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Norfolkline Ferry

2009-03-04T22:59:03+00:00

A nice ferry and only 2 hours from Dover to Dunquerke but today the ferry is late but the information board says everything is on time. Pretty useless if you ask me. Why can't people get simple things like this right?

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2009-02-22T20:44:13+00:00

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Jennifer Ellison steps out

2009-02-22T10:04:13+00:00

Ceri

Kate in FHM

2009-02-18T23:42:58+00:00

Blogmaster

Branson and Reynard to create Virgin F1?

2009-02-18T10:02:56+00:00

Latest reports are that Richard Branson and Adrian Reynard will get together to buy the ailing Honda F1 team. Good luck to them I say.

What a peach

2009-02-16T14:57:46+00:00

Blogmaster

Home - RSSFWD

2009-02-14T11:18:59+00:00

Home - RSSFWD.

This is a neat way to get any RSS feed delivered to your inbox.

Perspective Chair

2009-02-13T16:13:25+00:00

Ceri

Spotify – A world of music. Instant, simple and free

2009-02-13T15:45:20+00:00

Spotify – A world of music. Instant, simple and free.

Register, download and listen to pretty much any track you want.

Porthcawl Grob Crash

2009-02-11T23:48:54+00:00

I really feel for the families of the 2 instructors and 2 students involved in the tragic accident over Kenfig reserve today. I absolutely love the times I have flown in a light aircraft, and though you always accept that there is a risk, you never imagine it will actually happen.

The RAF University Air Squadrons are vital for the Service - I am sure over half of RAF pilots came through the ranks from a UAS upwards. So these flights may seem like pleasure trips but for many students it is the very beginning of a glorious flying career.

I cannot imagine how their families must be feeling nor can I imagine how such an unusual set of circumstances conspired to produce this awful accident.

But I do know that, like me if I had the chance, tomorrow many more youngsters and the not so young will take to the skies to do what they love.

F1 News > The new Red Bull RB5 is unveiled

2009-02-09T22:43:13+00:00

F1 News > The new Red Bull RB5 is unveiled.

Red Bull Racing has unveiled its latest F1 challenger with the RB5 being shown to the world for the first time in Jerez.

My tip for the coming season, watch them win races.

Donington British GP in doubt over 67m debt

2009-02-09T10:38:40+00:00

In a damaging report, auditors inspecting the accounts of Donnington Ventures Leisure Ltd (DVLL) say they remain unconvinced they will have sufficient financial power to stage the race in 17 months.

DVLL were set up 3 years ago by Simon Gillett and Lee Gill, who bought a 150-year lease for the track. In July 2008 they won the rights to host the British GP from Silverstone.

But the project has faced a barrage of negativity with many in the sport openly skeptical of DVLL's ability to win planning permission to develop the track, raise the necessary capital, meet building deadlines and get around transport logistics.

DVLL's detractors were given further ammunition when Gill, was dismissed last autumn. It has since emerged that he is taking his former colleague to the High Court, claiming damages of £150k. Court papers claim he was dismissed without notice by chairman Nick Schwartz, who "verbally terminated" his contract with "immediate effect" on Sept 3 last year.

Planning permission was eventually granted last month prompting. Nevertheless, DVLL's annual accounts just filed, revealing a loss of £12m last year and debts of £67m, are sure to rock the boat. Gillett, their chief executive, is trying to raise funds to finance the £100m project. He has always maintained that he will reveal details in March. He favours a debenture scheme whereby 6,000 or so corporate customers pay £5k each pa. He has until this September to satisfy Ecclestone that plans are on course or risks losing his 10-year contract to stage the race.

Ryanair Calendar - Video

2009-02-08T19:59:06+00:00

Ryanair Charity Calendar 2009 from Martin Buhr on Vimeo.

Ryanair flies into a storm with 'sexist' charity calendar featuring scantily clad cabin crew

2009-02-07T12:21:51+00:00

Knowing many of your readers are interested in flight and associated subjects this calendar caught my eye when looking for a Ryanair pic for my own blog

Low-cost airline Ryanair has flown into a storm after its latest charity calendar was branded sexist. A series of glossy photos feature scantily-clad female cabin crew who look more like page three pinups than plane staff. But despite raising money for homeless charity Dublin Simon Community, the calendar has already run into trouble.

Wet n' Wild: The girls of Ryanair strip off for the 2009 charity calendar. The Institute for Women in Spain is considering legal action and intends to complain to Irish and EU authorities that the publication is sexist as it only features female models. In a statement, it said: 'It is significant that only women are used, in a sector in which there is a considerable percentage of men.'

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January: Miss Fuel Pump

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February: Miss Lookout

Spokesman María Jesús Ortiz claimed the images presented the women as 'sexual objects.'

Enl arge 'We're not talking about morals or nudity here, it's simply how women are portrayed,' she said.

