Spending a penny to cost you a pound with Ryan Air

I can't knock Ryan Air too much as our own experiences of flying with them has been OK to date but their policy of screwing the passengers for every penny they can once on board has been taken up a notch today with their announcement that they are going to put £1 coin slots on the in flight loos. My only gripe until now was a cheap bottle of fizz sold as "Champagne" but carrying more than one bag on board, having the affront to take luggage with you and now getting taken short all attract a fee. And to make things worse they have also introduced mobile phone use on flights as another money spinner. The days of cheap air travel are well and truly over.




And another thing that is sadly over is the rugby career of young Matt Stevens. I am not a big rugby fan but I think it is sad that his career has been ruined for a failed drug test when the drug in question is cocaine. OK if Stevens had been taking some terrible steroid body building stuff or cheating blood enhancing drug, but cocaine? As far as I am aware this drug turns users into gibbering idiots and is hardly likely to improve a rugby performance especially as its effects only last for a few minutes.



You would be forgiven for thinking that this new species of psychedelic jumping frog fish which has just been discovered was something from the imagination of Matt Stevens while he was on his cocaine high. The wonders of the natural world never cease to amaze and with species dying out at an alarming rate it's great to see a new one added to the list.



Here at Instanta we are in the last few hours of the month. Will this be the first month in many years when we see our annual sales turnover figure go into reverse? In the twelve months to the end of January we were 1.7% up on 2008 and to ensure that we don't go backwards we need to invoice just £13,000 today. As we have got £24,000 of orders and still a few hours left, we should make it. OK it's not going to be a month of growth but at least we are still not down. Now we've got to try and do it all again in March.



Max (above) and I just carried out a full review of warranty work carried out in January. I am pleased to report that there were no nasty surprises and steps have already been taken to remedy the faults that did arise. This has already been reflected in February's figures which are well down. At least that's one graph that's heading in the right direction.



Finally please don't forget to watch The Colour of Money on ITV tomorrow at 6.45pm. I was on the leader board on http://colour.itv.com but got a target of £75,000 and failed miserably. Give the game a try yourself here and pass it on to everyone you know.