British Airways launches flights to Antalya

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• Matt B says:

  10 Oct10 October 11:21

  OT – anyone stayed at the Cheltenham Doubletree before? Looking to check in for a stay tomorrow night and not sure which floor to select a room on. Looks like the ‘top’ floor is same as the reception and then other rooms are lower level. Am gold so may get status upgrade but not backing on it.

  • Chuck says:

    10 Oct10 October 11:35

    Yes, you summarise correctly, top floor is level-ish with reception so my advise is take one of those rooms, fairly quiet as long as you get away from the bar…
    Gold too, didn’t ‘feel’ particularly upgraded but who knows ? it’s not the best DT ever !
    Breakfast decent and friendly staff though …

  • Peter K says:

    10 Oct10 October 12:43

    I enjoyed our stay here, but avoid the rooms facing towards the car park. The ones facing the river have a decent view and I even saw a large wild bird of prey (eagle??).

    There are no lifts so beware of lower floors if you have mobility issues. They do take your bags to your room for you though.

    As mentioned, breakfast was nice. The beds were not rock hard like some Hiltons. Parking is quite limited.

    • Matt B says:

      10 Oct10 October 15:01

      Thanks both, just rang them up for a different query and they were happy to allocate me to a garden view, with upgrade to a deluxe whatever that may be.

      Was originally a weekend away with a mate to watch the football, but it was postponed so taking the wife instead. Got a very cheap non refundable advance rate, was a bargain with breakfast for 2.

• vinz says:

  10 Oct10 October 12:49

  Re BA iPad app, exactly my thoughts when I saw it but I couldn’t be bothered leaving a bad review… 🙂

• the_real_a says:

  10 Oct10 October 13:25

  The Hilton Doubletree in Antalya is currently 15k points albeit away from the beach – it could make for a very cheap getaway especially with the 5for4 redemption discount.

  • marcw says:

    10 Oct10 October 13:30

    But aren’t hotel prices dirty cheap there anyway?

• Julian says:

  10 Oct10 October 13:30

  Rob,

  I’m impressed by your slating of the BA Ipad App that I felt could almost have been penned by myself.

  Although OT I wonder if you could also comment on what would have happened whilst just in Spain (Mallorca) if I had cancelled the return half of an Economy Avios booking from LHR to PMI on which I went for the 20,000 Avios plus £1 option mainly for the reason that the account in question is a legacy one that it does not make sense to continue to run long term alongside my own. So this option cleared out most of the existing balance before reaching the 2 year inactivity point.

  So anyway my question is if I had cancelled the return flight would BA have automatically refunded the 10,000 Avios cost associated with this sector and only not refunded either £1 or 50p depending on how they calculate refund of the £1 charges? As I think it costs £40 to apply for a refund of the charges and also incredibly needs a paper form to get it (which leaving aside the faff I would not want to go through in this case due to the account in question belonging to a deceased very close relative of whom I am an Executor) I would not have wanted to go down that track.

  In the end even though I really wanted to stay till Sunday (as the weather had turned very nice indeed and looked good for several more days) I didn’t do so both due to the unknowns on refunding the Avios and/or charges involved or not and the need for the paper form and because Goldcar/Interrent normally force you to go back to the airport (150km return trip) and charge an uncompetitive rate to extend existing bookings (which was in fact via Auto Europe for their Super Relax No Excess product as this was in fact cheaper than anything else leaving aside also then not needing to buy another annual excess policy with icarhireinsurance that I no longer feel I could rely following a very bad episode with Record making up non existent damage on a car last Autumn). Probably still up on the deal with Record due to the several months of rentals over the last few years in low season at a cost of only 20 to 50 Euros per week I had previously taken whilst liable to an Excess but since Record at Palma now seems to be run the same way as Malaga Record or OK Rentacar at Palma (that is make up damage for any customer who does not take the zero excess super relax product) I would not consider renting with them again.

  To be fair I had an accident on the first car I had from Record on which I paid the full Excess but that did not justify them making up several hundred Euros of further non existent damage on the replacement car that I returned in totally undamaged condition.

