Archive for the 'Guernsey' category



15
Nov

Guernsey considers ban on replica guns

A proposal is currently being considered within the States of Guernsey to ban all replica guns including the air-powered "Airsoft" ones used in the BB-war style sporting events.

I can understand the thinking behind such a decision when replica guns are causing a significant problem such as might currently be in England where the proposals seemed to originate from however a total ban seems absurd.

Here in Guernsey however we don't have a problem with guns, replica or otherwise. I can't recall ever having read such an issue although I'm sure there probably has been the odd one at some distant point in the past.

A Guernsey company called BattleTec organises weekly matches for regular players as well as events for birthdays, corporates, friendlies etc.

The small lightweight plastic pellets don't really hurt especially compared paint balls which are much heavier, faster and will leave you covered in bruises. I currently have a few to show from the weekend.

If this ban goes through no doubt my sisters boyfriend's business will be forced to close and who knows what will happen to their mortgage.

Here is an activity that isn't a problem being threatened because of what-if scenarios that also currently aren't a problem.

I wonder who exactly our politicians are serving when they raise proposals nobody asked for.

Thankfully it seems Battletech and their members got themselves organised quickly and around 80 of them were there to address the States politicians tonight and provide each of them with an information pack on the sport as well as fielding any questions they may have.

The fact that these proposals could become law within 14 days without public consultation worries me greatly.

How many other activities, freedoms and interests can they ban?

Update

The local BattleTec group met with a number of politicians and showed them the guys they use and explained what they do. The politicians seemed satisfied and have let the proposal drop :)

[)amien

05
Nov

A penny for your Guy thoughts

So, it's that time of year again.

The 5th of November. Bonfire night. Guy Fawkes.

And so, with the apt smell of damp gunpowder in the air, we headed down to my friends James' parents house and met up with the usual suspects, their partners and additional family members for a good show.

Earlier this week V for Vendetta had put me very much in the mood for the holiday. It is an unusual take on the whole Gunpowder Plot and how it inspires the citizens of a police-state London run by a dictator to stand up and take their country back. Whilst I don't agree with violence to achieve political change it was a not too subtle reminder about keeping our governments in control and making sure they remember who serves who.

I digress.

The fireworks were self-organised being the explosive equivalent of bring a bottle and so I handed over my obligatory couple of packets of fist sized rockets I'd managed to purchase just as Oatlands ran out. I think the guy behind me got the last two packets - and that's only because I decided not to take four and deprive him of any.

The display went mostly without a hitch although the lack of wind dropped the odd spent rocket fuselage back down to the ignition team and one firework return to the ground before exploding. Luckily nobody was injured - most had the sense to run away and the team was spared for next year. Notably absent from this years lineup of firestarters was Jamie who is away practicing being smug at university in England.

We ate hot-dogs and the Guernsey speciality, beanjar, consuming them and drinks in the marquee (except the designated driving few - alas myself included).

We chilled out and so wombled over to the bonfire and warmed back up all the while chatting and enjoying the dancing lights in the sky. As a plane came in low heading towards the airport I made a mental note never to fly on November 5th.

Alas things took an ugly turn as the police arrived.

James' uncle's new Land Rover was parked out by the seafront and had been intentionally vandalised. Specifically the front two tyres had been let down and the bonet (hood) had been badly scratched up - perhaps with something sharp like a screwdriver.

About 20 minutes later we were informed by an officer that a neighbour had been arrested and was being taken to the station - presumably on criminal damage charges.

And thus ends the story I can't find words to wrap up with.

[)amien

04
Oct

What friends get up to

Some of my friends get up to such interesting things. Matt's view of the Tien Shan Mountains

Matt has been making his way across Europe and through the Middle East into the Far East across land. Alas, the journals he writes aren't up online at the moment - I hope he'll consider putting them up at a later stage because they make for some interesting reading. In the meantime check out his wonderful photo blog.

Matt's brother Jo is currently out in Japan teaching English at a school and brushing up on his Japanese. He also plays in a band out there and they've put some of their material up on Google Video.

Steve 'Sinbad' Streeting has taken the plunge and decided to give up his day job and concentrate on his Ogre3D based consultancy business. Ogre is a 3D engine that sits on top of Direct3D and OpenGL and exposes them in a platform-independent way as full first-class object oriented citizens whilst also adding useful tools, classes and utilities into the mix. He also wrote the foreword to the Ogre3D book that has just been published.

GrinGod and myself have snapping pics of abandoned buildings from the island of Guernsey and put them up onto Flickr! to provide an alternative look at our picturesque island.

Whilst not a friend Adam Buxton from the Adam & Jo Show fame has a blog up too with plenty of clips from the show as well as some new material and some amusing rants.

[)amien

28
Sep

An open letter to FlyBE on usability

Last night I booked some flights with your web site and must say I'm rather disappointed with the experience. We needed to book two return flights with one going out on a different day but both returning on the same flight, and ideally next to each other.

