Result!

I've been having a poorly time with my car. It's getting on a bit at 5 years and it's nearing the big 100K.

So last week I had to have the Cylinder Head Gasket done, at a small local garage where it cost a mere £360, which in the scheme of things was pretty good. It was, therefore, with a little trepidation that I handed it over for the MOT yesterday.

£60 which includes the test fee - the only thing wrong was the headlights were shorting (something I had noticed but not fixed). Excellent. Asked the guy some other questions and he was succint, it is a good car, should be fine.

Cool.

So, it also being that time of year, the insurance renewal dropped through the door. It looked a little high so I checked online a bit and got a quote which was around £40 less than my broker had offered. A quick call to the broker and my current insurance company dropped to match the new bid and allow me to keep continuity of insurance, which I am told can help.

All in all, a result.

M is having an initial interview this afternoon and has been put forward for several jobs too.

Deafening Silence

As many people know I keep an eye on the Libertarian Blogsphere, well, everybody needs a hobby.

In particular the deafening silences that ensue when one of their pet projects has a problem.

The Libertarian side of blogging has, in the past, been insanely nice about Ryan Air. I'm not sure if people have used Ryan Air, they are a low cost airline - they are also the only airline which has come close to killing me, so I might have a rather coloured view of them. They are cheap, not cheerful and will gladly screw over their passengers, shareholders and anybody else who get's in Michael O'Leary's way.

A topic of last year was how unfair it was of the European Commission to force airlines to actually commit to getting people to and from their destinations and to do something about it when they screw up. In the case of Ryan Air this can be fairly serious as, in the words of an airline analyst at ABN Amro, "they fly from Nowhere to Nowhere..."

This week has been a bad week for Ryan Air - they've posted a loss, their business case is in a shambles as its been decided that these arch bastions of entrepeneur ship have a hole the size of an oil tanker in their business plan if the airports they fly to don't pay them extra to fly there. They also have virtually nothing, in real terms, to separate them from competitors, nor from the full service airlines who, if you are willing to sign up to the terms will also fly you extra-cheap.

Ryan Air have been doing some stupid things from an airline perspective - they've bought a new fleet of large 737-800's and stuck them on routes which will simply never need the capacity. They've relied on subsidies and, in my mind the worse, they've misled their customers about just what they are doing.

Easyjet are a lot better about this stuff but have a 20% higher cost base and have to factor that into a comparable service.

Mr O'Leary famously said last year, "I will never pay a penny in dividends while I am Chairman."

From what the sunday papers said, that doesn't look like being too long.

Spam

I've had to do it for my Atomicrazor account - I was getting to 100+ mails a day, so I've put in some filter software.

I may have missed emails to that account at some point in the last few weeks.

The Wacky World of Dave

I'm about to start travelling again. So, depending on where you live, I might be passing through.

Next week: 10-15 Feb I'm in hopefully sunny Seattle (yeah, right)

Week: 20-25 Feb Cannes, where it will hopefully be Sunny for the wild and wacky world which is 3GSM World Congress

March: 3-10 back to Seattle

March: 20-27 San Francisco

April/June: Korea and Taiwan

I'm tired already...