  • Shoestring says:

    10 Oct10 October 13:52

    [my question is if I had cancelled the return flight would BA have automatically refunded the 10,000 Avios cost associated with this sector and only not refunded either £1 or 50p depending on how they calculate refund of the £1 charges?]

    no refunds possible on return legs – book the 2 legs separately to give yourself flexibility

    • Julian says:

      10 Oct10 October 14:32

      Shoestring,

      Refund of charges paid (which were only 50p due to going for the £1 option) might not be possible on a return half of an Exec Club booking but what about the 10,000 Avios associated with that half?

      As surely if no refund of Avios is given either (in addition to charges) then why was a cancel the booking link option in my own BA Exec Club account and in the account it had been booked from still offered?

      But it has to be said that because it looked like too much faff and I would also have been screwed on the car rental extension by Goldcar/Interrent that this is why I ended up coming back yesterday evening (originally tempted by that also being an Economy rather than Business class redemption date only to then spend as many Avios as Business by going for the non cost competitive in normal circumstances new only £1 charges option)

      Point taken about the two singles bookings also being better re cancellation (which in the back of my head I already knew, but I booked this very late only 12 hours before departure and in a great hurry, especially when returning from low air duty charge countries like Spain where those charges are less than the £17.50 or £25 – Economy or Business – charged by Reward Flight Saver. Although would I get the lower charges local Spanish rate on a one way booking on an RFS qualifying account from Spain anyway or would I need to use a non RFS qualifying account in order to benefit from the lower charges at the Spanish end?

      Its a great pity that you don’t ever seem to get to the RFS parties (surely Bristol is not so far away from London for a one off jaunt, although I appreciate a hotel in London would be expensive unless a friendly forum member was prepared to put you up at their abode) as I would very much enjoy the opportunity of meeting you in person as I certainly did with both Lady London and also Genghis (who at the last party relented on his earlier decision that it was too dangerous to reveal his real world persona to myself, although I now only know his real first name, and actually turned out to be a very pleasant and Avios knowledgeable bloke not at all in line with his fearsome Mongolian Warlord HfP blog comment identity).

      • Julian says:

        10 Oct10 October 14:54

        Shoestring

        Couldn’t I have changed it directly to the later date I wanted to come back on while I was still out there, which would have been 5 days later but also was only available in Business rather than Economy? But presumably I would then have been hit with the £40 or whatever it is booking change fee and/or filling out a paper form (in addition to probably swingeing additional car rental charges by Goldcar), which knowing me I would forget to do and/or might generate the unwanted issues about the account used to make the booking.

        Also isn’t the problem that a lot of these changes are still only possible via the call centre on the telephone, which can take ages to get through to and would probably also have got in to the issues about the account used to make the booking.

        I really can’t see why BA needs paper forms and manual interaction unless that’s because most people forget to fill them out and so never get their points or money back…………..

      • Shoestring says:

        10 Oct10 October 15:03

        yep changing to a date 5 days later was very possible subject to availability – not sure if it’s easy to change date *and* upgrade to Business at the same time

  • Julian says:

    10 Oct10 October 14:16

    P.S. I would also like to justify my above OT post (before I get a booting from the usual suspects) in that it does at least relate to the odd vagaries of BA’s IT system in terms of how it executes bookings and makes refunds of charges. Still requiring a paper form to be completed to refund the charges on a cancelled booking in addition to also paying 40USD, 40GBP or whatever it is for the privilege is in my opinion totally ludicrous and quite unnecessary. Surely just paying the charge should be adequate and the refund process should be fully automated.

    Anyway if using the free automatic booking cancellation process would the Avios of 10,000 be auto refunded to the account but just not the 50p of charges paid on that sector?

    • Oh, oh. Oh. says:

      10 Oct10 October 14:48

      Thank you for all that information Julian.

      • Julian says:

        10 Oct10 October 14:56

        Sorry about the length but its the Aspergers type research and data man in me that requires me to make such detailed posts.

        I expect you may work in marketing or sales so hence would also keep things to one line……

        • SimonW says:

          10 Oct10 October 15:15

          Julian, are there any issues using a deceased person’s Avios to book your own tickets ??

