer cellular phone services while in flight, this makes Spanair's travel policy as outdated as their seats. Fortunately I've only had to use this airline for flights to Norway and Sweden.....and even more fortunately, I can connect through Frankfurt in future.

Time again to save those receipts.

2010-03-13T16:16:00.000+01:00

I've never been good at saving receipts. I don't think I've ever taken clothing back to the shop, if I don't like it, I don't buy it, and even if I decide I don't like it some time later, it just sits in my wardrobe until I throw it out.
I've also never retained receipts for goods and services. To be honest up until recently I've never had a need to.

Everything I've bought has functioned without error. TV, computers, monitors, telephones etc. The production cycle has improved so much, and the quality control is so good that the number of faulty goods that end up on the shelves or in the warehouses is really minimal.

But recently, we seem to have hit a spell of bad luck regaring our purchases, or goods purchased for us. The number failing is increasing, and because I've been so lapse at retaining receipts, the resolution to the problem is that much more difficult.

And it's all down to the recession, cutting corners, cutting costs, cutting quality, cutting reputation, value and customer loyalty.

At one end of the scale it's the disasters at Toyota, wrecking the brand of quality, and I bet if you did a little digging, you'd find a lapse in quality, with a reduction in quality control staff to be at fault. At the other end of the scale its my battle with the Plastic Man, the coffee machine we were bought as a wedding present, and the incredibly comfortable office chair my wife bought me, that was a screw loose.

I find it depressing that having come so far in the supply of products and services, in the space of a year we have wiped out 20 years of progress.

So that's the Hotel Dolce, 300 North Maple Avenue then!!!

2010-03-02T21:56:00.000+01:00

My first trip to the US for a while and I'm hauled up in the Dolce Hotel for a few hours before this evening's events kick off.

I appreciate and sympathise with the US desire to improve security, but it's always amused me that the process insists on an address for the first night. This can sometimes be difficult if you're travelling and you don't actually know, but I've been in the immigration queue and seen the fuss it causes when someone tries to get in without having an address.

My flight for this trip was booked some 4 weeks ago. No sooner had the details been forwarded to be I was advise to go to the ESTA web site and register my journey. This is a simple thing to do, and requirs me to fill in all that information required on the green visa waiver form. This was the first time I was asked to enter my address while in the USA.

On Monday I went to check in on line for my flight earlier today. It required the completion of several fields, including my address while in the USA, so again I entered the address of Hotel Dolce...only to find that I couldn't be issued with a boarding card, because further checks would be needed at the airport.

On arrival at the airport this morning, as I was obtaining my ticket, I was asked again for the address of the hotel I was staying in. This time the nice Continental check in agent entered it into (assumingly) the same system I entered the details not 24 hours previously.

During the flight, despite having an ESTA I was required to fill out a green visa waiver form and the customs declaration, both of which require me to again, write out the address of the hotel.....which by now I knew by memory.

After a long 9.5 hours, I arrived in New Jersey, presented my papers to the customs officer at the kiosk, who took a quick look and then asked me...."Where are you staying while you're here?".

Ironically, I can't see what all hte fuss is with the ESTA. I've brought it with me but not once has anyone asked me to produce it.

French Air Traffic Controllers are Revolting

2010-03-02T21:40:00.001+01:00

Last week, at the hands of the French Air Traffic Controllers, I was delayed a total of 7 hours for a return journey, which unfortunately included sitting for a fair percentage of that time on a plane. The only way I could vent my frustration was through updates to Facebook. Thank heaven for social software.

Perhaps the most annoying thing about the strike was that the French decided not to delay flights in and out of Paris. Oh no, already incredibly unpopular, they didn’t want to irate futher French citizens. I checked BAs web site daily to see that apart from a couple of cancellations, flights were leaving and arriving at Charles de Gaulle within a respectable (for BA) time frame. Far better to irritate the rest of Europe by seriously delaying flights travelling over French air space, which of course does nothing for French-Euro relations.

The reason for the strike, so I am told is that there is a proposal to implement a central air traffic control systems (probably in Brussels) to manage all flights over European air space. As a result the revolting traffic controllers in France are concerned they’ll lose their job.

I would rather think that releasing French Air traffic Control from their duty to serve the air travellers would be more down to the regularity with which they withdraw their labour.

I can think of nothing more just right now than an unemployed French Air Traffic Controller.

Gordon Brown is a big tit, but only half as big as Jordan's

2010-02-15T22:08:00.000+01:00

Blubbering Brown followed in the footsteps of Big Al and turned on the waterworks during his interview with Piers Morgan last weekend. Comrade is so short on policy reasons why the electorate should vote for him, he's now resorting to crying on camera.

What worries me is that this looks to be a new party tactic - first Hard Man Campbell, now the rugby playing, stout Scotsman......Perhaps even Johhny Two Jags will make a return to the stage with a hankie.

I don't want to appear too much of a heartless git. I cannot imagine what a parent goes through at the loss of a child. But for me the timing of this is all wrong. Only a week after Cambell, and a few months before an election - This looks incredibly like the spin doctors at work, of the same office that wanted to use 9-11 to "bury bad news". Have they no shame? Are they that desperate? Well, I guess the answer is yes, they are.

Unfortunately for the Prime Mentalist, not too many people bothered to hang around to listen to his life history. His viewing figures were only slightly more than half of those that tuned in to listen to Piers interview Katie Price.

Doesn't look too good for the post-ministerial autobiography eh?

In the event of the aircraft landing on water.......is there really enough room in the lifeboats?

2010-02-13T20:20:00.004+01:00

I've been mulling over the aircraft safety demo. When it gets to the evacuation bit we're asked to remove our high heels before exiting the plane down the safety shute that has automatically inflated on the opening of the door. In the (unlikley) event of landing on water, the chutes detach to form life rafts. From a previous blog you will know I'm a bit of a cynic regarding the chances of a successful water landing. Of course the Hudson River example was a bit of a miracle, helped by an incredibly experienced pilot and very still water. But, having achieved this, and it having been photographed many times, further flaws in the safety process clearly emerge.
In this picture of US1549 we can see the escape chutes still attached to the front of the plane, boarded by a mere handful of people. In the middle are the rest of the passengers (without life vests I note) perched on the wings of the sinking vessel. It looks like their escape chutes have already detatched to form life rafts and are on their way down the Hudson presumably without any passengers on board, given the number waiting to be rescued. I guess the reason the rear chutes never opened is because the tail is nearly under water already. What seems clear though from this exercise is that when US1549 ditched into the Hudson River just over a year ago, there were not enough life rafts to take all the passengers.

I recall something similar from the history books of a ship that was built never to sink and therefore didn't need lifeboats, but they put a few on board just to keep the passengers minds at rest.

Morbid thought perhaps, but I still think safety demos on planes are a little bit like rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic.

Political Justice: Eye Spy MP

2010-02-05T13:51:00.000+01:00

Over a year ago I blogged the reason Britain is the most spied on country in the world is because the current administration smoked too much cannabis at University and now suffers incredible bouts of paranoia.

Under the concurrent regimes of Bliar and Comrade Brown, the civil liberties of the residents of the UK have been seriously eroded for the last 10 years, so what better justice for those MPS that so gallantly voted for all the totalitarian measures, than http://twitter.com/eyespymp

Whassat? You don't think it's fair? Well, if you're doing nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide!!

Just spied Jim Devine entering Pentonville. Not sure if he's surveying for a re-wire, installing more shelves, or checking out his new home for the next few years!

What does Hertz have against the Higher Catholic Order?

2010-01-30T22:18:00.000+01:00

Recently my email inbox had one of those cheap marketing gimmicks from Hertz, one of the car rental companies I use quite frequently. It was encouraging me to upgrade to Gold status so I had ....the chance to access an all round better service and even better discounts is coming to an end on January 31st. It’s free to upgrade and will take no time at all. Don’t miss out! "This was strange" I thought, because I already hold Gold status.....another fine piece of profiling by one of the world's largest car rental companies.

But then I love a bargain, and didn't want to miss out on all those better discounts and extra service, so I pushed all the right buttons, and perhaps another gold card will arrive through the post in a few days time.

Even better discounts it said. Well I can think of a few times when booking a car for work purposes when this as proved a little challenging, so with a few spare moments I thought I'd do a bit of mystery shopping.

I've decided I fancy a short trip to London, from 18th March to 21st, and will be booking a compact car, one of Hertz green range (which turns out to be a diesel.....go figure). So that's 3 days, from London, Heathrow, and no thanks I don't want the extra insurance.

As a Gold card holder, with those "even better discounts" logging into my account, I make my selection and I can reserve the car for £130.18. That's more than £40 per day which seems a little high, especially since I've not taken the extra insurance. I wonder how much would it costs if I booked it using my company's discount rate, the one we get from Hertz for being such a great corporate customer.......that's £130.18 then, so not much discount after all.

But wait there's some more country options on the web site, so for a bit of a laugh, I think let's see what this would cost someone logging in from the UK, just an ordinary Joe, no Gold account, no discount options.

Interesting result, as the web page returns, I'm starting to feel cheated. For the same car and the same period, a charge of £91.87 if I pay at the end of the rental, and an even better £83.26 if I pay in advance. That's quite a discount, especially the prepay rate when comparing it to my company's corporate rate, the one we get for being such great customers

I thought perhaps the higher rate was because the web site recognized I was living in Spain and driving a right hand drive car could represent a greater risk for Hertz, renting to a Brit living in Spain. So let's take a look and see what an Ordinary Jose would be charged....£113.74 for pay on return or 126.13€ (£108.73). So a little bit more than Ordinary Joe (perhaps the steering wheel factor) but still notably cheaper than my company's, and my "valued customer" rate.

So let's trip across the pond, and this time Ordinary Joseph on the East Coast is booking a long weekend break in London. Our man on home turf would be charged only $152.79 (£94.07) for pay on return, but can benefit from a huge $20 saving by paying early....only $132 (£81.00).....so I guess that's the steering wheel argument shot to bits.

I just had to try a few more. A visitor from India would be charged only £82.27, and someone from Saudi Arabia only slightly more at £93.08. So that rules out the "wealth" factor too.

But the best had to be left to last. There was even the option for someone living in the Vatican state to book a long weekend hire in the UK, for which his holyness would be charged a whopping £300.99.

Hertz???? Yeah it does.

What's worse than the Spanish Inquisition? Barcelona Transit Bureaucracy

2010-01-27T15:48:00.006+01:00

Back in June last year I got caught in a speed camera on one of the several autovias around Barcelona. A couple of weeks later the fine arrived from Transit, the highway police. 100€ for travelling at 126Kmh in a 100Kmh zone. It was a fair cop, no point denying it. In fact I was surprised it was only 26 Kmh above the speed limit. The fine was duly paid over the phone and as part of the payment process, I was confirmed as the owner of the car and the driver at the time.

Just before Xmas I get another notice from the mail service there's another recorded delivery from Transit for me at the depot. I'm thinking it's another fine (multa) for speeding, but no it's a fine of 110€ for not indicating the driver of the car. How can this be....these details were given over the phone. The reason for the 2nd fine was not that I didn't reveal the driver, it was because Transit couldn't deduct the 2 points from my licence, because a) I hold a UK driving licence, and b) it's not registered with the authorities.