It is a little disappointing that to book two different flights that you have to book each one separately despite obviously being possible on the phone or with non-airline sites such as Amazon. To avoid booking one and finding the other not available and being left with useless tickets we decided to book each using a different computer so that we could try and make sure it went through at the same time.

Our first issue was that once you have chosen your flights there is no indication of the dates again until the payment has been processed. Other sites seem to have no problem displaying a "current itinerary" down the side at every stage yet with yours this place is instead full of such great things as "You saved £10 booking online!" in giant text and other less important details than a reminder/confirmation of what I have chosen thus far.

The next page, that of your details, then completely omits GUERNSEY as a country forcing us to choose UNITED KINGDOM. For a business that used to be called Jersey European it seems you have forgotten that the Channel Islands are not and have never been part of the UK. Would it be that hard to get it right? After all you've even got VATICAN CITY listed although I doubt you get many bookings from it's residents.

The next part automatically includes travel insurance - which is of course completely unnecessary if you are booking on credit cards or have a travel policy but it there it is and switched on as default. This adds to the whole spiraling-supplements experience that seems to be FlyBe.

Also here is a "I'm a UK resident" check-box. What do I select being from Guernsey? Do I tell the truth and uncheck it or leave it checked as you forced me to choose UNITED KINGDOM as my country?

An option here lets me choose my seat for an extra £5.00. There is no indication of course that it is £5.00 PER PART not per booking so for return trip will be an extra £10. The conditions also make it clear that you can renegade without refund on this arrangement if you feel it's not safe or that you didn't make it to the front of the queue within the allocated check-in time.

We struggled through and elected to pay the £2.50 per-person-per-leg-per-hold-item charge. If there's one thing that's really annoying about commercial flights it's the time it takes to get into your seat while people try to stuff over-sized items in their overhead lockers, other people's overhead lockers then under the seat in front of them. With a supplement on hold baggage I can only assume it's going to get worse.

Finally, the payment screen and one that seems okay apart from the fact that you're about to pay for something you can't get a refund on and there is no final confirmation as to what it is you are buying in contrast to every other e-commerce site I have ever used.

In order to ensure we both got our flights we clicked okay at the same time.

One completed, the other came back with a card error despite the details were okay. I can only assume your system was not happy about processing two different transactions with the same credit card details.

Hitting "retry" to return us to the previous payment screen led us to a page saying our booking was now invalid as that level of seat had gone and now only more expensive ones were available.

Joy, we get to do it all over again for one of our tickets.

Luckily for us we managed to get the second booking through, albeit at a more expensive price.

Using your site is like playing Russian roulette.

[)amien

04
Apr

Country codes for Jersey, Guernsey & Isle of Man added

It seems that the UK Department of Trade & Industry has convinced the ISO to add the codes for Guernsey (GE), Jersey (JE) and Isle of Man (IM) to the official ISO 3166-1 country database.

This is the database often used to populate the drop-down lists of countries seen when shopping on-line.

As a result we should now be able to pick where we live instead of UK and subsequently not find ourselves paying another countries VAT/sales tax.

[)amien

20
Mar

State of the broadband, March 2006

Time for an update on the state of broadband in the Channel Islands. Some interesting home tariff cuts on both islands. The Office of Utility Regulation is pushing for further wholesale ADSL cuts in Guernsey. More news as it happens.

Jersey Telecom

Now have usage limits in place on their "Rapid" broadband services with the exception of the top-end business service.

Home (Rapid)

Contention ratio of 50:1 with connection fees starting at £50 without a modem. Other more expensive install options are available but not priced on their web site.

  • 512KB @ £17.99, 20GB limit
  • 1MB @ £24.99, 40GB limit
  • 2MB @ £39.99, 60GB limit

Business (RapidBusiness)

Connection charges are £50 for self-install or £130 for JT visit. Contention of 20:1 and includes a single fixed IP address.

  • 512KB @ £35.99, 40GB limit
  • 1MB @ £49.99, 80GB limit
  • 2MB @ £99.99, unlimited

Newtel Solutions Jersey

Home (XBand)

Prices followed JT's lead since last update but without JT's usage limits. The 50:1 contention limit set by JT on the ADSL applies.

  • 512KB @ £16.99 (£16.25 if paid annually)
  • 1MB @ £23.49 (£22.50 if paid annually)
  • 2MB @ £33.99 (£32.50 if paid annually)

Business (XBand Pro)

Some price cuts here, almost the same prices as the old home tarifs. Contention of 40:1. Fixed IP addresses - 5 usable - £8.99 a month on top.

  • 512KB @ £30.99 (£29.75 if paid annually)
  • 1MB @ £42.99 (£41.25 if paid annually)
  • 2MB @ £85.99 (£82.50 if paid annually)

C&W Guernsey

Home

The £49.99 installation fee for "Pay-As-You-Go" is being waived until the end of May 2006. Anytime installation is free. Believed to still be 40:1 contention ratio.

