Travel

Travel Companies, Airlines, etc.

Royal Wedding Public Holiday

| Richard

I took the opportunity of an extra public holiday this year to make the most of it and headed out to Epsom to see GT, arriving just in time to see the ceremony itself on the BBC.

The British do this sort of thing so well and the happy couple looked just that: happy.

Then out to do some shopping: a new LBD for GT to go with her Jimmy Choos as it’s the start of formal dinner season again for me; the first one is coming up in less than two weeks’ time. I actually enjoy going out shopping for clothes with my partner: my chance to play Gok Wan and choose dresses, bags and shoes for occasions. GT is a tall, leggy athlete with a great figure so choosing the dress was relatively easy and we soon ended up with a great ensemble: an asymmetrical, above the knee black dress and a black clutch bag with silver clasp and chain that will go very well with those Jimmy Choos, some silver drop earrings and her long, black hair curled over to one side. For good measure, we also bought a stylish black raincoat that we’d been trying to sort for a while. And yes, the coat and heels go very well without anything else on 😉

Travelling back this morning, I decided to take the Victoria train instead of the Waterloo train as I wasn’t in a hurry to head back and felt like a change of scenery for my route home. London has plenty of that and my new route on such a beautifully sunny day reminded me why I love living in London. London is a great place to live and work and my frequent visits to see my partner of four months are enjoyable and hassle-free, especially when compared to the weekly 7 hour round-trip drudgery (let alone the hideous expense) I used to have to endure to see the cheating, lying, slut ex-girlfriend I had the misfortune to have up in Grimsby, itself a horrid and depressing place to have to visit, let alone live.

The Royal Wedding and my thoughts about those wasted years reminded me that the ex-girlfriend had always been really keen to get married and was always banging on about it: the identity of the unfortunate groom is less important to her than actually being married which is her true priority – anyone will do! Must be the cakes and flowers she’s so keen on 🙂

Right! The call of a nice pub lunch on the Thames calls! I love my life!

UK Border Agency

| Richard

Entering the UK via Humberside Airport (or how to piss off 200+ UK citizens) with the capable assistance of the UK Border Agency.

I recently travelled through Humberside Airport on holiday. This is not a busy airport: they say they are:

“…a key national and international gateway to Northern and Eastern England, connecting over half a million passengers to 30 destinations every year.”

On the day I returned to the UK, they were handling roughly one incoming flight per hour. Which was just as well, as it took the UK Border Agency over an hour to actually allow me back into the country along with all the other pissed-off passengers on the charter flight.

The UKBA say:

“With tougher checks now in place at the border you may have to wait a little longer to get into the United Kingdom, especially at peak times. We use scanners to ensure that passports, visas and other official documents are genuine. Our officers are trained to detect forgeries and check that people have the right to enter the United Kingdom.

“An officer will check your passport and give you permission to stay, if you need it. We aim to see you within 45 minutes.

“If you are a national of the EU or EEA, you can use the separate EEA/EU channel, where we will usually check your passport or national identity card more quickly.”

ORLY?

Well at Humberside there’s one channel for non-EU travellers and there’s the main bit. The two numpties on duty when I came through looked as though they were on day release from an old folks’ home and clearly relished the opportunity to have a chat with each and every passenger. Presumably these two are what the UKBA refer to as “scanners” because they didn’t actually use any equipment other than their reading glasses and mouths… So after an hour’s queuing, I finally got through their vigorous entry procedures. Just as well it’s not like this at the UK airports I usually travel through on business…

If You’ve Done Nothing Wrong…

| Richard

One of the most trite sayings that sheeple come out with from time to time when human rights issues come up is “if you’ve done nothing wrong, then you’ve nothing to fear”.

I always counter that with “define ‘wrong’ now and in the future”. What may be acceptable now might not be acceptable in the future.

Taking speeding and speed limits. Now I regularly speed but I believe I am a safer driver when ‘pressing on’ given that my attention is fully on the road ahead, traffic, etc. The other trite line trotted out by the Government is that “speed kills”. If that truly was the case, there would be no Traffic Division police officers alive, would there? It’s the inappropriate use of speed that’s the issue, but that’s more difficult to police without human intervention.

The Nanny State has announced that it intends to reduce speed limits where there is a higher risk of accidents but that’s bollocks as usual: speed limits will simply be reduced for no good reason as a revenue generator.

A case in point: the section of road between Wymondham and Thickthorn Services on the old A11 in Norfolk (now the B1172) used to have a 40mph limit in Wymondham, then a national limit, then a 50mph limit through Hethersett before becoming a national limit again.

Over time, the 50mph limit has been extended towards Wymondham despite there being no additional housing or changes in use, etc.

I noticed recently that the limits have now been changed to a 40mph limit in Wymondham, then a 50mph limit then a 40mph limit through Hethersett. Why’s this?

Similarly other rural roads in Norfolk have had 50mph limits imposed despite no changes of use or apparent increases in crashes.

Ridiculous!

Le Sigh

| Richard

Not a good day today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Norfolk Traffic Police

| Richard

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

What am I talking about?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Budget Car Scrapping Scheme Rip-Off

| Richard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damn You Google!

| Richard

{shakes fist}

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

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

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

Bugger!

Kota Kinabalu

| Richard

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

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

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

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

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

Simply outstanding! I will be back…