Exctracting this information was not easy. I had already handed negotiations over to my wife, as she was more likely to interpret the rules than I...and I'm not good at communicating in times of stress. The concept of giving accurate information consistently has not yet reached the Transit office, nor has the idea of a citizens' charter. Even Rosa was totally frustrated by this, and she's more used to Spanish bureaucracy.

A couple of weeks ago I got another recorded delivery notice in the mail, yet another communication from Transit....yet another fine for not revealing the identity of the driver. More calls, more frustration, and as it turns out, this was for a different speeding offence, from even earlier last year in May. Transit confirmed that I didn't sign for the first notice, something that they issued while we were on our honeymoon. Apparently the onus is on me to check if I have any outstanding fines I don't know about. And if I didn't know about them, then I wouldn't pay them, and nor would I reveal the name of the driver. So consequently, Transit issues a fine for speeding, and one for not revealing the driver, a total of 210€.

A trip to the Transit office yesterday revealed all. Yes, I had been speeding, at 130 Kmh in a 100 Kmh zone (bit more like it) and the notice had not been received. The official in the office accepted that my details had been provided for the second offence over the phone, and that it was obvious I couldn't have given my details for the first offence, because I didn't know I had a fine, and yes she accepted that the fine for not releasing driver's details was in fact not correct.....but that is what they do when they can't find the driver's details on the register.

Perhaps the biggest kicker of all is there's no legal requirement for me to register my driving licence with the authorities.

I shouldn't really have paid this. Barcelona Transit has some huge holes in its process, but no one cares. We were told that we could contest the fine, but having already paid it they would simply disgard any complaint, as for them the case was already closed. I'm guilty of twice speeding and for which I paid without contest the 200€. But to have to pay another 220€ because of some asswipe's broken process offends my morals.....but then again, it's only 220€....for piece of mind, and an end to this horrible example of Spanish injustice. At least we hope it's the end. Perhaps the officials in the Transit office weren't telling the truth.

Confession Time: I evacuated the Balmoral

2010-01-17T12:57:00.013+01:00

The Balmoral is a very plush hotel in the centre of Edinburgh. Normally I wouldn't get a chance to stay there, but I was a key note speaker for a couple of vendor clients at a partnership launch.

One of the great challenges of mixing travel in a carry on bag with public speaking is ensuring your clothes remain neatly pressed so you can look your best. One of my colleagues once told me that a neat trick he uses is to steam his shirts with the aid of the shower in the hotel bathroom. He told me to turn it on maximum, and hang the shirts as close to the shower without actually getting them wet. After about 10 minutes, the creases from travel will disappear. "Never fails" he told me.

That's great advice, but many of the hotels I stay in have those hangers that are meant not to be stolen. There's no hook, just a little metal knob on the end which locates in the collar on the rail in the wardrobe. However, the Balmoral is a plush hotel, that has only plush guests that don't have need to steal the hangers (or just in case the cost of staying there is inflated to include hanger replacement). Consequently with quality wooden hangers and proper brass hooks I was able to try out my colleague's advice.

He did say 10 minutes didn't he? Well I kinda got a bit distracted by my email, and by the time I went to hang the shirts, the bathroom was like a turkish sauna. No sooner than I'd hung them on the shower rail, the fire alarm went off. "How really inconvenient" I thought, "I bet it's some twit that's pushed the wrong button....ugh...tourists".

There I waited on the pavement in Princes street to watch 5 fire engines arrive, lights blazing, sirens wailing. The Japanese tourists loved it, snapping away with their digital cameras. After about 20 minutes we were allowed back in, and I returned to my room and my nearly pressed shirts.

Later I joined our clients for dinner, and on return I found a letter pushed under the door from the manager, apologising for the afternoon's events, and in it he explained that there was no fire, simply that a fire alarm in a guest bedroom had been set off.......by excessive an excessive build up of steam from the bathroom.

I have a high regard for the staff at the Balmoral, that they even post such a note to the culprit, just so as to not make him feel too guilty.

Since that day (I'll never forget 10th September 2001), I have always ensured there is no fire alarm outside the bathroom, nor do I start up email before I attend to my shirts.

The smarter the phone.....the smarter the supplier needs to be...

2010-01-11T19:36:00.001+01:00

It was August last year when I reached a decison that I too needed to own an iPhone. My early experiences of Apple, and its Powerbook all those many years ago was not good, and I've been holding a grudge ever since. But with significant peer pressure to suggest I should "snap out of it" and get with the program, especially having also indicated my dislike for Windows, "the Mac is the only way to go" I was told....and the iPhone is a great start for the Apple journey.

I wa almost hooked. I could see a multi-year plan of migrating to Apple technologies, but then the iPhone's monopoly supplier in Spain went and ruined Apple's chances. Movistar, the mobile division of Telefonica, the telco Spaniards love to hate....and with good reason screwed Apple's chances.

Mid August and I'm told there are no iPhones in the country. Hmm, perhaps a worldwide shortage similar to that of a couple of years ago. Not at all, blogs and forums would seem to indicate that the rest of Europe are lapping up the smartness of the iPhone, with its infinite number of applications. "Perhaps the end of August" says the shop assistant, and so I make a note to call again at the end of the month.

Let's check the Movistar web site to see if I can order on line, instead of having to queue.....how I hate queuing. I get as far as the point where it asks me to enter my current mobile phone number and IMEI....so no we can deduce, as a new customer I cannot order an iPhone on line. Another trip to FNAC to find that no iPhones were delivered at the end of August, nor to El Corte Ingles, or the Movistar shop in Plaza Catalunya. "We don't actually know when we will have more supplies" was the truthful response. So Movistar's response to customers biting at the bit for an iPhone....WAIT!!!

OK so I can buy an unlocked one....but at 600€ ($900) for something that costs less that $180 to make....who's trying to rip off the consumer?

Finally, the Nexus One is out, SIM free at $529 (which costs about the same as the iPhone to make), and I couldn't wait to get on line to order one......except that Google's website recognised that I'm connecting from Spain and informs me "Phones are not yet available in your market". I ask my sister in the UK to go to www.google.com/phones and her response tells her that the Nexus One is coming to the UK in the Spring.

That's not soon enough for me, and fear not this can not deter a determined buyer. 3.29€ later and I have a private VPN connection to a US server (for a week), and then I'm on line with Google.com and able to place my order for a Nexus One. OK so it's not shipping to Spain yet, but fortunately, I can send it to the UK for collection in the next couple of weeks.

What started as a potential coop for Apple has turned 180 degrees. If I have no iPhone, I have no need for a Mac book. If I have a Nexus One then perhaps I'm more likely to load Opensource and Chrome on my next notebook. If the demand for the iPhone was so great then Apple probably had no need for exclusive supplier relationships, and even if it did, it should have thought very carefully about who it gives exclusivity to. Consumers want iPhones more than they want mobile contracts with Telefonica. Google's decision to offer the phone SIM free was a refreshing change....and could be extremely good for its future business.

A new decade of blogging....

2010-01-10T12:35:00.000+01:00

Is it the 10th January already? How time flies! I've been reading over the festive break, but not my usual fiction. While my usual authors are busy coming up with new stories to write, I've been musing my way through a bit of faction. While the wife and I were on holiday in London over the Xmas break, we just had to visit Waterstones. Rosa is a librarian, and so books are part of her DNA (as is increasingly library software). Our home looks more like a library every day. I'm certain we'll have the Dewey indexing installed soon, and before long I'll be getting fines for leaving my books lying around, not back on the shelves, or worse, in the wrong place!!

Waterstones was an opportunity for me too to dig out some new covers. I steered towards the political section, though there are very few I would actually buy. There's something very immoral in my opinion about lining the pockets of a politician, by paying to read their memoirs, and thus keeping them in the lifestyle they were accustomed to while in office.....which was also paid for by you! There is one exception, and that is the ever-so decent Martin Bell, who has written A Very British Revolution, in response to the expenses scandal of 2009. I am very much looking forward to reading that one.

I also picked up The Noughties, A decade that changed the world by Tim Footman. I didn't realise the last decade was being referred to as "The Noughties"....but it was referenced several times on Facebook at the end of the year, and I'm sure it wasn't because everyone had been reading this book. I picked out a couple of key incidents that remind me of the decade in Yule Blog...but it's amazing how many other events kinda just passed me by, even forgetting the events of 7/7....which is pretty poor for a Brit.

I also bought 50 people who buggered up Britain. I think I'd describe Quentin Letts as "a little further to the right" than myself on the political front. But he does nail a number of key events that have happened in my lifetime....and his, since he's only slightly older than I. Not surprisingly politicians come in for huge criticism, in all camps, mostly while in office but also before and after election. It's not wholly obvious how one or two of the targets are actually responsible in their part for buggering up Britain. At times it seems, simply an opportunity for Mr. Letts to have a rant at someone he dislikes......and what's wrong with that I ask? The wide mouthed frog could hardly be described as someone who buggered up Britain, but she is someone who many have a deep dislike of.....and that's putting it mildly.

Quentin closes his chapter on Tony Bliar, describing him as a selfish w*****. Quentin, I think that should read SELFISH WANKER?......and what a good judge of character you really are!!

Someone should have told Little, Brown that Wide Mouthed Frogs just aren't that interesting

2009-12-31T18:04:00.000+01:00

I read in Guido Fawkes' blog that the wide mouthed frog is prostituting her book again, it seems because she's only sold 33,000 copies. Personally, I'm surprised there are even 100 people that would buy her book. There are even 22 people that actually took the time to write a review in Amazon, some good some bad, some awful. I'm wondering just how bad those that didn't enjoy the book feel now about having lined the grubby little scousa's pockets?

I have said before that if I did see anyone reading her autobiography, I would feel inclined to rip it from their hands, trample it and then set fire to it. Then if there were no fire extinguishers in the vicinity, I would put the flames out using more natural methods. Of course I would then recompense the reader with the £18 for a hardback or £8 for the paperback, and advise them some more appropriate reading material. Fortunately though I've not found this necessary as, with even 33,000 in circulation, it could be an expensive little rant!

So what about that then, 33,000 copies in circulation. Let's imagine that 50% are hardback and the rest paper covers. Let's also imagine that those foolish readers actually paid full price for the book. By my calculation that's probably brought Little, Brown the publisher an income of around £400,000 of which their profits are less than £150,000. So just how foolish does the board of this publisher feel for paying a cool £1M for the publishing rights?

Perhaps they should have done a little more research before hand, and they would have found that wide mouthed frogs aren't really that interesting to read about!

Happy New Year to everyone......except the Bliars......and Brown......and W

Yule Blog.......

2009-12-23T22:58:00.000+01:00

This is probably going to be my last blog this year. We're off to the UK tomorrow morning, and I don't see myself drunk in charge of someone else's keyboard for the next couple of weeks.

It seems quite amazing to me that 10 years ago we were wondering if the clocks were going to stop, if planes were going to fall out of the sky and if we would lose all our money as the banking system ground to a halt......hmm perhaps that one was actually an earlier prediction of what happened 9 years later.

