Snow Hill

Morning. Just got up, very misty outside, possibly due to being on a hill, raining and very damp out there, forecast for heavy rain until 8pm, with wind increasing to gusts of up to 40mph, which are far less than the coastal gusts thank goodness. I hear that a tornado watch has been issued for south of England this morning, don’t recall that ever happening previously. Don’t think we will be going anywhere today.

Morning. 12C here, with sunny spells, relatively dry day ahead according to forecast, will see, this evening it’s meant to rain and it’s a wet day tomorrow, we appear to have no weather warnings and strongest gusts forecast to be 35 mph.

Everywhere in the EU, but not everywhere in Europe, not available in Switzerland for example. Watch your data doesn’t go over 5GB or you will be charged, one of my volunteer colleagues just got caught out by that, he didn’t see the warning text.

We never get trick or treaters, partly due to the steep steeps to the front door which seems to put them off along with the Jehovah’s Witnesses and some other cold callers.

That is indicated on the P&O website that the essentials packages excludes videos, which would stop YouTube and other similar sites. I also note that VPNs may not work, as maybe caught by the proxy avoidance blocking also listed on website. I use a VPN on my phone, laptop and tablet when connecting to a public network as its is the recommended for security reasons. In all the cruises I have done I have only once purchased an internet package, usually I will wait until near land or ashore before I go online. Most cruises we chose have very few sea days so not an issue, we don’t see the need for streaming either, if we want to watch a film we will have already downloaded it to the tablet.

I think is throttling of speed rather than blocking websites, although it is likely they would block adult and gambling sites.

Hopefully they are.

Always found Scotland very welcoming of tourists, we are thinking of going to Scotland in March or April next year, found hotel prices fairly reasonable. After numerous visits to the city during my working life, I have only ever managed to have 1 Tourist visit around 10 years ago. i can understand why the Scottish Government and others are clamping down on short lets, it makes it difficult for locals to find somewhere to live, which has happened in many parts of Britain where much of the property has bought up as holiday homes or rental properties and pricing local residents out of the market.

Edinburgh joining a expanding list of cities and countries clamping down on short term let’s and AirBnB’s https://www.euronews.com/travel/2023/06/11/italy-malaysia-usa-which-cities-and-countries-are-cracking-down-on-airbnb-style-rentals

My GP put me on a course run by local NHS dieticians a few years ago when he thought I might be likely to become diabetic. Following their guidance I managed to lose 8kg in just over 10 months, with some some changes to diet, smaller portions and cutting out heavy sugar based foods and drinks.

After yesterday’s busy and emotional day at my FiL funeral, today has been one of doing very little, given it was a showery day, we probably wouldn’t have ventured far anyway. Tomorrow looks a little better, so hopefully I can finish of the bulb planting, cutback some shrubs and generally tidy up the garden and put away the loose pots in case Storm Ciaran makes am appearance next week.

Bulgaria, Romania and Cyprus all expect to join VWP by 2025.

I bought some petrol today paying at ADSA auto pump, message on screen said that a £100 hold would be put on my bank account. I filled my tank, took the receipt and left, I checked my bank account an hour later no hold on my account. So if ASDA can get banks to release half funds within an hour why can’t P&O do the same once they have received payment. I suspect the issue is with P&O and their tardiness is tell the respective bank that the payment has been received.Perhaps P&O need to speak to,ASDA, Tesco or Sainsbury’s who all operate the same system on how they release funds back to customers quickly.

The hold on the account should be no more than 5 business days I understand, if P&O have had their money then the hold should be immediately released. I would suggest if they don’t do that you may have a claim against P&O for any bank charges levied.

I have flown from Birmingham Airport multiple times over the last 20 years and can count in the fingers of one hand the number of times I have had any problems. My son flew from Birmingham to Dublin 2 weeks ago on business, he said he was through security in around 10 minutes, however his flight was delayed from 3pm to 10:30 pm, he was not impressed with Ryanair.

Allegedly it should improve connectivity, however it will depend on what Is installed and where onboard.

This is Starlink Case Study for Carnival Corp, indicates it’s a supplement to the existing Geo Stationary Satellite system. https://api.starlink.com/public-files/Carnival.pdf

Are P&O seeking to phase out the current inclusion of meals in the MDR being included in the price paid for the cruise by introducing this “up sell” option to increase profits. Are they following airlines who once provided a meal included in the price of the air (yes the quality was questionable in economy), that dropped to a snack, then food and drink became a payable option. What next charging for items of baggage brought onboard, a charge for the theatre etc, removal of OBC. I am sure P&O accountants are looking new wheezes to extract more money out of cruisers in order to maximise profits. Are these upsell menu options the slippery slope for charging for all meals in the MDR in the long run?

It took me almost 4 and half hours to get to Prestatyn yesterday, a journey on a normal day that would take under 2, drove through a number of flooded roads most passable with care. Never have I seen so much water cascading down hillsides as I did yesterday, much debris being washed of fields onto roads thus adding to problems with drains that are overwhelmed with the sheer volume of water. Looking at community pages in my area, many people seeing flooding in areas not normally affected, plus I never knew given the various comments that we had so many drains and river dredging experts in the town! One such “expert” suggesting that the River Severn should be dredged its whole length by removing 12ft of the riverbed along its whole length to remove flooding completely for years ahead. Yes the keyboard warriors were out in force yesterday.

Spoke with my brother earlier, he lives in Prestatyn, said there is Yellow Warning for rain tomorrow, the weekend I am visiting him, typical! I was in Worcester this after, although cloudy & mainly dry, temperature was 19C, ridiculous for late October.

Wrong post & deliveries that’s nothing what about wrong address for scaffolding. We we having external insulation on the house 8 years ago, one day I got a call from the installers to say they would be starting on Thursday now the scaffolding has been erected, I said what scaffolding? Cue a panic at the other end of the line, 45 mins later owner of scaffolding company turns up and agrees we should have scaffolding because job is listed as complete on the system, the question was where had it been erected. Tried to contact scaffolders who by 6:30 in evening had gone home, eventually at 7:30 he returned to say they had tracked it down same house number, same street name, similar postcode, appears owner of that house had returned from work to find scaffolding around his property. Made an irate call to scaffolding company, owner of the firm had to apologise profusely in person and then get the scaffolding removed next morning and erected at correct address.

The point is the airlines are using them to seek advantage over each other from an SEO by cutting the headline price and giving the impression they are cheap fares, but when the hidden costs are unavoidable then this is being deemed as not in the internet of the consumer. Spanish government consumer protection is in the process of prosecuting a number of airlines for breach of Spanish Law. https://www.surinenglish.com/spain/spain-opens-case-against-lowcost-airline-hand-20230804122139-nt.html

The EU and USA are looking to act on such charges as seat allocation and hand luggage charges, which are often billed as optional, as both believe airlines are using them to advertise the lowest fares online.

Personally I would have told them to stuff it and gone elsewhere, this response of “computer says no” needs to resolved. It’s stressful enough having a 6 month old baby to care for without having to sort all these issues out on board as well. If P&O wish to attract a younger clientele then they need to address these issue PDQ.

If you like crime and historical novels, then have you read C J Sansom’s Shardlake books set in the Tudor period, there are 7 in the series to date. https://pages.panmacmillan.com/c-j-sansom/