        • Julian says:

          10 Oct10 October 15:32

          I believe our leader Rob himself has recommended this very course of action in an article on this very website because BA’s initial position is that the Avios die with the holder but in practice have rolled over and transferred to anyone with a Grant of Probate after often protracted correspondence in some cases (which most people can only be bother with if several million Avios are at stake).

          As there were only 40,000ish Avios on death and I have also informed my co-beneficiary and the paper value of Avios as expressed by BA is almost nil if not used to book flights I doubt there is an issue in practice.

          If there was an issue then how could our website owner as a responsible person carrying out due diligence endorse and recommend this very course of action? The real issue is with BA trying to immorally confiscate and steal Avios balances that may run to millions of Avios in respect of deceased Executive Club members. But then this is in line with their entire long term policy of gradually devaluing the Avios currency and closing accounts unused for 3 years and stealing those Avios from customers if they can get away with it. That is they try to influence spending on credit cards with their client partners by issuing the Avios but hope to redeem as few of them as they can get away with.

          There is no excuse for this stance on BA’s part and they should adopt a formal stated policy position for Executors to be able to claim the outstanding Avios on behalf of beneficiaries.

        • SimonW says:

          10 Oct10 October 15:38

          Interesting defence. “I read it on the internet M’Lud. It must be OK”

        • Julian says:

          10 Oct10 October 15:46

          See Rob’s article at headforpoints.com/2018/06/04/happens-avios-points-die/

          I can assure you that the level of insane Dickensian paper only bureaucracy required by many people in the financial services community in order to let Executors access assets (share registrars have to be the very worst and most abusive in terms of trying to charge to reissue dividend cheques that only start turning up in the name of the deceased holder in the first place because their bank account is now closed so the automated dividend transfers are rejected) can make a severely bereaved person like myself feel close to suicidal at times at the sheer level of insensitivity and inhumanity frequently shown.

          Computershare deserve the wooden spoon by a long way for their level of utter insensitivity and callousness in ripping off the bereaved. They have an 0.25% commission share trading deal for ThisIsMoney readers but try to ripoff executors with 1% dealing charges just because you otherwise have to go through a tortuous double triple executor signature process first to re-register the shares in the name of the Executors before you can then use the 0.25% charge service as the executors.

          All these companies rely on solicitors not bothering to write to the CEO to complain about their vile and exploitative polices towards the bereaved (Link Asset Services still also continue to break the law with an 0871 phone number on their Contact Us page and have failed to remove it even after complaining to CEO level and explaining why they need to do so) because solicitor’s time to do so might cost more in many cases. However if you do complain to the CEO both Equiniti and Link did roll over and waive their ripoff charges and only the COO of Computershare was completely unashamed and totally unabased in refusing to do so. The COO of Equiniti on the other hand deserves a gold star for her outstandingly, compassionate and helpful behaviour towards the bereaved.

        • Julian says:

          10 Oct10 October 15:50

          And what defence do BA/IAG have to having a stated commercial policy of trying to deprive estates of the value of unused Avios that may be worth thousands of pounds in travel benefits in some cases, even though they roll over on it when challenged because they presumably don’t fancy defending that policy in court?

        • Julian says:

          10 Oct10 October 15:54

          See also http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/1514930-what-happens-avios-tps-status-upon-death-account-holder.html

          penhill57 writes there:-

          “I and others believe that the T’s and C’s that are applied in this siutation do not comply with “unfair contract terms” in consumer contracts in the UK. And normally what is “common sense” applies. I believe that your husband “owns” these miles not BA. I believe that they are therefore your own property. I think the arguments to support that idea are pretty obvious and BA’s position complete rubbish and almost certainly legally unsustainable nonsense. Most sensible people will agree. You would have had them if they had been in a family account. He could have paid for them in cash. They therefore both “have value” and are “his property”

        • SimonW says:

          10 Oct10 October 15:59

          Rob’s words….. “Whilst this is technically against the rules, I would not personally chastise anyone who acted this way.”