For many Y2K was nothing more than a huge hype of marketing to get companies to spend a ton of money on new IT. For others it was one of the best examples of project management ever practiced. Being in the industry, I know it was the latter, even if we were very grateful for the former.....but it was a pity it didn't continue, and so it led to the first recession of the new millenium, for the IT industry at least.

For me, it's been a decade of notable events. I started as a single, 30 something living in the UK. I'll finish it married, in my 40s living in Spain. It started with the West at peace, but will end with key countries still at war. We witnessed the terrorism of the Twin Towers, and the natural disaster of the Boxing Day tsunami. And of course we finish with the worst recession since the 30s, and in my humble opinion, one made significantly worse for the UK by that twit in No. 10. While the majority of Europe and North America will be starting 2010 with a return to growth, UK citizens will have to wait a bit longer for the natural course of recession to take effect, rather than benefit from prudent financial management by the governing party.

At least next year we have the opportunity to elect someone into such an important position. Comrade Brown's appointment only goes to show what can happen when a party indulges in a little bit of unelected communism.

But I digress. Christmas is a time for reflection, forgivness and charity. I've reflected on the last 10 years in this yule blog, I sad sorry twice today and put a euro in the christmas box of our local panaderia. That should do it!

May Peace be your gift at Christmas and your blessing all year through.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

A lesson in mathematics and manners for the Trotskyites at Unite

2009-12-18T11:16:00.001+01:00

I'd say I'm a little relieved that the planned strike action is over. It still means I've lost 75,000 airmiles with Lufthansa sourcing a different route to London just in case the strike went ahead. For me it wasn't just the flight times that were important. If our dates had changed I couldn't have hired another car since it seems they were all fully booked. Flying direct with BA will be quicker and there is less chance of our luggage not making it before Xmas. I'm sure the flight will be a sombre one....but our Xmas celebrations will make up for it.

That doesn't mean in any way I've forgiven the cabin crew and the Trotskyites at the TGWU. I'm pretty disgusted at their early announcements this wasn't an attack on the passengers and that BA had reluctantly drove them to the decision to strik of 22nd December. Clearly Simpson and Woodley are too thick to do the mathematics so let's help them out.

A flight from London to New York brings BA a revenue of £194 (Sloppy jaw gets the lion's share in more indirect taxes). A flight in Business Class brings BA an income of £1369. In terms of seating, there is one Club class seat for every 2.7 economy seats. Do the mathematics and its clear that a Club class traveller is worth 3 times that of an economy class passenger. Given that the majority of club class seats will be bought by business travellers, if the the Trotskyite twins wanted to damage BA, they would hold the strike when the plane is loaded with business travellers.....and that's NOT in the period betweeen Christmas and the New Year.

Calling a strike over the Christmas period is a bit like belching loudly at a dinner party. People look at you in disgust, in perhaps much the same way as they would look at the wide mouthed frog picking up another freebie dress from Zandra Rhodes. It seems Woodley and Simpson are the Christmas belchers this year.

But if you thought this was a one-off, check out the headline on Wedneday. The Baggage Handlers at Hearthrow Airport are going out on strike on 22nd December in a row over pay "It is deeply regrettable that our members have been forced into a position where they have to threaten industrial action over the Christmas and New Year period to get this company to play fair," said Unite's regional industrial officer Kevin Hall.

Do you recall hearing a very similar statement earlier in the week? The TGWU has a handbook of this stuff......because its leaders are too thick to make it up.

Blud's Blog is not written to encourage violence towards politicians

2009-12-15T15:38:00.004+01:00

Today in the news the Italian government blamed social networks for the attack on Berlusconi, suggesting that Massimo Tartaglia's rage was fuelled by the growing tide of anti-Berlusconi propoganda in social networking sites and blogs.

At this point I would like to make it clear that my verbal assault on Chairman Brown in Blud's Blog is not in any way meant to encourage British citizens to break his nose or knock out a couple of his shiny white veneers.

If I wanted that....I'd do it myself!!

Who's hated more than MPs right now........BA Cabin Crew

2009-12-14T23:25:00.001+01:00

If as Wille Walsh seems to suggest, his cabin crew really do have their noses in the trough then I have no sympathy. While I do believe that everyone has the right to withdraw their labour, they must also expect the consequences of doing so, which in the real commercial world means no job at all. I've never joined a union (OK I was a member of the Students Union so I could get cheap beer) and I do believe there is a place for unions to protect the actions of some unscrupulous employers, but to decide to hold a dispute just before the Christmas festive period, of all times is simply inexcusable.

BA is in dire straights, it needs to make serious changes to the way it works. When you look at the consessions other staff in BA have made, it seems senseless that cabin crew are taking this action. Any possilbe sympathy with their plight will be erradicated by the disappointment of not meeting up with family, changed plans, lost deposits, increase costs etc. And to do this at a time when we've suffered the mother of recessions indicates these employees are detached from the real world of commerce.

I dearly hope that this action is called off. Alternatively I hope that BA finds us an alternative route to get to London on Christmas Eve. Other routes exist - it depends how much BA wants to retain its customers. I fly with BA because in the main it is a great airline, and I think the cabin staff are wonderful...but there are limits to loyalty. Screw this one up and they're going to have to do some serious sucking up to customers.

In case they hadn't noticed....there are other cheaper, more reliable airlines out there. If they're lucky the cabin crew might be able to get a job with one of them.

Do the old fart in wigs have trouble understanding orders of magnitude?

2009-12-11T20:36:00.000+01:00

Today a violent crack head was sentenced to an indefinite period of time behind bars for mowing down a mother in her car and leaving her paralysed for life. The judge said that he was to stay in prison because he was a danger to the public.....and what a great reason for slamming the door and throwing away the key.

Only Judge Stephen John has a little bit of a problem with the English language. Wiktionary describes indefinite as without limit; forever, or until further notice; not definite; or vague or unclear, undecided or uncertain, or an integral without specified limits. Nowhere does it state that indefinite can equate to at least 7.5 years, which was the minimum term wiggy suggested Kevin Richardson should remain behind bars, in order to protect the public. Judge John told Richardson that his behaviour had been "despicable" and he would remain a "significant danger" unless he changed his way of life.

So our man cracky can be cured of being a danger to the public in less than 8 years can he? I'm sure there's some academic farty that thinks so, but this is a slime ball that has more than 20 years of convictions behind him. He's been a criminal since he was a teenager!

There's a big problem in the British legal system....and its sitting in the high chair at the top of the court room, wearing a ridiculous wig.

Perhaps my name isn't so uncommon after all....

2009-12-10T21:51:00.005+01:00

We had lunch last weekend in a new sushi restaurant in the center of town, Ikibana, and as I paid; with my credit card and obligatory driver's licence ID, the Mediterranean looking waiter said, with a distinctive London accent "Now there's a name you don't see very often".

OK so I thought I was the only Brit in the restaurant, but aside of that, I used to frequently receive comments about my surname when living back in the UK. But I guess for Spaniards it's perhaps not so obvious that it's a bit of a strange name.

There is only one way to find out just how common your name is, and that's to Google it. So if I tap in "Steve Blood" into search, I get more than 60M results returned in less than 0.24 seconds.

Hey looks who's No.1....it's me.....well I never would have guessed it :o)

But No.2 is a Web Designer, based in London, and then there's Steve Blood the musician, who in addition to writing his own material, has worked with the famous rock group Queen.

There's Steve Blood, the photographer that snaps planes at UK airports for Air Britain, and further down the list there's a different Steve Blood of London on Facebook.

If I modify the search to Stephen Blood, there's Dr. Stephen Blood MD an Osteopath based in Virginia, and another on LinkedIn in Australia....and MySpace...and not forgetting Diane Blood, wife of Stephen Blood who made history by winning a case to allow her to use her dead husband's sperm to conceive (now) 2 children.

So it seems my name isn't so rare. Perhaps more so if I were to translate it to its Spanish equivalent...Esteban Sangre.

Quick Google search reveals it would indeed be unique.....but then it also sounds a little bit too much like a porn star!

You gotta love the Swiss.....

2009-12-04T20:43:00.007+01:00

Thursday morning I awoke in my hotel room in Lausanne. I arrived at 10.30pm, it was dark, and while I knew that Lake Geneva was lurking somewhere close by I really didin't expect such a nice surprise when I opened my bedroom curtains. This has to be one of the best hotel room views I've ever had.....and what a great start to the day it was. The only pity about this photo is that it's taken with a naff phone camera, and doesn't really do justice to the beautiful view.

A few years ago I presented at a client's office the other end of the Lake. The presentation room had this huge glass wall overlooking the Lake. The office couldn't have been any more than 100m from the shore. "How do you get any work done with distractions like this" I asked...."You get used to it" came the reply. In fact my audience was very attentive right up until the point that the coffee lady arrived, and before I had a chance to say anything, everyone had taken an impromptu break. "We have to sample our products" I was told....so now you've probably got a pretty good idea who our client was. I'm glad we didn't return this week, as the coffee snob in me would have had to turn down powdered coffee.....oh please, where's the pressure to squeeze the coffee cream through the freshly ground beans?

The comment I left on my Facebook page was that with views like this to wake up to, it was hardly surprising the Swiss didn't feel the need to go and invade other countries. Makes you wonder what's wrong with the mountain ranges of Washington :o)

The breadhead's guide to watching movies in your hotel room

2009-11-24T19:09:00.007+01:00

As you may have gathered from previous blogs I travel quite a bit, and normally the selection of movies on the in-house entertainment system isn't of much interest to me as I spend so little time in the room.

However this evening is not one of those occasions. It's one of those rare occasions where I can't fly in the evening, so I'm hauled up in my hotel room at Arlanda airport prior to a dawn breaking 7.00am flight tomorrow. Having cleared the important email and after a pretty heavy day, I simply want to relax, and perhaps take in a movie. No, I know what you're thinking....nudge nudge wink wink....NOT that kind of movie. I just want to watch something relaxing.....so here's the breadhead's procedure to watching movies in your hotel room.

1. Browse the TV guide in you room or the TV channels to a movie that takes your fancy.
2. Fire up you PC and go on line. The best bit about doing this in Swedish hotels is that generally the Internet access is free.
3. Go on line to btjunkie.org, enter the name of the movie, in my case "Nothing but the truth", then download the bit torrent.
4. Launch BitTorrent on your PC....whaddaya mean you don't have BitTorrent on your laptop??
5. Click on the torrent, and wait for between 40 and 50 minutes. That's how long it takes for a Swedish Internet connection to download a 700Mb avi file.
6. Time to order room service before the performance begins.
7. Transfer the file from your PC to a USB stick.
8. Remove from the laptop and plug it into the flat screen TV's USB port. Whaddaya mean the TV doesn't have a USB port. You need to start staying in hotels that have TFT TVs.
9. Fiddle with the controls until your USB port selection is highlighted and you can start the movie.

This is so much cheaper than paying anything between 75 SEKs and 15€ a night, something that you can't generally claim back on expenses and which leaves everyone wondering exactly what you were watching last night!

