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According to The Man in Seat 61, three days from London, and it looks to be a great journey.

Better off for the passengers, but not better off for the profit line of the shop operators. How much do you think that £350 non-leather handbag cost them wholesale?

The first time I went to Marrakesh (I have been many times since) the riad I had booked in the centre of town offered to arrange a taxi for me. 'Great' I thought, and the booking details arrived explaining that the taxi driver would be at the airport to collect us and take us to the central square where a 'chariot' would be waiting for us. A 'chariot'???? Anyway I went along with it, and we arrived at the central square where a man was waiting with a home made wheelbarrow made out of planks of wood and pram wheels - Ah the 'chariot'. However what followed next was hilarious as he put our suitcases in the 'chariot' and then set off at a run across the square and then down through the maze of alleys to the riad, with the narrow streets full of goods spilling out of shops, motorbikes and donkeys in the road, and all the while we were running to catch up and trying to remember the route - altogether rather like something out of Indiana Jones film...

And would you have bought those items if you had not had the 'free' money... The shop doesn't have a £10k watch to sell, it has a £10k watch as a 'Veblen good' to convince people to buy lower priced but still expensive items that do sell - and given the mark-up on watches they can afford to have people stood around doing nothing a lot of the time.

Don't you? A captive market on sea days looking for something to do and spending their 'free' onboard credit on overpriced stuff - overpriced because on the couple of times I have bought items from the shops (other than alcohol) I have had to involve either the retail manager or on one occasion the P&O manager to actually honour their price guarantee because what they were selling was more expensive than back in the UK. And the occasion with the P&O manager it took three days of back and forth between P&O and the concession operators in the UK before they finally agreed to match the price - and the P&O manager was so embarrassed they offered a free meal in Epicurian to make up for my wasted time. That's why most of the stuff they sell has no easy to compare UK retail price, such as the 'tat' they sell in the electrical shop, or jewellery and watches, or even most of the clothing.

If someone has managed to that, then your device is already compromised anyway and a VPN isn't going to solve that problem.

IIRC behind the kettle.

Meanwhile I am glad that the newer P&O ships have an 'always on' plug in the cabins, that doesn't require a card in the slot for the socket to be live.

And of course everyone is going to take notice of that, and not charge their phone, iPad, Kindle, watch, camera, etc. all containing lithium batteries when they are not in the cabin or overnight.

It is recommended by the VPN companies selling their services, but now with HTTPS such services are pretty pointless for security (other than to obfuscate your IP address which is pretty irrelevant unless you are doing something you shouldn't be). Now if you were using a split VPN back to a PiHole whilst using your phone, laptop and tablet on mobile phone or public WiFi networks, then I would agree there was some reason to do so.

And I suspect there are not significant differences between the American banking processes and the UK ones. Visa (and the other companies) are global businesses, and the issues created by 'abusing' pre-authorisations and then ignoring those pre-authorisations for the final charge will be similar to any of their cardholders, whether they are in New York, York, or Cape York. Or perhaps a responsibly to actually fix the problem.

And just to add, any travel router can only share what bandwidth is available. If the WiFi the router is connected to is the equivalent of 'two tin cans and bit of string' then the connection it will be sharing will be each device getting 1/2, or 1/3, or 1/4 of 'two tin cans and bit of string', I have no idea what the bandwidth is of the WiFi connection onboard, as I rely on roaming on land (or when close enough to the coast onboard).

Its actually a GL.iNet 300N and I have used one for several years (the GL-AR300M), as well as the more powerful GL-AR750S (the tiny 300M is when I travel with hand luggage and the larger 750S when not). They will do exactly what you want, but make sure you know how to use it, and set it up in preparation *before* you want to use it in anger because although it is straightforward to use, it isn't simple if you are not used to 'spoofing' MAC addresses. The 300N is only 2.4GHz WiFi, but that is fine for sharing amongst devices (the more expensive versions also use 5GHz but that is unnecessary for this purpose). These 300s are also perfectly happy to run off a small rechargeable power-pack for hours and hours, so you don't have to be tethered to a plug socket. The main difference between the cheap 300N and the more expensive versions is if you use them with the built in VPN client (handy if you want to overcome geo-blocking with a Fire Stick), when it isn't quick with the OpenVPN protocol, but that can be overcome by using the WireGuard protocol which it also supports - they work really nicely with PiVPN run on a cheap Raspberry Pi plugged in to your router at home.