        • Julian says:

          10 Oct10 October 16:10

          And just to clarify further most corporates are actually wholly unabashed in trying to steal from the bereaved by imposing policies to obtains refunds on death that are so hard to use that the bereaved will give up while they benefit financially (as still death certificates and grants of probate are not online documents some 17 years after the government recommended change in this area in their own report).

          I had to renew a tv licence at my mother’s house after her free over 75 year old exemption expired following her death (tv licencing agency will allow free cover to continue until renewal point for the next year all above aboard and stated to them as to what has happened) and it was easy to do this online stating the reason for the purchase. But on trying to obtain a refund of the money that I paid for the unexpired term remaining no easy process and demands for proof of date of sale of property to get money back, even though the new property owner will have almost certainly started his own tv license at that address within a few days or weeks or even on the same day.

          Same story with the house insurance policy in that I paid to renew it 9 months after deathon behalf of the Executors after negotiating down the renewal rate with a card with no problem (it would have been hard to move insurers at this point as only a handful will deal with Executors due to concerns about the extra unoccupancy risk, even though in this case the house was not being left empty for long periods as they fear).

          But on notifying them the house was sold and wanting money back they are demanding legal proof we no longer own the house in order to refund. But surely it should be enough we no longer want cover after date x and they should refund on the original payment card without question subject to any additional charges for short term cover that they may or may not waive due to death being the reason for incurring them.

          Its the same motivation with utility companies issuing cheques for refunds or cheques for goodwill gestures and not making electronic payments. They hope you will mislay or fail to cash the cheque before it times out so they can steal the money off you. So it seems to be quite alright for the average corporate to have unfair T&Cs and steal from the bereaved as a result in your book as I understand it?

          Of course I know some of you are just sore because I pointed out that it was commercially unsustainable for Amex to pay vast loyalty bonuses to repeat card churners. But the fact is that it was commercially unsustainable the more this site promoted this activity so in the end the card companies not surprisingly and perfectly reasonably (not at all immoral or unreasonable in my view) changed their terms and conditions to prevent such frequent card churning.

        • Julian says:

          10 Oct10 October 16:19

          @SimonW “I would not chastise” indicates he in fact endorses such a practice as the only “de minimis” way to deal with such clearly Unfair Terms and Conditions of the airline points schemes for smallish outstanding Avios balances.

          As things stand those with larger estates who obtain Grant of Probate can get hold of the Avios from BA (if they will go through the further letter writing hassle involved enclosing Grant of Probate) but for anyone with a smaller estate that does not need the cumbersome and costly Grant of Probate (death certificate alone will suffice for smaller balances with many banks) BA will try and deprive them from getting access to the outstanding Avios balance.

          Let us be honest that you are just feeling sore that you can’t any longer churn your Amex card for another sign up bonus every few months. And I merely commented that this change was coming and was inevitable but I didn’t cause it. Rob’s and other similar site’s aggressive regular aggressive promotion of the Amex sign up bonuses are in fact what made the card issuers decide to radically change their terms and conditions (not at all unfairly in this case I would say) to deal with the unsustainable commercial cost of that problem.

          Come to think of it you sound to me like a solicitor or barrister who is rather upset that he can no longer enjoy as many long haul trips to Caribbean, Seychelles or Maldives in Club Class at the expense of his employers who he was probably using his card to carry out corporate spend for on travel or other related matters.

        • Julian says:

          10 Oct10 October 16:27

          P.S. @SimonW – the clever legal defence that any barrister would of course invoke in terms of earning personally beneficial Avios points on work spend would of course no doubt be that all barristers are self employed, although it probably surely all depends on whether the card is the one issued to them entirely personally or a corporate one the clerk of their chambers has applied on behalf of several members of their Set (barrister it appears apparently seemingly functioning in the same social groupings as badgers for some odd reason, although probably it has to do with the idea of darkness and underground ways of operating to win one’s case in court).

        • Julian says:

          10 Oct10 October 17:42

          Strangely heard no more from SimonW. So suspect I was too near the truth with saying that he was fed up he could no longer earn large Amex sign up bonuses on cards he planned to clock up the required spending targets on by charging through expenses from his employers.