The best bit of all is that even if Handy Mandy does get his legislation through parliament to disconnect media pirate down loaders, you can still do it while you're travelling.

Happy downloading.

Will the city ever understand humility?

2009-11-20T18:09:00.009+01:00

At the end of last year in my last blog I wrote that 2009 would be a tough year for capitalism. I'm not that impressed with the return to exuberance in the city, with the justification that they have to pay good bonuses to attract and retain good staff. Or what else....they might leave? Where exactly would they go with their wonderful reputation of investing clients money until it's all gone? Switzerland? Well those that could and wanted to would have done it already. Those that are left in the UK are there for a reason, so how about a bit of humility, an apology for dumping on the value of our investments and pension funds that we pay you so handsomely to (mis)manage.

Humility certainly didn't extend to our flight from Barcelona yesterday afternoon. As I boarded the bus to be shipped to the plane, there was a buzz of derivatives, hedges and foreign exchange. The majority of the bus had been on some finance conference in the city, and were now on their way home. "Have you been here all week" asked one, "No" came the reply from the sharp suit, "Just popped down for the day". As I looked around I wondered if any of the winkle pickers were responsible for mismanaging my investments.

As we boarded the plane from the tarmac, I headed to the rear stairs for my favourite seat 27C (Boeing 757), the majority of the suits headed for the front of the plane.

I travel quite a lot around Europe and I've noticed how with this recession, the curtain for business has been getting closer to the front, normally fixed at row 3 or 4. But not yesterday. In fact the business class section stretch beyond the curtain, half way down the middle cabin.

You might think I was a little bit jealous....but having flown extensively in business class on short hall, it's not much to write about. Long haul is something else, but for Euro flights which are generally less than 2 hours, I can cope with economy, especially row 27, with more leg room than any other seat on the plane.

Like many companies, my employer changed its travel policy a few years ago, such that now we should opt for the cheap inflexible tickets, which puts you at the back of the plane. While we whinged a bit initially, the effect was to make huge savings in our operating costs, which in turn resulting in huge increases in the value of our share options, which in fact we were much happier about.

Consequently I find it rather distasteful that this community of bankers, having lost a lot of our money have the nerve to waste more of it on unnecessary travel expenses....and besides the smell of warm bread was making me really hungry.

I never realised Jeremy Clarkson was such a good judge of character

2009-11-18T19:54:00.012+01:00

On 1st October 1994 Ford launched the Scorpio, the much awaited replacement for the Granada. And just like the Sierra, which replaced the very successful Cortina, the design also was a little bit too controversial. So much so that Jeremy Clarkson could only describe it as the a "Wide Eyed Frog".

This perhaps was only slightly worse than the Sierra which had been likened to a banana. As a big Cortina fan, I was devastated....but not as much as when my father returned home with a new banana, and to make it worse it was a yellow one....but I digress.

I have just finished reading Jeremy Clarkson's "Born to be Riled", written back in 1999, so shame on me for taking so long to read it. In it he describes this as a Wide Mouthed Frog.

I never realised he was such a good judge of character.

"It's OK, we've recorded the session so you can listen to it in your own time"

2009-11-16T19:32:00.006+01:00

Web conferencing tools are really valuable, and recording the dialogues can be incredibly useful for those who couldn't attend the meeting in real time...because they were already in another meeting, or in the case of a global company, they were sleeping at the time of the session.

There is though one BIG problem with listening to recordings......when are you going to do it? Recording conference calls for play back has become so popular, it's become a great excuse for holding a meeting when it's more convenient for the organizer, and not necessarily for the participants for whom the meeting is being called.

Where it says "...you can listen in your own time", it means exactly that.....your OWN time....because you're far to busy during the working day to find the time to listen to recordings of meetings you'd not planned to attend in the first place.

ID Cards - Am I the only Brit that wants one?

2009-11-07T08:58:00.000+01:00

Legally in Spain I have to carry identification and present it to an officer of the law should it be requested.

Up until 2 years ago Spain issued foreigners with a residency card, very similar to the ID cards given to nationals. However in its infinite wisdom it decided that foreigners of the European states should carry an ID card of their country of birth......and that's where the problem starts for the Brits. Despite asking, I can't get one....because I don't live in the UK.

Fortunately I can use my UK driving licence in place of carrying my cumbersome but most treasured passport. But an ID card makes such sense. I could carry it along side my credit cards, use it to travel between European countries, identify myself when paying for goods with credit card...how very useful...so why can't I have one?

The problem is with my fellow Brits....and their quest for anonymity.....which is perhaps why the UK is the most spied on country in the world.

But I can understand their reservations. An ID card in Spain needs a photo, an address, a DNI (similar to an NHI number), an address....and here's the slightly controversial bit...finger prints. These are incredibly useful if you have passed away, and as a result unable to identify yourself....and yes, if you did leave your finger prints at the scene of a crime then you could be traced and arrested.

Chairman Brown wants to include DNA in the UK ID cards and this is proving unpopular. I believe the British Constabulary could be at fault here. Stupidly they have been very vocal about how taking DNA samples from every suspect they arrest has helped them solve very old crimes.....and we should think just think how many more crimes they could solve if they had the DNA of every citizen living in the UK.

Great communications job Plod. You've just obliterated the principle of UK law that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. "Someone, somewhere on this island did it....with the candlestick...in the drawing room".

But privacy is constantly under attack in the UK. It was ironic to hear Ben Bradshaw on Question Time be so scathing of Andrew Marr for asking Gordy the Moron if he was on medication. "Your health should be private" he said (or something like that). Really? Then why did his government allow the police access to every citizens medical records....or is it that only citizens records should be made public? Those of ministers and the cabinet should remain private? Isn't that ever so slightly elitist?

Citizens of the UK are having their civil rights and privacy whittled away as the state connects hundreds of individual public and private databases.

So is it the same in countries with ID cards? Here I have an NIE rather than a DNI, because I am a foreigner. It holds the details of my passport, my address, the names of my parents, date of birth etc. So I'm registered with the Government for tax purposes. But I also have to register with the local Government in Barcelona so it may count me as another resident, which requires a different identification. I also needed this identification, not my NIE to buy a car. Before we got married I had to register myself with the British Consulate, and recently when we went to try to change my driving licence for a Spanish version, I was told there's a new document I need to obtain. Despite having a national identification system, the Spanish are unable to identify people.

Ironically, I can get an ID card in 6 months time. As I married a Spaniard, I can claim citizenship after only a year. But this does mean I have to give up being British....which is a rather extreme measure just to get a little piece of plastic.

Today marks my 4th anniversary in Barcelona

2009-11-01T14:42:00.008+01:00

4 years ago today I woke up in a strange bed, in a strange apartment, in a strange country. What made it worse was I decided to move to Barcelona on the day before All Saints Day...so the shops were shut, the cupboard was bare and I celebrated my first day hungry!

This morning I woke up with toothache after breaking a molar at dinner last night. This required a trip to the emergency dentist for a filling, which 4 years ago I would have left until after I returned from my business trip, and I could go and visit my English dentist here in Barcelona. Brits abroad can be so gregarious, but when it comes to something like my teeth...I really want to make sure the dentist understands me!

I continue to try to "fit in". I married a Spaniard...that though was for love, not to fit in. I now drink wine, not beer, fish, not meat and have become a total coffee snob, preferring this to tea....and I never drink cafe con leche after midday...and will of course scorn anyone who does!!

That said I am still the "guiri". My skin colour, my light coloured hair. I don't think it matters how long I live here, I'm still going to stand out. The funniest thing in restaurants is that the waiters take one look at me, and hand both of us English menus. And fortunately my wife sees the funny side.....who since knowing me has come to excel in the English language.

In 4 years, I've also achieved new friends, a Spanish vocabulary, some Catalan words, a car, and therefore a speeding fine, and the ability to argue with Taxi drivers. I'd like to have thought I would be more versed in the Spanish language, so I could argue with more people, but it has been a challenge, working for an American company, speaking English for work every day.

Perhaps my biggest regret is being so stupid with language, seeing how people here master several. If I was proposing changes to the UK education system, I'd be campaigning for the introduction of Latin, which provides an important foundation for many European languages.

I'm quite delighted with the life style change I have been able to achieve. While 4 years isn't a special anniversary, the last year certainly has been quite significant....and I hope I'll have even more to say this time next year.

Wouldn't it be great if Michelin took over the star ratings for hotels?

2009-10-30T12:56:00.005+01:00

There's one thing for sure. If Michelin graces a restaurant with one or more of its coveted stars, you're in for a treat. Not only is the food quality outstanding, but so is the presentation, staff service, ambiance of the restaurant....it's the complete package.

And that's kinda what I've come to expect when staying in a hotel. Only the star ratings are incredibly ambiguous, and can often lead to huge disappointment.

There is no international standard for hotel ratings, but at least I'd expect there to be consistency in country, but it seems just as at school you had teachers that were harder at marking your work that others, it seems the same people are working for the rating agencies.

As a rule we swear by Trip Advisor, just as much as Lonely Planet guides...and as good social citizens we update Trip Advisor with our own experiences, especially the really good ones, and also the really bad ones.

Last week we spent some time in Sevilla. We wanted a hotel in the old town, and I wanted one of good quality....so I picked a 4 star, thinking this would entitle us to a comfortable bed, enough room to swing the cat and a decent shower.

The hotel was incredibly quaint, a series of houses joined together in the Jewish quarter, and while the room was big enough, the bed was horribly hard (I'm still suffering from back pain), the cat was delighted about the bathroom, and when using the toilet the only place for your feet was in the shower! Oh yes, the shower, a glorious huge pan head with great water pressure, set at a fixed height for the average Spaniard.....of the 17th century.

So while we had a lovely time in the outstanding city of Sevilla, and we did like the hotel, it's primary function, which was to provide a place to sleep was a bit of a disappointment for yours truly. Worse was our selection was based on the feedback from Trip Advisor. Am I the only person that hated the beds?

The only country for me that consistently turns out well appointed bedrooms of a very high standard for a very reasonable price is Germany......even if the rooms can be a little bit....well....kinky!! This is the Innside Premier Inn in Frankfurt, and yes that is a shower cubicle in the middle of the bedroom!

Public Address - What the railways can learn from the church

2009-10-26T21:51:00.013+01:00

I've been in a few churches recently.....and every time I enter one I'm in awe at the architecture, the sheer size, and the beauty of stone carvings......but most of all it amazes me how, despite these beautiful buildings being acoustically a disaster zone, the set up of audio amplification is something that approaches perfection.

I don't think I've ever witness a priest's sermon (or other ceremonial audio projection) emulate that of a passenger announcement......the most famous of which of course was "The 08.14 Barnehurst to Blackfriars". Sorry couldn't resist...I was an avid Capital Radio listener in the 80s.

Yet if you compare the structure of a church with that of a railway station, it is very similar....large, full of columns, lots of stone surfaces. So how is it that the railway station broadcasts undecipherable jibberish, while in a church, the sermon is clear and undistorted......even though it may still be jibberish to a non-believer!!

The answer is in the provider of the church's sound system. This year I've been inside churches in the UK, Italy, Spain and Germany....and I've noticed that all seem to have the same slimline vertical grey/beige speaker towers.