With a debit card it is the bank, not the retailer who is holding the pre-authorised money to ensure there is money there when the retailer comes asking for it. Similarly with a credit card it is the card company who has deducted that amount from your authorised credit limit so the the pre-authorised money is money there when the retailer comes asking for it and it doesn't take you over the limit. The issue that seems to be occurring with P&O is that it isn't following the rules and updating the prior day's authorisation with that day's spend, and then cancelling out that single authorisation with a settled bill at the end. What it seems to be doing is if you were spending say £50 a day it is doing 'Day 1 authorisation £50', 'Day 2 authorisation £50', 'Day 3 authorisation £50', etc. so by the end of ten days has £500 authorised. BUT... then it takes the £500 as a separate transaction and just lets the ten £50 authorisations fall away when they reach their expiry date. So P&O haven't benefitted from the £500 that was on hold after they took their £500, but the problem is that the customer doesn't have access to that £500 in their bank if they used a debit card or to spend on their credit card. Now since most people use credit cards for onboard spend and most people have credit limits that this process wouldn't trouble them, so my guess would be that P&O have taken a cheap and easy shortcut 'that will do' implementation that doesn't impact 99.9% of customers, and for the 0.1% it does then P&O can ignore them or tell them it is the bank's issue not theirs.

If that document is applicable to the debit card transactions on P&O, then P&O would seem to have messed up badly with their implementation of their system. The document is clear that - "Multiple standalone authorizations should not be processed for one payment transaction" - which is exactly what P&O seem to be doing, instead of using incremental authorisations which they should be - "Incremental authorizations can be used to increase the total amount authorized if the amount of the estimate/initial authorization is insufcient. An incremental authorization request may also be based on a revised estimate of what the cardholder may spend. Incremental authorizations do not replace the original authorization — they are additional to previously authorized amounts — the sum of all linked estimated and incremental authorizations represent the total amount authorized for a given transaction." And as the document note - "If incremental authorizations are not properly coded, issuers may not be able to link associated authorizations, which may lead to cardholder frustration. Additionally, cardholder funds may be held in error."

Looks interesting, and I will definitely check it out as I am out in a month's time for a couple of weeks on Azura whilst she does her circular tours of the Canary Isles, but then will be back again in January staying a few hundred yards from the cruise terminal for a couple of months for the rest of the winter.

Absolutely - I have been in far too many meetings when similar plans have been discussed, that if you want someone to do something different then make the standard experience as horrible as possible.

Because it is an important revenue stream to them they have to ensure two things, that those paying get to go through quickly, but more importantly that those not paying have a terrible experience so they pay next time and that those paying can *see* that others who didn't pay are having a terrible experience. If the normal queues were sufficiently staffed then nobody would pay. Similar to the rest of what goes on in the airport - put too little seating in to persuade people to pay for lounge access, make the bus trip from the long stay car park unpleasant and people will book the more expensive meet and greet, hide away any water fountains so people will buy bottled water, etc. etc.

I completely agree as the last time I used the Epicurean the service was just painfully slow. Sure you don't want to be rushed, but this went way beyond a pleasant space between courses. Whereas the service in Sindhu was far better, but the trouble is the food recently has been 'dumbed down' and is nowhere near as interesting as it used to be. It really wouldn't surprise me if some activities became chargeable, such as the theatre, the gym, the cinema, show bars, sea-day talks, etc. or more cynically offer them 'free' if you are a Select passenger and a fee payable if you are a Saver passenger - rather like the port shuttles.

A lot of things used to happen in the past that most people wouldn't want to happen now - and depriving people of their independence is one of them. Yes, because other than a review of the fire fighting which was already being undertaken, the other suggestions were poorly thought out ideas that would achieve nothing.

To be honest I can perfectly see why P&O are taking this approach, because the fact that the 'pay' restaurants on board (Epicurian, Sindhu, Beach House, etc.) are frequently fully booked is a good indication that people *are* prepared to pay. Now whether people are prepared to pay extra for better quality food in the MDR, as opposed to better food AND a better experience in the Epicurian, Sindhu, Beach House, etc. is a question the trial will answer.

You really want those in a wheelchair to be denied the possibility to travel because of such an infinitesimally tiny probability of occurrence, and a risk that P&O have satisfied themselves that they have addressed. However if the risk concerns you so much then perhaps it is you that should stay at home and not travel.

I do hope that wasn't a serious answer.

You missed the /s What is your solution? Ban all powered wheelchairs? Because it is either that or nothing. Some people just recognise that a 'something must be done, and doing that is something' attitude isn't always the best.

Because unfortunately many landlords are... well I will stop there. So the check would just be that the device has a CE mark (or whatever the abandoned British version is) - I would put money on the battery and charger that you saw going up in smoke having such a mark, so that check would be pointless. There is plenty of security theatre that takes place already, and more isn't needed.