  • 1MB "Anytime" unlimited @ £26.99
  • 1MB "Pay-as-You-Go" @ £19.99-£34.99 (500 mins, 3p per extra min)

Business

These rates that look like JT's business ADSL prices four years ago. Contention ratio of 20:1.

  • 1MB @ £89.99
  • 2MB @ £149.99

Newtel Solutions Guernsey/Guernsey.Net

Home (XBand)

Price drop takes effect from today. Free connection and D-Link 200 modem. Single IP address available for extra £15 a month.

  • 1MB @ £21.99 (£20.50 if paid annually)

Business (XBand)

Despite evidence that the wholesale price of the 2MB ADSL is £73.99 Newtel seems to be following C&W's out-of-date pricing model for business.

Very strange when you consider their margin on 1MB home must be around £4.50.

Connections start at £49.99 a month without router/modem. No indication of contention ratios.

  • 1MB @ £85.00 (£81.00 if paid annnually)
  • 2MB @ £145.00 (£139.00 if paid annnually)

British Telecom

Just for comparison I'll include BT's current pricing. True bandwidth costs more to the UK but then we also don't have VAT...

Home (Broadband)

  • to 2MB @ £14.99, 2GB limit
  • to 2MB @ £20.99, 6GB limit
  • to 2MB @ £25.99, 20GB limit
  • to 2MB @ £29.99, 40GB limit

Business (Business Broadband)

  • to 2MB "Single" @ £29.99, unlimited (Free connection & router)
  • to 2MB "Share" @ £45.00, unlimited (Free WiFi router)
  • to 2MB "Network" @ £65.00, unlimited (Free connection & WiFi router)

Bulldog (C&W UK)

May as well look at C&W's UK service offerings. Note that the 8MB is only available if you're right next to an exchange and indeed Wanadoo have been slapped by the Advertising Standards Authority over their 8MB claims.

Home

  • to 8MB "Pay-As-You-Go" @ 1p-3p minute
  • to 8MB "Anytime" @ £9.75, 1GB limit
  • to 8MB "Unlimited" @ £19.50

Business

  • to 8MB "Small Business" @ £25.50, 1 IP address, 40:1 contention, £60 connection

All the prices are per-month in GBP and do not include the additional monthly charge for a phone line.

[)amien

17
Mar

Newtel Guernsey DSL price drop on Monday

Newtel are dropping the price of their Guernsey 1MB unlimited service to £21.99 a month as from this coming Monday.

This compares very favourably with C&W's £19.99 a month Pay As You Go and £26.99 Anytime unlimited services.

Also bear in mind that C&W's £19.99 a month deal is for 500 minutes a month before you have to pay 3p a minute until your monthly charge hits £34.99. It also costs £49.99 for a connection.

They are also offering fixed IP on top of that for an extra £15 a month meaning a 1MB fixed IP service can be had for an attractive £36.99 a month.

[)amien

02
Mar

Channel Islands to dump UK mail order hosting?

There exists a provision, some people mistakenly refer to as a "loophole", in EU tax laws that allows goods under £18 to be imported tax-free from outside the EU.

Guernsey and Jersey are outside the EU and have no GST/VAT/sales/goods tax of their own and as such the islands have become prime locations for low-value mail order operations.

In Guernsey MX2, HealthSpan, 7DayShop and a number of flower shops have jumped in. Jersey has seen local business Play, BlahDVD and the like.

The large UK retail stores, keen to take advantage of the situation, arrived in Jersey with Amazon Jersey, Tesco Jersey, Asda and even Woolworth basing their mail order centres there.

But now the islands are "under fire" from the UK government that believes its loosing a large amount of tax, in fact £80 million a year according to them.

To be loosing £80m in tax somebody has to be making sales worth £6.6 billion. If we assume an average price of £10 that's 660 million items a year. Lets get real here, the industry isn't that big.

They also mistakenly believe that somebody spending £50 a month on VAT-free goods will now spend an extra 17.5% when in fact they'll spend the same or less on fewer items. Governments and bodies like the MPAA and the RIAA always assume that you're cheating them if their income ever drops - I guess they think everybody has an infinite amount of expendable money.

So Jersey has decided to withdraw the UK chains licence's next year and Guernsey has already warned the businesses they won't be welcome here either.

The rationale is that they are looking after local businesses which is kind of true. If the UK government get irked enough about the situation they'll change the laws and we'll all be out of luck. Maybe closing the door to UK retailers will work, or maybe they'll retaliate and claim they can't compete with offshore sales and push for the laws to be changed.

I guess Apple is out of luck with their offshore iTunes idea. Well they decided they didn't want us using their online Apple Store...

I guess what goes around comes around.

[)amien




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