I've no idea which company makes them, but if they're cornered the religious vertical, perhaps they could do the same with travel and transport.

Frank Field is a bit of a fraud......

2009-10-20T17:09:00.008+02:00

I've been tracking Guido Fawkes blog as an RSS feed.....he does a great job of uncovering the scandals in the Palace of Westminster. He recently blogged about Frank Field "Is Frank Field really so saintly" so I took a look at what Frank was moaning about.

Not surprisingly he's moaning about having to pay back £7000 in the expenses scandal, arguing that he was actually called out as one of the politicians that was more conservative with his expenses claims. In his own blog "The justice of a roulette wheel" he writes that he feels undermined by the actions of Sir Thomas Legg in changing the rules for expenses. He went on to point out how he claimed far less than the maximum for his home in his Birkenhead, and how he feels very much hard done by over this.

Frank welcomes feedback from readers.....so I did......

I have very little sympathy with any of you. How can your home in Birkenhead be your 2nd home? It is you PRIMARY home, the home from which you serve your constituency. Your 2nd home would be one in London, where you stay when you're serving Government. The fact that you've been allowed to bend the rules, to switch your primary home, so you can benefit from upgrades, modifications, actually anything is a crime in itself. Yes I know you're not the worst, and I know the system let you do it. But it doesn't make it right. We've seen you give yourselves pay rises above inflation, huge increases in administration costs (paid to a spouse or family member) and at the same time as begging you're not paid enough, you're embezzling tax payers money to fund the upkeep of your home, the one you sell and keep the profits of. Wake up, smell the coffee, and get real. There isn't another job in the UK where you could flirt with the rules so much and still keep your job.

Not that it made it to his web page of course. Our Frank's very selective about feedback, only wants to display positive comments. I took a look at some of his other blogs that were full of "well said Frank" and "Frank, you talk so much sense". I didn't see a blog that criticised him personally.

In fact, frankly speaking....he's a bit of a fraud.

Happy 1st Birthday to Blud's Blog

2009-10-16T09:10:00.011+02:00

It's Blud's Blog's first birthday! I've impressed myself with the number of blogs I've been able to maintain, even though at times there's been a bit of a gap in publication.

I'd like to say thanks to the many people who have commented positively on my weekly outbursts, rants and raves...your feedback only encourages me to continue.

It has been a remarkable year for blogging! The credit crunch, Obama's election victory, MPs expenses, Bliar in the news.....and of course the marriage of the year.....mine!!! (or rather "ours" as I'm reminded)

That said politics has probably figured a little too frequently. I will try to think of new and different topics to express an opinion on. There is going to be plenty of dirt flying around with a UK election next Spring....you really won't need my view to form your own opinion....and I think it's abundantly clear where I will be putting my X this time around!!

I once got asked "Why Blud's Blog?" It's because Blud was the most amusing spelling of my surname I've seen. Despite spelling out B-L-O-O-D, people still couldn't quite believe it so made it up from their own interpretation. I kinda like the "bluntness" of Blud, and often use it in my email signature, especially when I'm being deliberately blunt....it sorta works for me.

What are your most irritating office phrases?

2009-10-15T10:34:00.009+02:00

I've been clearing out email this morning and I found an invite to subscribe to TechWatch....apparently a "must have" for IT Pros. "Well" I thought, "I guess I'm one of those", so I thought I'd take a look. The first web page opened at ExecWatch...and one of the most prominent entries was Are you abusing these 10 most irritating office phrases? I just had to take a look.

These are the 10 most irritating phrases......do you recognise any of 'em?

At the end of the day
Fairly unique
I personally
At this moment in time
With all due respect
Absolutely
It’s a nightmare
Shouldn't of
24/7
It’s not rocket science

Perhaps it's because I work in IT, or because it's for a US based company....but these have to be my top 5 pet hate phrases...

1. I'm reaching out to you to see if you can help me
2. Perhaps we can touch base on that one next week
3. The meeting's finished early so I'm giving back 10 minutes in your busy schedule (just enough time to write this blog entry!!)
4. Hold that thought for one moment
5. We're moving into a new Theater...why has a "market place" all of a sudden become a theater?

The first two always prompt me to start humming Depeche Mode's 80's classic "Personal Jesus"...hmm...hmm...mmm..mmmm...reachout and touch base!

I was 37,207th to sign the "Stop Bliar" campaign

2009-10-14T17:45:00.006+02:00

I just signed the anti-Bliar campaign to stop him becoming president of Europe.

I'm trying to get my head around why the majority of the leaders of Europe would risk such an important position to a character under such intense suspicion right now. This could be a doubly embarrassing mistake....

By the end of the month the SFO presents its case to Ms Scotland, who will be under increasing pressure to accept there is a case against BAE Systems. Given her own current investigation by the Bar Standards (you couldn't make this stuff up), it would be incredibly difficult for her to block this prosecution. So in allowing the case to continue, this will then raise a huge question mark over why Tony Bliar decided to quash the investigation into BAE Saudi....after a quiet, cosy chat with the Prince. Did he act ethically, or was he so overcome by meeting royalty that his decision was influenced by money, fame or fortune....either way it raises huge questions about ethics. Can the EU really be led by a man with questionable ethics?

Next year, the Chilcott investigation into the Iraq war is expected to quiz, along with others, comrades in arms Bliar and Brown. It is expected to continue into 2011....so plenty of time for the stigma of an illegal war to hover over the president of Europe, and many opportunities for the press to pick up on a few leaked conversations, headline grabbing articles that will for sure embarrass the former PM and potentially even highlight the illegalities of his actions. Can the EU really be led by a criminal?

Or is it the case that the EU leaders, who detest the UK Euro scepticism really would like to do serious damage to its world ranking, and can think of no better fight than Crony Tony vs Tory Toff?

Winning in the UK, but losing in Spain

2009-10-09T20:28:00.006+02:00

Having deposited a generous sum of money with Lloyds TSB, and despite several commitments to offer better savings rates, by the end of the first year the account had grown by a mere 8.04€.

So last week I transfered the money to a different bank where I can achieve a significantly better rate of interest.

BUT what I didn't read in the T&Cs for Lloyds TSB Espana is the commission charges for transfering money between accounts in Spain so I was hit with bank charges of 59.85€ for moving my money from one Spanish account to another.

I recall paying LESS when I transfered a similar sum from the UK, which included commission for the currency exchange!!!

Ever wondered why the Spanish banks largely survived the melt down last year?

A small victory for the little people

2009-10-01T21:58:00.014+02:00

I sometimes get fed up with being pushed around by retailers, especially when I've done nothing worse than making a selection in their favour for some goods or services. Under normal circumstances, you'd expect the retailer to be delighted, and in general, in a faceless sort of way, they are....except if you find something wrong, or they ship a different item, then everything breaks down, you get upset, they ignore you and it looks like you're heading for another wasted purchase....and I've noticed it's got worse through this recession. Less customer care, less quality control, more unhappy customers. It's a vicious spiral.

This week I had a little victory for the consumer. In Forget your local suppliers at your peril I described my experiences at the hands of Nick Holloway, the Plastics Man. I described him as a charlatan, a cad and a thieving bastard. Well this week thieving bastard is light of nearly £200 as he buckled in and paid up for the damaged shower screen, travel costs as well as court fees.

It could actually have cost him significantly less. I offered him the option of sending a new screen, or refunding my money for just the screen. I offered to stand the cost of the posting and packaging as a compromise....because the courts always like to see compromise. He decided to ignore both options and so it cost him 50% more. But at least he saw sense and paid up, because I really didn't want to have to travel in all the way from Barcelona to Northampton to defend the case, which by the way I would have absolutely won without any shadow of a doubt.

I used Money Claim to pursue Mr Holloway. It's possibly one of the more sensible things the UK Government administration has done in allowing consumers to file claims of less than £5000 on line. It's quite cheap to do, very quick, and if the dirty, filthy greedy postal workers weren't out for more money, then it would be quite efficient too.

But I have used another method which is also even more effective and much more satisfying. If you really get to the point where you're tearing your hair out with the senior customer service representative of the retailer in question, follow Steve's small tip for immediate response and satisfaction. It will cost you a tad more than Money Claim but it's so much more effective.

1. Register with 192.com
2. Buy 100 credits at £34.95 - it seems to go up each time I access it!
3. Do a company search for the offending retailer in question.
4. List of a directors report, where you will then have the home addresses of the most senior people in the company that you're battling with.
5. Pick a couple, and send letters to their home addresses, laying out your experience and how you would like the issue resolved. Now be nice - these are very important, and generally wealthy people.

I can almost guarantee your complaint will be actioned swiftly and your issue resolved smartly, by a senior executive personal assistant, not some faceless customer service jobs-worth.

There are 2 reasons for this. Firstly, in my experience having done this twice with the CEOs at Dixons Stores Group and British Airways, the executives are quite dismayed at your experiences, and it really does pain them that you have been treated so poorly. Secondly, you know where they live!!!!

Unfortunately, under the 2006 Companies Act, directors are now allowed to post a contact address in the public domain field on the directors report rather than their actual home address. I can understand how, from a family security perspective, the directors of cosmetic companies would want their home addresses safe from the eyes of the animal activists but as it seems, not all directors have changed these details. How do you think Fred the Shred had his tyres on his Merc shredded?

So give it a go. I have to say that the PAs to both John Clare, CEO at Dixons and Willie Walsh, CEO at BA were incredibly charming, and thanked me for sharing with them my experiences, and handsomely rewarded me for my troubles. Consequently, I still do business with them even today....my flights to London, as BA flies to Barcelona, and PC City is the source of all things IT related.

Obviously if another 12,000 consumers read this blog then more CEOs may use the privacy of a contact address....so be quick!!!

Today I registered my intention to vote in the next election

2009-09-28T20:29:00.013+02:00

It's been years since I bothered to vote. So dismayed was I at the corruption that engulfed the Conservative Party in the late 90s that I couldn't bring myself to vote for them in 1997, but then I couldn't bring myself to vote for smug faced Tony Bliar either....and as I wasn't going to waste my vote on the third party (who ever they were), I um.....well I guess I wasted my vote, by not bothering.

In 2001 I had a great excuse. I moved home earlier that year, the electoral register hadn't caught up with me and I didn't actually receive a polling card. Equally though, I still couldn't bring myself to vote for the Conservatives; they hadn't yet pulled themselves together as a party, and William Hague's pathetic "last chance to save the pound" was a joke......especially since 8 years on the UK still has sterling, even if its worthless since the Moron sold all the gold and borrowed all that money!

In between the 2001 and 2005 elections I was away on business one evening, having a very pleasant dinner with clients. Then the subject of politics got raised. I recall playing the agnostic "heart on my left side, wallet on my right", then stupidly said something like " But my conscience is clear as I didn't vote for the current administration. In fact I haven't bothered for years." This inflamed a female client across the table who pointed out that in her home country only very recently people had died for the vote, and here was I waving away a right that I took for granted. I could tell from her accent she was South African.

