This week Volkswagen, Europe’s largest manufacturer of cars and vans has released a new electronic magazine called Van Mail. The newsletter is aimed at small businesses, van hire firms and van enthusiasts across the UK. A lot of companies nowadays prefer to promote themselves through e-newsletters and mail shots, but the thing that caught my eye about this VW offer was the chance to win a VIP guided tour through the RedBull Racing Factory.

If you love motor racing and mechanics then this is the ideal trip for you. The winners of the VW Van Mail competition will get a guided VIP tour around one of the most high-tech automobile design and construction plants in the world. This year the RedBull team have had a phenomenal amount of success with their new F1 car, winning the majority of pole positions and taking the chequered flag At 6 grand prix. 

As well as the primary competition to win a VIP trip tour, VW are also giving away the chance to win £5000 for your business by going out and taking the latest Crafter out for a test drive. The new magazine also provides a whole range of information about the latest VW products, servicing details and other bits and pieces concerning VW’s new and used van dealership network.

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In troubled financial times people will often turn to desperate measures to get by. Stealing scrap metal, digging out bits of copper wiring and even siphoning petrol are all now considered to be viable targets for criminals looking to make a few extra quid. As financial conditions get harder, bandits are resorting to all kinds of thievery as one van hire company in Surrey has discovered.

In recent months Kendell Cars, a van rental company based in Surrey, has experienced a number of thefts involving its fleet of Ford Transit vans and catalytic converters. According to the director Roger Kendall it will cost you nearly £1000 to buy and fit and catalytic converter. The nearby Ford dealership has apparently sold nearly 80 units within the last week, highlighting just how bad the latest spate of burglary in the area is.

According to the director, Transit converters are quite easy to remove and can be sold on to rogue scrap merchants for a hefty price, making the process incredibly profitable. Surrey police are advising residents to purchase a catalytic converter identity kit from www.theisr.org to help prevent further incidents.      

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Summer is supposedly the biggest season for tour operators, but this year things aren’t exactly going to plan. Yesterday another major budget holiday company, Kiss Flights, became the third UK travel operator to collapse this year. Earlier in the year Goldtrail hit the wall and at the start of this month Birmingham based Sun 4 U also collapsed, plunging thousands of holidaymakers and their travel plans into uncertainty.

According to the BBC a total of 13 tour operators have so far gone bust this year due to the pressures of the recession. This year companies have experienced a number of problems including volcanic ash clouds, rising fuel prices and a blazing UK summer season, all of which have contributed to poor booking numbers. A spokesperson for Tui Travel, Europe’s largest travel company, also cited a number of other issues including travel strikes and fears over job security as contributing factors to poor holiday sales.

Many of the budget travel companies operated holidays in and around the Mediterranean, including holidays to Spain, Greece and Turkey. Thankfully the CAA, Civil Aviation Authority, assured holidaymakers that the majority of people who had booked with Kiss Flights would receive refunds and that those already out and about would receive return flights.

To combat the poor number of bookings, a number of travel companies are now offering drastically reduced package deals which include flights, insurance, accommodation and car hire. In some areas of Greece and the Mediterranean discount packages can now cost anywhere from 40%-70% cheaper than they were last year. 

Customers due to fly out with Kiss Flights are advised to contact the CAA website or phone-line for more information regarding refunds under the Atol scheme.    

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There was good news for borrowers and mortgage lenders this week as the MPC, the Monetary Policy Committee, again voted to keep interest rates at 0.5% for the 17th month in a row. According the meetings minutes only one member of the MPC, Mr Andrew Sentance, voted for a rise from 0.5% to 0.75%, to deal with rising inflation. This is the third month in a row that Mr Sentance has argued for a rate rise. Although the news is good for borrowers, the news is not so good for the millions of retirees who rely upon the interest earned from their savings accounts and other investments.

During the meeting the committee also agreed that another round of quantitative easing (QE) was not currently necessary. QE is a monetary policy used by central banks to increase the supply of money by printing more of it. The money which now tends to be created digitally is then used to purchase financial investments and assets from banks, alleviating certain financial restraints and pressures. During the financial crisis the Bank of England pumped in over £200bn to the UK economy, although the MPC has ruled out more QE at this time the committee stated that it was prepared to continue the policy should the situation demand it.

Despite fears of a double-dip recession, the MPC stated that it wasn’t overly concerned with rising prices and inflation. According to James Knightley at IGN the bank is more concerned with securing the recovery, rather than fighting inflationary prices. In a statement to the BBC he suggested that “Given growth is going to slow due to the severity of the UK's fiscal austerity package, and with lead indicators and consumer confidence already softening, we doubt the Bank will look to raise rates until next year at the earliest”  

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I assume that this both took a long time to learn and hurt alot

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Have thoughts of a stumbling economy, worries about job security and rumours of public sector strikes throughout Europe put you off taking that traditional summer holiday to Spain this year? Well perhaps it’s time that you put such thoughts to bed and jump on the burgeoning array of late summer travel deals.

According to recent report published by the Guardian a mixture of factors including job security, strikes, force majeure and downbeat consumer trends has resulted in a dramatic drop in tourism across the continent, forcing tour operators to drastically slash prices in order to sell flights, car hire bookings and hotel rooms. According to the article a number of travel companies are offering discounts of up to 40% for Mediterranean vacations, some of which are increasing to 60% after the summer holidays.

Tui Travel the owner of Thomson Holidays blames a number of factors for the sudden summer bonanza including the good weather, the emergency budget and rumours of continuing strike action throughout Spain, Italy and Greece. According to reports the company still has in excess of 650,000 flights and packages left to sell this summer.

Last minute packages and deals have been a stable fixture in the holiday market for more than a decade now, but with such a large drop in flight, hotel and car hire bookings this summer, operators have now been forced to take more drastic measures. In some cases ‘when you get within 12 weeks of departure, you see prices really start to drop for lates – up to 70% in some places. They (tour operators) are managing prices on a day-by-day, hour-by-hour basis to ensure they are not left with stock which has effectively gone off because the date's gone.’    

If you are reconsidering a summer trip away remember to thoroughly research your destination and travel company before you hop on a flight. A number of tour operators have gone bust this year, leaving passengers stranded and forcing holidaymakers to return home by rental car and additional flights at extra cost.  

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Welcome to the future; a future where you won’t have to take a driving test, a future where your car will drive itself to its’ own MOT, a future where your rental vehicle will drive straight from the van hire depot to your door. This does of course all depend upon an elite bunch of crackpot scientists, currently testing out a new range of autonomous driving technology.

For years engineers and scientists have been working on self driving cars and vans using a mix of video technology, computers and GPS to navigate and control the vehicle. The latest attempt to create an autonomous vehicle is being orchestrated by Italian company VisLab. The company website states “After about two decades of continuous research on Intelligent Vehicles, VisLab is preparing to set a new worldwide milestone in the field of Vehicular Robotics.  Autonomous vehicles are being prepared and tested to drive with no human intervention from Parma, Italy, to Shanghai, China, along a 13,000 km and 3 months unique journey.”  

Although the two vans (Piaggio Porter Electric vans) will be virtually autonomous, they will also be equipped with technicians to take control in the event of emergencies. The two vans are equipped with solar panels and they have a top speed of 37mph. Although there are high hopes for the expedition a recent demonstration in which the vans entered a congested traffic circle resulted in a communication breakdown between the vehicles, forcing the onboard technicians to take over.    

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