Safe and Secure

I have no time to develop this and I don’t have the expertise to manufacture or source luggage of any sort.  I must admit that I’ve acquired a lot in my life (baggage too!) and nothing is suitable.

Consider Ryanair’s rules for carry-on baggage :-

1. Cases must be smaller than 55 cm. x 40 cm. x 20 cm.
2. The weight limit is 10 kilo.
3. You are only allowed one bag.  And that includes handbags and duty-free.

The interesting point is that if you are taking a laptop, as I am on my trip next week, then it is unlikely that you will fill the case, as you’ll get to the 10 kilo limit first.  So in fact, it is not the size of the case that is the problem, but the allowed weight.  On this point note that EasyJet has the same size limit, but none for weight.

So why is it a business opportunity?  There would appear to be no case that fits this specification, with the additional one of the case being as light as possible and that means no wheels and as few straps and heavy bits as possible.  My son has a slightly smaller Paul Smith backpack case, which weights in at just over a kilo.  In other words, you could have a payload of nearly nine kilos.

If I take into account that this laptop weighs 2.7 kilo, with 0.5 kilo for the power supply and 0.2 kilo for the real mouse, I need to lose all of the weight I can get.  Surely, I should get an extra weight limit for being lighter than the average traveller.

So all you designers out there.  Design a lightweight case, that is as big as possible, that has a stiff back to give some protection to a laptop and can be easily carried, either as a backpack or over the shoulder.  Don’t bother with wheels.

So get designing!

I was actually browsing The Times website as I do most mornings, when I came across this article entitled Twenty Reasons Not To Fly Ryanair.

I fly Ryanair as an airline of last resort and I’m doing that next week, as I’m going to see an investment opportunity and then take a train for a much-needed holiday.  I’ll have to be at Stansted at some ungodly hour, but that isn’t a problem for me, as my friendly neighboughhood chauffeur has already been booked.  The flight incidentally was actually listed on the web site at £3.99 and I paid £48.26.

Put your own words about that here!

We have the Euro elections next week.  I want a no-hidden-extras law.

I’m actually travelling hand-baggage only, so how will I manage being away for nearly two weeks?

It’s easy, I’m just taking three bikinis, one pair of trousers, two cotton skirts, half a dozen t-shirts, assorted bras and as small a number of personal things as I can manage.  But my man is flying down to where we’re starting our holiday a few days later with baggage in the hold on a much more accommodating airline.

I was playing around with my case last night and could actually do the two weeks on EasyJet, as they have a much higher cabin baggage limit.

I think that in times like these, Ryanair had better watch out, as I don’t believe they can carry on as they do, without losing customers prepared to pay a few pounds more for convenience, service and a lot less hassle. Or actually do their sums and find out that their £3.99 is more expensive than someone  else’s £49.99.

Ryanair is an airline we all love to hate.

I travel on them occasionally, just as I do on several other airlines.  But I’m starting to get fed up with some of the rules that they keep thinking up.  Why should I pay a sum for a ticket and then we landed with a host of other charges for credit cards, security, taxes etc? I’m not against a fat tax though!  Especially, if it’s done in the way that SouthWest do it. 

When I heard the latest charge for using on-line check-in I thought it was a joke.  If they do away with check-in desks at the airport, then why should I pay to do it on-line.  I suppose that this is so they can find a way to keep the headline fare down.

Just say I went into John Lewis and bought a television.  Yes, madam that will be £200 for the television, £30 for tax, £40 for service, £3 for gas and electricity etc.  You’d go elsewhere wouldn’t you!

But if you want to fly from Stansted to Carcassone, you can only fly Ryanair.

Now when I fly on business, I have to go where the client or opportunity is.  But as I’m probably going to spent three or four hundred at least on accommodation and entertainment at the other end, I’m not really bothered about saving £50 on my flight.  Especially, as if I was going to some cities by Ryanair, I’d spend the difference getting into the city by public transport!

So I balance everything and I’m afraid for Mr.O’Leary that Ryanair are fast becoming an airline of last resort for by business travel.

Now, when I go for pleasure, I’m not too bothered about time, I don’t mind ferreting around some quaint public transport systems and as I’m more flexible, the choice of airline is much less important.

But increasingly, I avoid Ryanair.  Their food and coffee is overpriced, they irritate you all the time trying to sell you things you don’t want like duty-free and scratch-cards, the weight limit of 10 Kg on hand-baggage is very tight.  Remember too, that I have the choice of five airports in London, so I can investigate all options.

So whereas five years or so ago, I would travel on Ryanair several times a year, now I’m down to perhaps one round trip a year. 

There are just a lot more non-irritating alternatives.

And the trains are so much better and more interesting.

It’s not just me, who is thinking this way.  See what Simon Calder said in Friday’s Independent.

I don’t think that this is anything sinister, but as I write we have the Finance Ministers meeting somewhere in luxury in West Sussex.  I bet that they didn’t stint themselves and had a decent wine with their meals rather than some water or soft drink.