Of course she was right. It was very reckless of me to abandon my democratic right, and I thought very hard about it before staying at home on 5th May in 2005. It was 2 years into an illegal war. I had to make a stand. Duncan and his brother Smith were leading the unelectable Tories on 13th March 2003, and because of his stand in support of Bliar (a good soldier always does what he's told) I couldn't possibly consider putting my mark against the local Tory candidate. My affinity on the war at the time was strongest with the Lib Dems but I couldn't waste my vote for someone who spent more time in the Commons bar than at his seat in the chamber....so again I, um....wasted my vote.

Much has changed in the last 4 years. Just as a soldier marches on his stomach, a good voter marches on his wallet, more so than his conscience. Noting that mine (wallet) is significantly lighter in recent times, following years of incompetence, the appalling handling of the public finances, combined of course with the incredible levels of corruption and deceit that has overwhelmed the shower of shit in charge right now, it really is time for a change. And fortunately, after 12 years in the wilderness, the only electable alternative finally has a voice, a set of policies and is mostly fresh from the corruption that comes with contempt of office. While I don't doubt that some of the less vote worthy Conservatives will still slide into some sordid dodgy dealings (these are seasoned politicians after all), I do expect their leader will take a firmer approach than we have witnessed in recent days by the Prime Minister supporting of his lying factions.

There are a number of reasons why I want to help remove this drivel from power, but the strongest goes back to 1997, when Brown, then Chancellor imposed a tax on pension funds, that has stripped our retirement funds (so far) of more than £140,000,000. That's an incredible stealth tax that has helped to fund less efficient schools; better paid, poorer performing civil servants; a more expensive crumbling health service, and more police but in the station, filling out paperwork. Our retirement funds of all things are sacred.....at least to all of those politicians that have a conscience...but certainly not those that have a gold plated state pension to look forward to!!!

You could write a book about the last 12 years of office, and I'm sure Gordon the Moron will have a go after he is ejected from power next year. But I for one will never buy it, and I'm likely to be quite rude to anyone that helps him line his pockets. I think I despise him even more than Bliar (that was at least elected) before him.

Mrs Scotland, the pride of British Justice

2009-09-28T09:00:00.008+02:00

Whassat Mrs Scotland.....a second passport? Your ex-cleaner showed you a forged passport? Well let's ask the Border Control shall we?

Forged passports are very expensive, and the last thing an illegal is going to discard. Ms Tapui's flat was raided by Border Control, and all they found was a Tongan passport with an out of date, forged visa.....and I'm sure they were very thorough in their search of the flat.

The fact that Gordon the Moron sees no reason to sack her is another example of how this shower of shit has become as complacent with office as the previous shower of shit, that time and time again they are unable to tell the difference between right and wrong. And there are still people in the UK that want to see this jerkoff and his party run the country for another 5 years?

Scotland sacked Ms Tapui as illegally as she employed her. This is no defence, she knew the rules, she created them. And as for comparing her £5000 fine to a congestion charge, well I'm sure £5000 to this rich old bird is like £8 to the average Londoner, especially when you've already stolen £170,000 from the tax payer.

In the Bag......Barcelona's recycling efforts hit a snag

2009-09-26T19:25:00.006+02:00

Yesterday morning I went down to the Caprabo closest to our apartment for a few items, coffee, oranges etc. After I paid I asked the check out chica for a plastic bag to carry my items home. As she peeled one out from under her cash til she made it very clear to me this was my LAST plastic bag! From now on I had to recycle, or buy one of their reusable bags. I would have.....but they'd all gone already.

It seems several of the supermarkets have joined the ecological craze and are planning to stop providing plastic bags for consumables. We either have to purchase one of their robust reusables at a very reasonable 1€ a throw, or recycle existing bags. Initially I thought it was a money saving idea, but now they have to employ security guards to make sure you're not stealing anything away in your large robust carriers.

Now I 'm not against the idea of recycling. I've been doing it ever since I moved here. On the corner of our street, there are separate bins for rubbish, paper and car board, plastic and bottles. Everyone chips in and recycles, and they do it without the need for the not-so-civil servants applying penalties for non-conformance and all that rubbish that has been allowed to escalate in the UK.

So today we went to Hipercor, a hypermarket on the outskirts of the city. I decided that perhaps the ecology bug had hit Hipercor as well, so just in case we took along 4 of our robust carrier bags to bag up after check out. As soon as we got to the entrance, a check-in chica decided she wanted to seal our carrier bags inside another bag, because this was the way they ensure you don't steal anything in a large hypermarket, where they can't afford to employ an army of security guards to patrol the aisles.

And this is where it got silly. I should have been a nice "guerri and helped her out, but so incensed was I by this total stupidity that I decided to sulk and watch her try and cram our 4 large recycling carrier bags into one of her much smaller "security sealed" bags to ensure we didn't hide anything in our travels around the store. Of course it was impossible, they wouldn't fit, and there was no chance of her getting to heat seal the open-end, so finally she thrusted one of her bags over each end of our bags and put a single security sticker on the side, which promptly fell off.

When it came to check out, Hipercor has yet to start rationing plastic bags, but given we'd brought our recyclables I thought we should use them. I ripped off the 2 ridiculous plastic bags that were covering ours and proceeded to fill with our shopping.

I was delighted that we completed this without using a single plastic check out bag, but left me wondering how Hipercor is going to support recycling if each recycling bag has to be sealed in its own security bag prior to entry, which is later ripped open, and therefore cannot be recycled.

Forget your local suppliers at your peril!

2009-09-22T20:59:00.010+02:00

Years ago when I lived in the London Borough of Waltham Forest (too embarrassed to say Walthamstow), Sainsbury's built a Homebase DIY Superstore in the car park of a derelict industrial transformer site. Within spitting distance of Homebase was A D Jones, a traditional plumbers merchants, a family business that I'm delighted to say is still running today.

All of the local plumbers relied on A D Jones, and being a supplier to the trade, the owners were more accustomed to dealing with tradesmen than the general public, and consequently where not too polite when handing out advice to the average punter looking for some help. "You silly arse, whaddaya want to install it like that for" was common place, as I recall. My father, a keen DIYer learned everything there was to know about plumbing from A D Jones Senior....but with it had to endure the abuse and berating that was common place on a Saturday morning.

I guess that's probably why Homebase became so very popular with the average punter, who, instead of being belittled by the experts in a run down shop that smelt of copper flux and Boss White, could browse the shelves of a shiny new store, helped (or not) instead by spotty faced clueless students. The impact was almost immediate - A D Jones business suffered acutely, sales were down to the extent that for years they had a banner running the full length of the shop "You could pay more at the Superstore". I am however delighted though that A D Jones is still going. I'd like to think that the sales tactics have changed a bit, and perhaps customers are treated a little bit better these days, because the local business is invaluable, it's generally more customer friendly and in many cases, much cheaper!

Let's fast forward now to July of 2009, as yours truly prepares to buy up the raw materials for a bathroom renovation at Mother's house. Yes, that DIY bug of my Father's wore off on me and when Mum's bathroom needed replacing, there was only one person to be left in charge of the renovation.

Now I'm a big fan of Internet shopping, so much so that it's become my DNA to look first on line for something. There are so many things I've bought, that would never get with the Yellow Pages, or Teletex, such that I'm Internet shopping's biggest fan.

We needed a sheet of glass for the walk-in shower, it had to be big, toughened and at least 8mm thick to comply with safety standards (yes I know all this). On line quotes, initiated from Barcelona were returning prices of between £260 and £300......which is the point at which I switched the idea to perspex, safe than glass, lighter and considerably cheaper.....and so I placed a faceless order to a company in Northampton to deliver a sheet of 8mm perspex to the size and specification we wanted. It cost about £160 with transportation, and I was feeling very pleased with myself.

Let's jump forward to last month, when I came to install the shower screen, only to find that underneath the bubble-wrap inside the packaging was a sheet of rubbish. Something that looked like it had supported the cast of River Dance, over several performances. The problem with Internet purchases is its faceless, no chance to build a rapport with the vendor, no chance of any him/her taking ownership for faulty or damaged goods, because there's very little chance you're ever going to meet.

I think there's nothing more vile than a vendor that absolves themselves of any responsibility for the quality of goods they supply, especially after they have your money and especially in a recession. They're supposed to be extra nice, because they need punters to buy things....else they go out of business.

So there is a chance we might meet, because I've entered a claim for damage with the County Court.....but just in case anyone reading this feels the urge to go and buy a sheet of perspex from an on-line supplier, don't use the Plastics Man. Nick Holloway is a charlatan, a cad, a thieving bastard!

So with the court summons issued I can now go and source a replacement. I decided that I'd opt for glass this time, as it's a bit stronger, less likely to be scratched, and even if it does cost twice what we paid for Nick Holloway's pile of shit, it will be worth it. So done I am with the on-line shopping, I called up a local supplier in the Maidenhead area, Price Glass, something that I should have done from the very start. From this local supplier I can buy the same size and specification for £136.84...and they won't even charge for delivery.

I'm delighted to be giving a local supplier (to my Mum) our business, and I'm feeling a bit of a fool for not even thinking about them in the first place.

I certainly paid more at the on-line Superstore!

More than 11,000 hits.....My blog must be popular...

2009-09-21T22:07:00.005+02:00

or the web site counter had a little hiccup.

It's been nearly a month since my last post and I'm damn sure that antenna theory and UK passports aren't really that interesting.....

I've been neglecting this page for a few weeks. It's partly because I've not got anything interesting to report. Usually my travels prompt me to write something, but having burned a mere 4.5 tonnes of carbon this year, clearly I've not been spending anything like enough time on a plane! In fact it looks like this could be the first year in something like 15 years that I don't make at least one trip across the pond.....now is that a good thing or a bad thing?

I did have the chance to pass through Swiss, UK and Barcelona border control in the last month, with my shiny new bio-passport. I was expecting somehow that getting chipped would reward me with an automatic fast track channel, but alas no. The Swiss guard in Basel was actually very quick, I queued for ever at Term 3...and get this....he had to swipe my passport...because despite the fanfare around biometric passports, Heathrow doesn't have the readers installed. By the time I returned to Barcelona, the guard took one look at me and waved me through without even looking at my passport.

"That's neat" I thought, "An extra long range biometric card reader that can scan the data in my back pocket, pop a digital image of me on his screen that the guard can match with the person walking through the gate"......then as I turned around to look at his booth, there wasn't even a computer there.

My my, what a big antenna my passport has!

2009-08-25T18:45:00.014+02:00

In my distant past, I was a radio ham. I used to CQ CQ all evening long before the days of the Internet. And not just voice! We used to dabble with SSTV (slow scan tv), RTTY (radio teletype), even Morse code, across many the many designated radio bands, for Radio Amateurs (before they got sold off by the Government to clear the national debt). We operated on high frequency, very high frequency, ultra high frequency as well as microwave (before the ovens).....but one thing was common...the bigger your antenna array, the further you were able to transmit and receive signals from like-minded radio hams around the globe.

From a previous blog you will know I've been suffering from the incompetence of the UK IPS in applying for a new passport. I have now received my shiny new biometric passport with its very own RFID chip and "rather large coil of copper wire" antenna embedded in the back page. Of this I was immediately suspicious, and which then reminded me of my Amateur Radio days.

