The Grumpy Old Blog

You have to hand it to Ryanair. It's a very clever business model that has made chief executive Michael O'Leary an enviably wealthy multi-multi-millionaire. And it's all been done on a business model that not only STILL, as yet, doesn't care one hoot for the customer, despite certain big-mouth promises, but also treats staff with equal disdain, seeing them forced to act like in-air salespeople, wandering up and down the airplane peddling over-priced crap and stupid lottery tickets. And it all starts before passengers even step on the plane. For example, I don't think the Budapest Airport authorities realise that the reason their fancy (and very nice looking) duty free shops were bereft of customers was because there was just one desk open for the three Ryanair flights taking off between 16.20 and 17.30! There appears to be four types of traveller who use Ryanair. 1. Those who simply just want to get from "a" to "b" as cheaply as possibl...

Predictions for 2015 January – ebay crashes under the strain of unwanted Christmas presents. Once again, this is the year the world will end, but not until the 14th of the month at about 2.18pm, but thankfully, Microsoft will dash to the rescue and reboot it at 2.19pm. However, several countries will need updating immediately so the whole thing will slow down to a crawl while these are updated and the world is rebooted several times February – a bank or four will announce that they might have mistakenly miss-sold thousands of its customers products they didn’t need at the time when they didn’t want them. By mistake. Apple unveils their iPhone 7 that sees extremely stupid people queuing outside their shops for days in their efforts to be the first to get one March – BBC 1 goes through an entire day (18th) without either a presenter or guest totally mispronouncing basic English words. Amazon, Apple, Vodafone, ebay and PayPal announce they are going to pay what the...

There is an absolutely huge dilemma in the UK that I need to bring to your attention, but let's leave it until later in the blog. At the time of scribbling this, the casual reader will not need reminding of some of the lesser impending problems in the world at the moment, but I'll remind you of them anyway. There's that nasty ebola virus that governments are trying their best to keep out of their respective countries. Horrid, but not as big a dilemma as this UK one I will allude to. There's Iran posturing about its rather unclear nuclear vision. A vision to have weapon-grade electricity generating stations. Horrid, but not as big a dilemma as this UK one I will allude to. Then there's the unacceptable increase in anti-Semitism throughout the world where Israel can do no right and everyone seems to have forgotten the Holocaust during World War II where just under half the world's then population of Jews (along with gays, gypsies and the disabled) were bru...