  • BJ says:

    10 Oct10 October 16:29

    @Julian

    “I’m impressed by your slating of the BA Ipad App that I felt could almost have been penned by myself…etc, etc, etc”

    You’ll need to get your application in quicker next time, Rhys already got the job! Seriously though, come comment more regularly Julian 🙂

    • Julian says:

      10 Oct10 October 16:47

      Unfortunately I’m not “young and hungry” to climb the ladder as Rhys undoubtedly is (even though he’s also extremely competent and very personable indeed in my limited experiences of meeting him) so I doubt I would have turned out to be cheap enough for Rob to employ (or am probably saying even £40k per annum wouldn’t have been enough, even though in the end Rob hasn’t ended up paying this with the sudden cuts in Amex bonuses and related commission and his probably also suddenly belatedly realising that you don’t need to pay travel site copy staff this much).

      Also generally it works out difficult for a guy in his mid 50s to work for a guy in his early 40s as the boss in such close proximity plus I have probably a become a somewhat, stubborn, awkward and cussed bugger at work in my old age even though I remember a time in my mid 20s when I was also keen, eager and helpful (much like Rhys clearly currently is re aviation points schemes) to any journalist or other person requiring more information and understanding of the goings on in the world of unit trusts.

      • BJ says:

        10 Oct10 October 17:00

        So an internships obviously out of the question too then 🙁 I doubt young Rhys is hungry either given the silverware he has been exposed to of late. Like you I am in my 50s but seriously hoping that is now middle aged and not over the hill. Fortunately, I never experienced what it was like to work for somebody younger than me.

        • Julian says:

          10 Oct10 October 17:40

          Only had to work once at age 31 in London for an exceedingly annoying and self pleased American (male) aged about 25 who was having a massive affair with our mid 30s American local office boss to the extent that they had even been caught at it in one of the meeting rooms by one of the other Brit staff (so with the culture of the company at the time any such report by a UK new hire would have held no sway)

          The guy was totally out of control and up his own behind and enjoyed trying to keep everybody else in the office till 8pm or 9pm at night (probably because this let him pop out of the office periodically to have another shag with the boss upstairs) in the most pointless of American/Jap My Life Is My Job type work cultures. Ironically the product we were working on never even saw the light of day as they persistently ignored my advice that the American product’s format would not comply with UK regulations on investment advice.

          But as I am now an awkward and cussed old bugger in my mid 50s I know that working for somebody of 25 or 30 would now be even worse so I took myself out of the world of corporate office based wage slavery in my early 40s………..

        • BJ says:

          10 Oct10 October 18:09

          Same old Yanks…over sexed, over paid and over here.

• Julian says:

  10 Oct10 October 14:38

  But the flight that returned wasn’t the one with James Brown on it but a different one for another reason.

  Sadly my own caring and sharing 53 year old teacher cousin who had no previous extreme lefty credentials (even though she clearly was a Guardian and not Telegraph reader) has also recently been drawn in to the ER net (including cutting off her long hair and getting a permanent ER tattoo on the back of her neck, which I see as being pretty extreme). But I keep warning her to stick to leafletting and writing to ministers etc and to not get involved with the hard core protests where she might end up getting jailed and/or losing her job.

  Sooner or later a judge is going to have to send down some of the more hard core protesters for a few months to discourage them from obstructing other people’s civil liberties and causing huge collateral financial damage in this way. Mr Brown seems to be at the head of that queue of people likely to get jailed but probably thinks he will be spared due to his disabilities…

  • Julian says:

    10 Oct10 October 14:40

    Shoestring,

    See also my above further post re the refund of charges issue.

    I assume that like Genghis you have some kind of auto alert system in relation to responses to your own posts on this discussion blog. Either that or you simply regularly all three of today’s new blog posts throughout the day……………..

    • Shoestring says:

      10 Oct10 October 14:49

      nope – I’m just clock-watching at my desk ready to move us up the plane @T-24

      • Julian says:

        10 Oct10 October 14:58

        Well I did think that might be the case with you as I had heard you are retired (as I also am but early in my case) you don’t strike me as quite as much of a geeky technophile as the Mongolian Warlord.

