50 Year Old Cars are more reliable.

by Stuart 16. January 2010 10:10

1954 Land Rover defenders have nearly 50% better pass rate than 2004 Renault Megane’s.

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Top Beer

Cars - welcome to London

by Stuart 17. October 2009 12:18

This week we went to Softworld to exhibit Fusion Accounts.  Hired a car to get there as had a lot of stuff and also it’s much cheaper – which seems strange to me.  Realised on the way to Olympia that I might need to pay some congestion charge.  Stopped at the garage.  Who trains garage attendants to be so grumpy?

£24 later I had enough charge for 3 days.

Seems strange to me.  Surely charging people means to drive in London just means better off people can drive around whilst less well of can’t.  So a nurse doing shift work or a cleaner at an office in the city or a teacher can’t drive to work whist a city banker or a doctor can.  Wouldn’t it be better to just make the public transport cheaper and quicker?  Is the money from the charges ring fenced for transport?

I also heard on the radio that congestion charging was a “green” success.

Check this out from Wikipedia -

image

Car and truck emissions only make up about 14% of “greenhouse” emissions.  So even if you half them then you only knock 7% off the total.  Home heating makes up a massive 10.3% – most of this from cold rich countries like Northern Europe!  So why don’t we see a massive push for renewable home heating?  Probably because telling everyone to change their boilers is not going to get many votes whilst taxing 4X4’s is a much easier target. 

Oh yes – electric cars need electricity from power stations -  the big red bit in the cheese.

Then there’s the 21.3% or so used in producing electricity.  We could eliminate this by switching to nuclear power.  Again – a tough political decision yet France now produces 87.5% of its electricity this way (Wikipedia).

Ok – enough about the planet – we were booked into the Premier Inn Kensington.  Took us about an hour to drive the 2 miles from Olympia as we kept getting lost despite Google earth on 2 mobiles and GPRS.  Strangest check in process I’ve ever experienced.  I had no idea of the reservation number as our resellers had booked the hotel and so could not use the fast check in machines –so I queued for reception – about 10 minutes.

Girl found our reservation quickly enough but I was confused when she took us back to the machines where I had to key in the reservation number and name of guest for each of us followed by a series of questions about breakfast and then put in my card and pin one at a time while she stood next to me.  Why she couldn’t just check us in I don’t know.

Then, after I’d checked in my other two colleagues and started on myself she said “I don’t think we’ve a room for you”!

And she was right.

Anyway, some time later she came back and told me to try again and it worked.  Then I had to go to the desk while she manually transferred me from a family room to a standard room and overrode the computer when it told her someone was already staying there.  No idea what all that was about but it looked like the computer did not know who had left that day – chaos.

I managed to contain my anger as the girl was actually trying hard and I could tell it was not her fault but some stupid computer system.

Had a similar story on check out.  One of my colleagues complained 2 nights in a row that her TV did not work and was told she would get a refund for one nights stay as they had not fixed it.  Took about 30 minutes to refund.

Other than that I have to say the hotel was great – the breakfast was particularly good.

Parking was a problem as it was residents only except a few meters outside the hotel.  Put my hire car in a meter overnight and then put £1 in meter at 8:30 to last ‘till 9.

Went out to the car at 9:10 and picked up a parking ticket for £120 - £60 if paid early.

Parking at Olympia (since I  couldn’t park on street) £30/day.

On the way back at 5pm on Wednesday I missed a right turn and spent 30 minutes doing 200m back onto the A4.  Longer than it ever takes to cross Belfast in rush hour on any day.

So – London – not too welcoming for the motorist – glad I don’t have to drive there every day.

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Top Beer to take part in wacky rally.

by Stuart 9. October 2009 17:55

After a bit of a confusion over holiday dates - the top beer team have booked themselves on a real motoring event the wacky rally

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