They’ve already put out a release about stopping tax havens, but this is an irrelevance, as it’s the US and UK governments that got us into this mess, by not watching what the banks were up to.  Still what do you expect with the idiots we have/had in charge! They’ll need to control the tax havens to make sure they get enough money in, so they can pay their debts.

I can’t say what I’ve been doing, but a new order is emerging.  Governments and big business will not like it!

I deal with a lot of hi-tech companies and what is happening there?

Order books are bulging as they produce new products that will make life better for many and save a lot of jobs in large corporations.  And governments, if they would put efficiency before mediocrity.  Take a company like Ryanair, who use sophisticated web sites and databases to manage what they do.  Similar technology could be used to manage a lot of the British government’s systems, but they always fail.

The reason they fail could be, that as the Civil Servant’s first duty is to protect the jobs of other government employees, it is in their interest to make sure that nothing ever happens.  One thing to do is to divide the number of unemployed by the number of people who actually work in the government’s job centres.  It is not a number that anybody should be proud of.

So what is actually happening?

A large number of organisations, such as banks and government departments, are becoming those that you don’t do business with.  Banks say no to anything reasonable and governments just want to control and load business with more and more regulations and rules.

So they are being bypassed.

People are lending to each other, credit unions are sprouting like mushrooms, new technology is pushing forward and others are having some of the best ideas of their lives.

Those that can’t change and use their brains will suffer.  Unfortunately many are Civil Servants with index-linked bomb-proof pensions.  So even if they are useless, they will still be OK. 

We live in interesting times.

British Airways has been fined an awful lot of money for colluding with others on fuel surcharges. 

That’s correct. 

In fact, I’d go further and argue that if you agree and pay a particular price for a service, then no-one should be able to charge you extra.  Do I go to Waitrose and after the bill has been added, do they add an extra few pounds because they feel like it?  Of course they don’t.

But perhaps more importantly, Ryanair and Easyjet to name two, don’t charge anything for the increase in fuel prices.  They must have a better business model. Or better accountants.

But I also wonder about some other airlines in Europe, who are basically bust and just supported by their governments.  I’ll name no names, but anybody who reads a decent newspaper knows the culprits. Interestingly, some of them use old, fuel-inefficient airliners, unlike Ryanair and Easyjet, who have some of the most modern airliners in Europe.

Let’s have a fair playing field. 

And with tax on aviation fuel, so that the airlines compete on a fair basis with the railways.

Don’t think I’m an anorak by any means, for the the train home from Gatwick yesterday, I bought a copy of Modern Railways magazine.  I read it occasionally, as it gives a good insight into the way that the railways are going in the UK. Commercially that is. 

And it is my brief to find interesting investments.

For instance, I doubt I’d ever invest in one of the train operating companies, as they are so highly regulated and all you’d get is a risky low rate of interest. But it’s the little technological nuggets and how we’ll be using trains in the future that are important.

One of the most interesting articles was on what our trains would be like in 2045 and another gave all of the figures on global warming.

I suspect that by 2020 and not 2045, we’ll all be travelling differently.  They’ll be some sort of road pricing, even if it just expensive fuel and many of us will work perhaps three or four days a week from our homes. I could live without a car, but my daughter and her family couldn’t, as in common with many today, children have to be taken to school, swimming, sports and other activities.

Will we still all be able to be do that in 2020?

The rich like me will, but the average family will not have the resources to obtain the energy they need. So they will have to use public transport or walk.

Our homes, towns and cities are going to need a lot of redesign. And as Ian Walmsley said in the article, the trains will have to get more efficient, longer and better designed.  We also need a lot more electrification.  So perhaps that might be an area to investigate for new and better methods of installation.

On global warming, they have a lot of figures which show that we should use the train more to cut our carbon dioxide emissions. Over the last ten years or so, trains have cut their emissions per passenger kilometre by over twenty percent and car by eight percent.  Despite what Ryanair say, domestic air has increased their figure by five percent.

A lot of other figures show why we should get more and better trains to help protect the planet.

If you are still stuck to your 4×4, read the article in Modern Railways. But then it’ll probably make little difference.

We must hike the price of all energy to force change.

Ryanair’s database probably contains almost as many names as the database for the Inland Revenue.  They virtually have no call centre and everybody deals very happily with them over the Internet. (I could also add lots of other companies like EasyJet, the banks and Lloyds Bank Registrars.)

Do we ever hear of any problems with Ryanair’s computer system?

Now why can’t the Inland Revenue, VAT and Tax Credits be run on a similar sort of system, that is as reliable and efficient?  Obviously, for those that didn’t have computers, local offices or say the CABs could be used for people to enter the data.

Is it because that to get it to run efficiently, you actually need to reduce the staff to a minimum, so that the computer can take most of the decisions?

And no-one has the stomach for such a fight.

I would.  But then I’m a hard bitch, who knows the pain that being a single parent on not-enough money can bring.