      • Julian says:

        10 Oct10 October 15:19

        On the flight I came back on from PMI BA had pre-allocated me to seat 30F on the Airbus A320 in question which they described on their seat map as a Window seat. But on the plane the seat in question had no window at all on either side of the aisle (just a white plastic wall where the window should be as presumably this used to be a loo space area), which seems totally ridiculous in terms of sale of goods act and misleading customers, so I reseated myself on the plane around 18C with a pleasant young Spanish Mallorcan couple as opposed to various aggressively Chav looking people (an unfortunate invevitable consequence on the popular short haul sunshine holiday route of much cheaper BA hand baggage only fares together with the recent failure of Thomas Cook Airlines as one of their more natural spiritual travelling homes) sitting in the only other rows with a free aisle seat.

        I didn’t change this online (you can now never get a further change at the airport check in desk, even when checking in with luggage) as the only free alternatives were aisle or centre near the back when checking in lateish (4 hours before flight but always wise to have an online boarding pass at PMI as check in stupidly closes for BA flights at T-60 – which is still T-45 on Iberia and most other airlines at the airport – even though security will let you through with a hold bag any time as long as you can make the now rigidly enforced T-20 close at the gate compared to the previous T-10 that was often in fact T-0 to T-5 only a few years ago when loads of people loitered in the duty free) because I was investigating cancelling or rebooking for another date.

        Anyway really can’t see how BA can have window seats with no window at all and especially also not make this clear to customers on the flight seat map (which also appears to show extra legroom in certain other non chargeable change rows that actually don’t have any more leg room at all). This A320 aircraft also had no flight entertainment screens but I don’t know if it was a Neo or not or are they only A321s??

        They did tell me they don’t have any food reheating facilities (they do have a water heater) after they served my porridge with luke warm water (so it was just warm water with no set porridge) after the cart took nearly an hour to reach the centre of the plane with the ridiculous M&S Buy On Board menu that vastly increases passenger service times and god only knows how they manage at all on flights of an hour or less. There was a crew of 5 but 2 of them stayed in Club for the first 80 minutes, even though there were no more than 8 rows of Club out of 30.

      • Genghis says:

        10 Oct10 October 16:03

        Very kind words above, Julian 🙂

      • Julian says:

        10 Oct10 October 16:30

        @Genghis.

        The complement is accepted Old Bean (that also rhymes with something else)……

      • Julian says:

        10 Oct10 October 17:31

        So does no one have any comments on my point re BA’s lousy IT systems (the original Topic of this thread re lousy BA IT in their iPhone App and presumably also mirror Android App that any loyal corporate clone worth their salt would not consider as an iPhone alternative) allocating customers with Window seat preferences set in their Exec Club profile to Seat 30 A or 30F on an Airbus A320 (and no doubt other aircraft where the former loo space is now part of the cabin space) when that seat has precisely no window at all?

        This is a clear fault in BA’s auto seat allocation policy to BA Exec Club members (you don’t get much as a Blue but you do normally get your preference for a window seat honoured, even though in an Economy redemption or on a hand baggage only fair its now generally in the last few rows of the plane as punishment for not generating enough revenue or paying for seat choice) that needs fixing as I think most of us would rather have any aisle seat at all (even seats 30C and 30D on an Airbus A320, although any other row with a distant window view from the aisle would be better) compared to a seat next to the external wall of either side of the aircraft but with no view and needing to get other passengers to move to get out to the loo or take some exercise (for those of us who are taller and so get cramped up in BA’s new meaner Economy seat pitch).

        Of course I realise that not that many people tend to read these discussion threads later on in the day they are published when they are not then able to do on their employer’s time………………………

    • Brian W says:

      11 Oct11 October 00:13

      You seriously worry me Julian. Your posts are bizarre to say the very least.

• Guy G says:

  10 Oct10 October 14:39

  Sorry for the OT, maybe I am going mad, but I recall 2/3 years back Amex used to show the amount required before you hit your target/bonus. Perhaps this was only for the BA voucher?