I was concerned that the coil of wire made up a "loop antenna". As all Hams know, there's only one good reason to build a loop antenna...... it's for DF'ing......that's "Directional Finding" for the common folk that read this. We used loop antennas to seek out the source of transmission.....a much simpler version of triangulation used today by cellular providers to locate mobile phone users for the Government snoopers.

So being the Government sceptic I am, and convinced that Comrade Brown and the Communist Party are up to no good, I decided to research a bit RFID and antennas.

I found it quite difficult to find out any information on the UK Government's use of RFID in passports. They're actually quite secretive about it. But I did find a huge paper on RFID antenna circuit design, written back in 2003. It's a full 50 pages long and goes into all sorts of details on inducing voltages in coils, tuning, resonance etc. But the most interesting read of all was the page that referenced "read ranges" of RFID devices, and the different sizes of antenna coils and readers necessary to read passport data, which is all very relevant when there are also several posts about compromising identities by hacking passport chips.

Several posts mentioned how easy it was to break the encryption on the RFID chip, with a cheap reader you can buy off eBay. To make it worse, they suggested people should be wrapping their passports in aluminium foil or other radio frequency materials to prevent their identity being compromised. It all seemed very worrying until I studied the read ranges in a little more detail.

There are two influences in the read range of a passive (unpowered) RFID chip, as used in biometric passports - size of the antenna and size of the card reader (which also needs an antenna). To put this in perspective, a credit-card sized RFID tag (similar to the above picture)has a read range of about 150mm with a card reader the size of a small envelope. That's just enough range for one of those imposing Immigration Officers at Heathrow to do validation, and the with size of reader that's likely to be installed at Border control desks.....pretty short range huh? It does increase to 1.2 metres if the card reader is the size of a small table top, something that's a bit impractical for a Border control desk, and also for a hacker trying to crack passenger identities in the airport. "That's too big for carry on luggage sir, it will have to go in the hold"......"and that'll be another £10 please".

So I believe we can safely say that the risk of having your identity snatched while waiting for a flight in an airport is pretty slim. But to be on the safe side, keep a look out for very close proximity nerds carrying laptops and wearing copper knitted jerseys!

So does this lighten my suspicion that Comrade Brown and his cronies are up to no good with electronic storage? Not one bit. I still don't trust them....and it does leave me wondering what the range of an RFID reader with a copper coil antenna the size of the floor at Terminal 5 would be.

NAFFTEQ....and an apology to Italian Cartographers

2009-08-24T17:53:00.003+02:00

In a previous post I heavily criticised Italian cartographers suggesting that the reason GPS didn't work well in Italy was because the reference maps were inaccurate. But that wouldn't explain why the navigation aid on my mobile phone directed us under the center of Paris and out towards La Defense when our destination was entered as Calais.

It really was the last straw in a series of hiccups that have cost us time, patience and fuel, such that I'm finally going to ditch the mobile phone software for something more purpose built for the car, and ideally one that is made in Europe for European countries with tunnels, tall buildings and viaducts, and can actually still function when it loses GPS signal....instead of the software I've been using that simply shouts "can't see, can't see" every time the signal is lost.

While I wouldn't expect a GPS signal to reach a device in a tunnel under Paris (or any tunnel for that matter), I would expect it to know the entry speed into the tunnel, make some calculations and advise which route to take based on estimated speed, not simply panic every time the GPS signal is lost.....or better still of course.....don't take us into a tunnel in the first place!!!

I've got some research to do though. There must be some difference between the different devices available, a 60€ annual licence for mobile phone software, 300€ for a portable in car unit and 1500€ for the manufacturer supplied in car navigation system. Let's hope I reach a decision before our next road holiday! In the mean time I'm off out to buy a map!!!

The truth about hand dryers

2009-08-13T21:32:00.004+02:00

"This hand dryer has been installed to serve you better" says the writing on the machine, and then further goes on to say how much more hygenic and eco-friendly hand dryers are than hand towels.
Err....actually no, and a simple mathematical calculation will bear this out.

Here's the yucky part....It takes the average man between 10 and 20 seconds to empty his bladder....unless he's on a major drinking session, in which case it's nearer a minute. I have to say I've never actually timed myself but I'm sure I've never stood at the urinal for more than a minute.

Washing hands takes a minute or two, depending how quickly the hot water runs through. OK I use posh public lavatories with hot water.

Then, we get to the drying of the hands. The eco-friendly hand dryer takes at least 4 minutes to warm up, then a further 3 to dry wet hands, or 2 if you wipe your hands down your jeans first.

So in order to meet the demand of relievers, there should be at least twice as many hand dryers as there are urinals.....and of course we all know it's quite the opposite......in fact having scanned a few public conveniences I've found an average of one hand dryer per 4 urinals.

This means that either there is a queue of relieved gents waiting to dry their hands, or the majority don't bother washing up afterwards. Notably drying your hands on a paper towel takes less time than peeing.....and consumes less electricity.

The Passsport Office - The Civil Service....at its worst!!

2009-08-02T21:31:00.019+02:00

Well it's finally happened, I've got to renew my UK passport as it now has less than 6 months until it expires...and I need all of that to enter the good old US of A on the Visa Waiver program....though given the Visa is only ever valid for 3 months, and the passport is still current by the time I leave, I'm not quite sure why this restriction is in force...but perhaps I'll be enlightened one day.

But that's only the start of my problems. Getting a new passport when you live abroad is more than difficult, and the policies and procedures laid out for this were created by imbeciles that have never left the shores of ol' Blighty.

Let me share with you my experiences so far.

I am told by the IPS call center the procedure for ex pats in Spain to renew their passports is to use the consulate in Madrid. This process takes about 6 weeks, and is great for pensioners that have retired here, but not much use for the 100,000 (mostly working Brits) that leave the country each year., especially those that still travel a lot.

While the Passport Office recognizes that Brits living in the UK sometimes have to travel at short notice, and therefore created the fast track and premium services to speed up the process of passport renewal, it fails to recognize that Brits living abroad have the same challenges. There is no fast track service abroad, anywhere!

If you travel extensively, and have need for the fast track service, it's also quite likely that your passport is going to be a little bit worn after 10 years of use, 10 years of waiting in long queues (no more so than good old LHR) with passport grasped in sweaty palm, awaiting your turn to enter the homeland once again. And if you passport is a little bit worn, the Passport Office classes this as "damaged", you can't use the Premium same day service, you have to wait 5 days to get a passport replaced...because "extra checks have to be carried out".

The Passport Office has dictated that unless your passport is in "pristine condition", it will be classed as damaged. No shit Sherlock!! Which brainless cretin came up with that idea? I of course have two thought tracks for this.....

a) The passport office, not known for its efficiency wants to make it seem like its providing a service to its citizens, but without actually have to get its staff to do any more work. With the majority of used passports damaged....they can reject the passport for Premium Service and go back to tea drinking......or

b) It's a ploy to get Brits not to use their passports, not to travel abroad and see just how great the rest of the world is....because they might decide to join the 100K leaving already....then who would fat bastard get to pay the taxes, so he can continue buying up British industry?

If you travel, there's a big chance your flimsy passport will get damaged, you can't use the same day service, and if you live abroad, you're going to have to spend a little bit longer in the UK than you expected.

But it gets worse. If your passport is damaged, you'll need to get a UK resident, one with professional qualifications that has known you for more than 2 years to countersign your application. It's only 3 years or so since I left the UK, but I can imagine for someone who left many years ago, the option of finding someone in the UK who knows them is increasingly more difficult.

So for a rapid replacement of a well used passport, for a Brit living abroad, you're going to need to spend at least a week, more like 10 days getting a replacement. It makes you realize that the £114 for a new passport pails into insignificance in comparison to the cost of travel and accommodation while your there.

Thanks Passport Office.....for nothing!

Thank heaven for Gazpacho

2009-07-27T21:41:00.006+02:00

This is my 4th summer in Barcelona, and quite possibly the hottest. When you work from home, in an apartment with as many glass walls as brick, it tends to get a bit hot. This month has been no exception where the air con unit in the salon area (of which a part is my office) acts as little more than a dehumidifier. As the temperature soars to 30 degrees, it extracts the moisture but fails to lower the temperature. The air is at least dry,so it's a slightly more comfortable heat. As I write this it's 11.37pm and my thermometer shows 29 degrees!

Working at home means often I eat at home too. While I like to engage in Menu del Dia, I often don't have time......and to be honest, I'm not great at eating out by myself. In temperatures like this, I feel loathed to fire up the hob to create yet more heat on which to cook something. I'm a big fan of salads, cold meats, pastas etc. But most of all I adore Gazpacho.

Pronounced "Gathpacho"...it is not as you might think, a cold soup. It is in fact a liquid salad. There is no stock in Gazpacho, simply good wholesome and freshly ground vegetables...well that's unless you cheat and buy it ready made in the supermarket. Either way, the tomatoes and sweet red peppers mixed with the refreshing taste of cucumber is heaven on days like this summer.

Cool, nourishing, full of vitamins.....what more can you ask for. I eat (drink) it every day and the best bit of all is, by the time I get bored of it, summer will be over!

Crisis - what bloody crisis?

2009-07-20T22:00:00.004+02:00

I'm kinda confused by this. There's me trying to buy an IPhone through the monopoly supplier in Espana, Movistar (not sure quite how that passes European law) and it seems to buy on line (no, I don't do queuing) I need to already have a mobile with a different provider, to take advantage of the offer "Ven a Movistar"...(Come to Movistar). So I duly sent in an email....they offered me the option, and a week later I still don't have a reply.....I WANT TO SPEND MONEY with these people, there's 4 million unemployed in Spain but do you think that would stir the stumps of the monolith....no chance in hell.

It's not much different in the UK, where I want some very simply technical information to assess what I need for a plumbing installation.....and after a week, I had to ping another email suggesting that perhaps I should buy from one of their competitors....which did solicit one of the naffest technical responses I've ever seen.

With economies in a slump, I would have though the mere mention of someone even thinking of parting with their money would solicit a barrage of interest, but no...it seems that no-one's every heard of the term recession. Perhaps the faces behind the emails have never been through one before?

I've been reading Richard Branson's "Business Stripped Bare".....it's a great read. He show incredible common sense in advocating that no business should be allowed to get too big, a theme he has supported in the early days of Virgin. By keeping businesses small, not only do you limit the risk of catastrophic failure (yeah, Fred Goodwin) but also it reminds the staff of why they're employed. I think that's something that employees of monoliths tend to forget. Job security has its downfalls.

I just wanted a coffee....a decent one!

2009-07-10T09:47:00.008+02:00

I'm going off poncy hotels. I had a great dinner in the Italian, in the Sofitel in La Defense on Wednesday night. The prawn risotto was one of the best I've ever tasted. Clearly a talented chef. At the end of the meal I asked for coffee, an espresso with a little hot milk on the side....it's called a cortado in Spain, and I adore it. It never arrived. Perhaps the request for a little hot milk on the side was too much to contemplate.

