Mobile broadband customers offered EU Travel Passes

Internet users hoping to log on when they head to Europe need worry no more, Virgin Media has revealed.

It has introduced EU Travel Passes, which give consumers access to mobile internet services across the continent for as little as £6 a day.

Those who want a mobile broadband connection can access their favourite sites abroad from £10 a day, the company revealed, which helps avoid running up large bills.

“Whether it’s searching for the best pizzeria in Rome on your mobile or uploading photos onto Facebook with a laptop and mobile broadband, customers now have control over what they spend on holiday,” explained Jonathan Kini, Director of mobile at Virgin Media.

There are four mobile broadband products to choose from, which range between £10 and £60 a day depending on data usage.

Earlier this month, Virgin Media’s digital TV service offered exclusive Valentine’s entertainment to its subscribers.

It’s a horrible thought, it’s been 18 months since your accident and your lawsuit has finally reached a favorable verdict and you were awarded monetary compensation. Then, you get notification from your attorney that the defendant in your lawsuit is appealing the verdict. This means you’re going to have to wait even longer before you can receive compensation; while hoping the verdict remains the same in the higher court the case is being appealed in. What Read full post…

University of Hertfordshire psychologist Richard Wiseman has been studying luck for the last 17 years. It may seem like a silly thing to study. Isn’t the concept of “luck” just superstitious nonsense? Well, according to Wiseman, luck isn’t a kind of cosmic fate that gets stamped into people’s souls when they are born. Rather, it’s a matter of perspective, awareness, and willingness.

Wiseman came to this conclusion after reading about psychology studies that show how “unlucky” people miss out on lucky opportunities because they are too focused on other things. He conducted further experiments of his own.

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Motorists urged to vote for their Golden Garage

As an increasing number of people are dissatisfied with the service they receive at the nation’s garages, a competition has been launched to find the best services.

Motor Codes is encouraging drivers to make their nominations at www.goldengarages.co.uk, which will help others ensure they choose a reliable service in the future.

Chris Mason, Motor Codes Director, commented: “Despite there being many very good UK garages, the public’s bad experiences with some has brought about a lack of trust.”

He noted that more than 6,200 garages across the UK are currently subscribed to Motor Codes, with customers having a 91% rate of satisfaction when visiting them.

Mr Mason added that the car repair sector has long had a bad reputation when it comes to costs.

Research from Motor Codes recently found that 45% of motorists feel they have been ripped off at a garage to the tune of around £2.4 billion.

Nobel Prize-winning economist and Columbia Business School professor, Joseph Stiglitz argues in this interview that we are headed for another collapse.  His arguments are sound and should be listened to.

If you do not feel like watching the full video, we’ve broken down the argument he offers during this interview into a few key bullet points:

• Stiglitz’s first point is that almost nothing has been done since the last disaster to reform the way Wall Street does business.  The practices that led to the recession are still allowed and so we can expect another disaster.
• We still have ‘too big to fail’ financial institutions which, because we will bail them out, are like one-sided bets:  if they make a risky investment and it pays off, they win, but if they lose, then it’s the taxpayers who lose because we’ll bail them out.  Moreover, these ‘too big to fail’ banks are now even worse competition for smaller banks since they get bailed out when they take bad risks, whereas a smaller bank at risk of failing cannot expect a government hand out.
• Our policy towards ‘too big to fail’ banks has forced us to slip into a moral hazard:  we’ll bale out everyone involved no matter what their responsibility for the problem.  So, the people running these institutions know that they can engage in risky behavior without having to take the repercussions personally.
• This most recent collapse wasn’t out of the ordinary:  it was not only predictable but it was predicted.  The banking industry would have taxpayers believe that the current recession is a “thousand year storm” but, in fact, it was the inevitable repercussion of bad banking practices and deregulation that had been causing damage to the global economic system for decades.
• The devastation was caused by our lax regulation which encouraged banks to engage in risky behavior.  Our regulation is still lax.
• In the short run, Stiglitz expects problems because the government hasn’t dealt with the last crisis effectively: we’re still seeing real estate problems and high risk speculation.
• In the longer term, in 3-7 years time, Stiglitz predicts that the incentives still  offered for excessive risk taking due to lax regulation will cause another collapse.
• What we need for effective reform is more transparency, better incentives for proper behavior, and the invocation of the Volker Rule to prevent conflicts of interest—no speculative trading by depository institutions.
• We also need to restrict high leverage trading (Credit Default Swaps).