  I’ve just got my Platinum card and wanted to keep track of where I am vs the spending target for the welcome bonus (invariably thinking it used to be there has made me think I’m not eligible for the bonus)

  Thanks

  • Julian says:

    10 Oct10 October 14:41

    I have the same issue re hitting the bonus spend with my recently acquired Virgin Atlantic Mastercard so any comments on that would also be useful.

    • Shoestring says:

      10 Oct10 October 14:46

      you have to add it up by viewing your statements & tapping away on the calculator

      in the same boat with my Gold Amex £15K annual target but at least they add it up for you on the pdf statements

      • Liam says:

        10 Oct10 October 16:22

        I have the tracker, at least on the app, for the £15,000 target on my Gold card. What I don’t have is the tracker for £4,000 over three months, which is the target I was offered for not cancelling the card at the start of year two, a couple of weeks ago. There shouldn’t be any problem hitting it, as I have a number of flights to book soon and that will cover the Christmas period too, but I would like to cancel the card as early as possible after that. I guess maybe I could ring up and ask as well.

      • Julian says:

        10 Oct10 October 17:45

        Of course they always factor in to their sign up bonus model the fact that quite a few customers will not hit the required spend targets to trigger the bonus so hence why they don’t want to make it easy for you to keep track of whether you have so far qualified or not…….

• Paul Pogba says:

  10 Oct10 October 14:41

  Why don’t they put their efforts into getting the Greens into Downing Street? Either this is a democracy or we submit to middle class mob rule.

  • Callum says:

    10 Oct10 October 19:55

    Why didn’t black people in America commit to getting people into power? Why didn’t the suffragettes commit to getting people into power? Because they couldn’t.

    Their idea of mob rule doesn’t look too different to the current state of democracy in the UK, where a government elected by a very low number of people (15%? Or a third if you want to restrict it to only the eligible voters who turn out) can wield absolute power.

    Though given that their demands are for a civilian assembly to decide what to do, not XR itself, that argument doesn’t hold much weight anyway.

• Charlieface says:

  10 Oct10 October 14:48

  I guess I always take these things with a pinch of salt. The world is not going to come to an end but we must do something about the current pollution.
  One of the problems is that these issues are never clear cut and have trade-offs. If you reduce greenhouse gases to 0, you will probably cause major economic damage, but equally climate change itself can cause major damage as well. Same with road speeds: if you reduce speeds to 20 to save lives, you cause congestion and more air pollution. If you ban Euro4 minivans, you cause problems for poor families with a lot of kids.
  Personally I’m much more bothered about localised air pollution than generalised greenhouse gases. I think they affect people much more.
  In my area buses make far more NOx and partics than cars do, they’re old and not to Euro6 standard. According to a BBC article recently, 2 people sharing a car cause on average less CO2 and NOx than someone on a bus, so I have no sympathy.

  • Lady London says:

    11 Oct11 October 11:38

    +1. The Swiss have had buses that emit mostly water for about 30 years now. I cannot understand, with the spiralling we have seen on public transport fares in London, why London did not choose these non-polluting buses on any of the 2 or 3 rounds of bus replacements we’ve seen in that time.

    • Rhys says:

      11 Oct11 October 12:54

      Do you mean the electric buses that hang on to overhead wires? Apart from that they don’t pollute I’ve always thought it was a bit of a botched solution….

      • Rob says:

        11 Oct11 October 17:59

        Electric-powered stuff is only environmentally friendly if the underlying electricity is generated in an environmentally friendly way. The UK is still weaning itself off coal.

        Take paper recycling.

        UK paper goes to Wales to be recycled, in a process which uses a lot of electricity which, in the UK, partially comes from coal in the Winter. If you DON’T recycle your paper, trees in Finland – farmed on a 100% sustainable basis (eg you cut down 2% of a forest every year if trees take 50 years to grow) – are cut down and made into paper using 100% hydro electricity. Which is actually better? I’m not taking sides, but eco stuff is never this simple, in the same way that we couldn’t feed the world if everyone ate organic food and ate fully free range meat.

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