Next morning I took a petit dejeuner in the same restaurant, and ordered coffee. I was expecting "cafe au lait" but being a poncy hotel "garcon" bought me a cafetiere of coffee, squeezed very slowly, and poured.....while standing over me....nothing more irritating when you're trying to take breakfast. I search my small but cluttered table for milk.....there was none. It was my fault I should have expressed my desire for cafe au lait.

Milk came, and garconetta poured....at which point I begun to notice the "flotsam and jetsam" floating to the top. It looked like the filter on the cafetiere wasn't working properly. I asked for it to be changed, and garcon returned with another cafetiere.

He pointed out (to the stupid Brit that had never visited Paris before) that this was french coffee and it was normal to have "this" floating on the top. "Bollocks to this" I thought, "I've had cafe au lait up and down the Champs Elysees, from the Obelisque to the Arc....and never had I been served coffee with....floating coffee grains".

"Would Monsieur like a different coffee?" he asked. "If he offers nescafe I'm going to lump him one" I thought. "Bring me a cappuccino" I asked, thinking that surely they couldn't screw up an Italian coffee, in an Italian restaurant.

Poncy hotels have a tendency to use poncy tableware, and this place was no exception. Perhaps I should have explained the theories of thermal conduction, pointing out when you put a hot liquid into a bucket, 4 times the volume, the heat rapidly transfers to outside of the cup.....leaving me with a Frappe.......and I didn't want a cold frothy coffee.

I'm fortunate to live in Spain where coffee is a practiced art, second only to the Italians. I love to see the French add art to their cooking, serving delightful dishes in some of the most amazing tableware, but please when it comes to coffee......stop friggin around and invest in a decent Saeco, and an Italian handler.

Confession time: I was "white van man" once

2009-07-06T21:09:00.007+02:00

It all started a few months back when my (then) girlfriend asked me what embarrassing stories my best man was going to reveal at our wedding. So I started to confess to indiscretions and all the embarrassing things I could think of that he might bring up.....so it was no big surprise for her. As it happens, he was incredibly conservative.....so I needn't have told her half the things I did.....but that's hindsight for you.

My "white van man" experience occurred back in 1990. It was shortly after my father had died, and my defence (if I had one) was that I was seriously stressed out. At the time I was working in the telecommunications industry, in London's Docklands as an Installation Engineer. My job was to install equipment that provided companies with data circuits and telephone lines, and being the early 90s and in Docklands, in the shadow of the construction of Canary Wharf....we were incredibly busy.

The company I worked for procured white vans for its engineering staff to transport materials, and hence I was, for a period of about 18 months, a "white van man".

But if only that was the end of it. Wikipedia has a full description of "White Van Man" but I'll just highlight the bit where it says "The stereotype represents the drivers of such vehicles as having poor driving skills or an aggressive and inconsiderate manner".

I was on my way to an installation in one of the new offices in Harbour Exchange, and as I was driving a car with company livery, I was driving sensibly and considerately....no really I was!

In Marsh Wall, I noticed ahead a car trying to turn across the traffic. As I approached, since none of the cars ahead of me had stopped to let the poor lass through, I slowed, and flashed my lights to let her cross. At the same time, a vehicle behind, a BMW 3 Series came to an abrupt (tyre screeching) halt, followed simultaneously by a blast of the two tone horns.

Docklands was full of traffic and building works and in the late 80s but unfortunately it was also full of far too many yuppies, one of which had pulled up behind me. There is only one reply to this sort of behaviour, and that is to forget the fact I was driving company property, forget the defensive driving course I'd taken, and reply by giving the fore mentioned asshole, the bird! This did not go down well, in fact so much so that a rather irate yuppie decided to follow me, blasting his horn and flashing his lights, until we stopped at a temporary signal further up the road.

In my rather stressed state, I decided to get out of the car, walk up to his window and ask what exactly the problem was. As I peered over the driver's door, he let the window down about 30mm and told me that he didn't have a problem, but that I did. "Oh" I asked, "and exactly what is that?"....to which he replied "You're a f*&$%g ignorant c$%t".

I'm not sure exactly what caused the red mist to fall, whether it was his language or the fact that he spouted such foul abuse through an opening big enough that I might hear, but small enough such that he couldn't be dragged through it. I did manage to stay quite calm...probably because this was the first (and the LAST) time I'd ever actually got out out of a car to start a confrontation. He was, not surprisingly quite adamant that he was not going to get out of his car to discuss the issue, and he'd rather I moved my car so he could pass on his way.

It was clear that I wasn't going to get anywhere, and that I certainly wasn't going to get an apology from him, so I resorted to leaving him with the habitual "If I see you walking down the street...." threat.

As I straightened myself up again, I realised that my yuppie friend had left his sunroof fully open, and wisps of his blond hair blowing in the breeze through the roof. At the end of his wispy blond hair was a head, and within it the brain of a foul mouthed coward. I could do no more than reach in with clenched right fist and make contact with skin and bone. It was probably the hardest I've ever tried to hit someone, and I believe it hurt......cos it certainly hurt my knuckles.....but oh how oh how I felt a divine retribution.

I've never owned or driven a BMW 3 Series....and I never will, because of the memory of the sort of scum that used to drive them. I've never got out of my car again to initiate a confrontation.....I was really scared at what I might do. I've also never stopped in Marsh Wall again to let someone across the traffic.....sorry about that.

Some weeks later, a police car arrived at our office in Docklands. I nearly crapped myself. My colleagues said my face was a picture.

I've been neglecting my blog......

2009-07-03T15:53:00.012+02:00

I managed a couple of updates since we left for our honeymoon at the end of May but since returning in June, there's been so much to do at work I've barely had time...and I promised to bitch less about politicians.....so now I've got very little to say :o)

24th June was Dia San Juan, a public holiday in Barcelona, and with everything shut for the day, and the fact I was nursing a hangover, I dabbled a bit with my home office environment. A while ago I wrote a blog which said I couldn't go to the office because I was on a productivity drive, and I needed 2 PCs to be productive. One of my old work colleagues commented that I didn't need two PCs, I could achieve the same with only a single PC if I connected a second monitor......which got me thinking.

Earlier in the year I bought a second monitor, with a 22" wide screen with a DVI high def output.....which means you get great graphics for games.....or in my case it means I can cram more open windows on a single screen. This worked OK, and the digital output is great....even if all the icons are a little bit smaller and I have to sit closer to the screen.

But this wasn't enough. This year has seen the ramp up of on-line conferencing. Nearly all the briefings and presentations I do with industry peers are now through web based conferencing. It's a great way of connecting, but I really don't have enough desktop for all my other applications as well as a web conference.....and that's where the 2nd monitor, my old analogue 19" unit comes in.

I have to say I was really quite proud of myself last week. Usually these "plug and play" sessions are always "plug and PRAY" for me, but yes, I actually managed to connect up both monitors to extend my desktop display. But what's more, is I managed to make the DVI output the primary display!! "So what", you're thinking.....well just try it! I did a bit of browsing before hand and the forums indicate that switching the DVI and AVI ports on a Lenovo docking station is a really difficult thing to do. In fact I'm surprised that I even started to have a go.....must have been the hang over!

Anyway after a couple of hours, I'd achieved it and now I have a nice large high definition display as my primary monitor, and a lower but acceptable quality output for web conference pages, tweet deck and RSS feeds. So this is what my home office looking like today. This is a picture I took while being briefed by a vendor on a new and exciting product launch!

So now you're probably wondering how I did it.....well I'm not going to tell you. It's rare that I have an opportunity to claim some elite knowledge when it comes to PCs.....so I'm going to wallow in my self-importance. OK so if you ask me in the commentary below...I'll tell you how I git it to work with the Lenovo Stinkpad, the unfortunate choice of company supplied hardware.

One thing is for sure though. If this is the office of the future, not only do I not have the right equipment in our company office, I don't have the space either!

Why Italians drive so badly......

2009-06-05T23:21:00.003+02:00

I think I’ve worked out why the Italians are such bad drivers. As everyone knows, driving always leads to arguments between couples. Usually it’s because either hubby can’t follow the wife’s directions, or the wife can’t read the map correctly. Either way it ends up in an argument, even the most amicable of relationships can head for the divorce courts after the shortest of trips. But in Italy, there’s an additional consideration. It could be that hubby can’t follow directions, or that the wife can’t read maps.....or it could also be that the maps are RUBBISH.

It seems to me there is a shortage of quality cartographers, especially in the north of Italy, and consequently, you’re bound to get lost, which in turn leads to frustration, and (I think) the bad driving that we’ve experienced in the last few days as tourists.

But it doesn’t stop there. Because the roadmaps are rubbish, so are the GPS solutions. We’ve been using my mobile phone to navigate between cities and hotels…. and it’s been a nightmare. Now I know it’s not the GPS provider because we’ve successfully navigated Spain, the UK and the USA using its map provider. But when it comes to Italy…the GPS map is also RUBBISH.

Even when we resort to road signs it’s no better. The other day, in the space of about 8Km we passed 3 signs for Verona all indicating 11Km to go.

Driving is stressful enough, but to have to entrust your navigation to maps, GPS or even road signs is enough to turn anyone to road rage!

The next time you get cut up by an Italian, rather than blasting the horn or applying the favourite of hand signal, have some sympathy, he (or she) has just spent the last half hour driving in the wrong direction, and is now even later than normal for their next meeting.

Observations of Venice

2009-05-30T20:54:00.006+02:00

We're here in Venice on our honeymoon. I have to say it's an amazing place - incredibly beautiful, outstanding architecture, ornate churches, great ice cream and amazing coffee.

But you also can't help noticing that it's also a bit of a building site. Perhaps because of years of neglect, or perhaps because it was built on marshland and is eventually going to be reclaimed by the sea, the work to restore it is never-ending. There is one thing that would help though....and that's a damp course! Every building we visit, our apartment included is suffering from the same problem of damp at low level. This would be a great destination for a conference of the British Wood Preserving and Damp Proofing Association. They'd be overjoyed to see the amount of work there is...especially during the current crisis.

Being the politically correct person I am, I've noticed that Venice is not very wheelchair friendly. I believe it's impossible for a wheelchair bound person to get across the city without negotiating a few bridges, a task that I would think is incredibly difficult on parallel 2 wheels. But then as we returned from dinner last night, there was hope on the horizon. Perhaps Thora Hird and the Stenna Stair Lift people had been to Venice already....as we came across the enclosed lift near to Rialto Bridge....though not on it, I might add.

Finally, Venice must be one of the most expensive places I've ever visited. OK so let's ignor the fact that coffee is 12€ in Plazza San Marco, and a Gin & Tonic is 20€ in Harry's Bar - these are typical tourists traps that you just have to visit to say you've been there, but generally I think prices are especially high to pay the taxes the shop owners have to pay to the council to subsidise the never-ending renovation work.

I do think there's another reason though. The shops don't have the turn over or volume of sold good, so the margin on their products has to be higher to cover their costs. Of course they could achieve a higher turn over if they opened a bit longer. A shop that opens at 10am, closes at 1pm for lunch, opens again at 3pm only to close at 5pm is going to struggle to make ends meet. I guess it's a bit too commercial for Venice, but tourism is more than a 5 hour shopping window.....or else it will be just window shopping!