'If there had been men in the calendar I'm sure there would have been no controversy.' The Institute became involved after a complaint from consumer group FACUA, which claimed the images promoted macho behaviour. 'The company is attacking the dignity of women workers in general and especially of cabin crew members, by presenting stereotypical images of these professionals which they have spent years struggling against,' a spokesman added. Last year's Ryanair Cabin Crew Charity Calendar raised over 70,000 euros for the Angels Quest Charity. A Ryanair spokesman said: "The 2009 edition, which was shot in Spain in September, is even more colourful and sexy and should sell like hot cakes,"

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March: Miss Check-in

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April: Miss Cockpit

"It will make the ideal Christmas present, or a New Year gift which will remind people not just of Europe's favourite low fares airline, but the gorgeous girls you can meet on board Ryanair flights," she added. Ryanair has sent a free copy of the Ryanair Cabin Crew 2009 charity calendar to the FACUA which last year objected to Ryanair's 2008 calendar.

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May: Miss Engineer

June: Miss Control Tower

The airline has also sent a free copy to Swedish politician Birgitta Ohlsson, who recently criticised a Ryanair advert which used a scantily-clad model. The Dublin Simon Community's Sam McGuinness said: "With Government funding constraints we now, more than ever, depend on the generosity of corporate supporters, such as Ryanair, to continue to provide services and shelter to those seeking our assistance."

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July: Miss Take-off

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August: Miss Mechanic

Simon Community said the number of people requiring the assistance of its Rough Sleeper Team rose by 50% during the first half of 2008.

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September: Miss Wet and Miss Wild

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October: Miss Safety

The charity said the Government should have done more during better economic times to eliminate homelessness as it claimed it is faced with the prospect of even more homeless people facing into tougher and less secure times. The calendar can be purchased for ten euros either directly from Ryanair flights or through the Ryanair.com website.

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November: Miss Hostess

Teddy Mayer

2009-02-06T23:55:54+00:00

The older I get the more I realise I read the obits often and this item caught my attention - I thought your readers might be interested

Formative influence on McLaren's formula one world champions

Teddy Mayer, who has died aged 73, was one of the architects of the early success of the McLaren formula one team. He had a vital management role in its first two world championship titles, with Emerson Fittipaldi in 1974 and James Hunt two years later.

Mayer ran the team for 10 years after the death of the New Zealand-born racing car driver and designer Bruce McLaren in a testing accident at Goodwood in June 1970. Then came the point where the organisation's fading fortunes caused its main sponsor, Philip Morris, to insist that Mayer amalgamate the team with Ron Dennis's emergent Project 4 operation as a condition of retaining the lucrative backing. He finally left McLaren in 1982 after selling his shareholding to Dennis and the team's then technical director John Barnard.

A combative and feisty personality, Mayer became involved in racing mainly to look after the career of his talented brother Tim, two and a half years his junior. Tim was due to join McLaren in the Cooper formula one works team in 1964.

In 1961 Mayer ran a team of formula three Coopers in the US, the drivers being Tim, the US Revlon cosmetics heir Peter Revson (who won two grands prix for McLaren in 1973 during the Mayer regime), and an old friend, Bill Smith. Out of the 16 races they contested, the "Rev-Em" team scored 15 wins, 14 second places and 14 thirds.

Then Tim was killed, practising for a race in Longford, Tasmania, at the start of 1964, driving a specially prepared Cooper-Climax Tasman series car fielded by the new Bruce McLaren motor racing team. Mayer, perhaps as a way of dealing with his grief, abandoned his career as a lawyer and threw in his lot with McLaren to bring some much-needed finance as well as mental dexterity to the management side of the business.

Mayer came from a wealthy Pennsylvanian family. His father was a stockbroker and an uncle, Will Scranton, was state governor in the 1960s. He graduated in law from Cornell University, New York state, but when he and his brother acquired an Austin Healey 100-6 sports car in 1958, the die was cast as their thoughts turned towards motorsport.

When Mayer joined McLaren in 1964 the financial structure of international motor racing was very different. "We paid our top two mechanics, Tyler Alexander and Wally Willmott, £30 a week and we reckoned that was a tremendous amount of money," he recalled. "You've got to remember that there were none of the outside commercial sponsors as we know them today. Virtually all the sponsorship came from oil and tyre companies and most of the negotiations were carried out via the old pals' act. It was as if you waved a magic wand and the finance appeared."

McClaren and Mayer worked well together. The New Zealander's laid-back charm and sunny disposition, his outward tolerance and reservoir of goodwill were a foil to Mayer's somewhat abrupt business style. They were an unlikely team, but a successful one.

After McLaren's death, Mayer steadily built the team into a formula one force, reaching its zenith in the mid-1970s when he first tempted Fittipaldi away from Lotus, for whom he had won his first world championship in 1972, and gave the Brazilian driver the equipment to win his second title two years later.

When Fittipaldi moved again, to join his elder brother Wilson's fledgling Copersucar team in 1975, Mayer pulled a masterstroke by signing Hunt, who went on to take the 1976 championship by a single point from Niki Lauda. The photograph of the furious and distracted Englishman erupting from the cockpit of his McLaren M23 at the Mount Fuji circuit - with Mayer in front of him, holding three fingers aloft to signify he had achieved the third place necessary to win the championship - is a famous formula one image of that decade.

After leaving McLaren, Mayer ran his own Indycar team, Mayer Motor Racing, with his longtime collaborator and fellow American Tyler Alexander, who had been a Rev-Em mechanic and one of the handful of staff with McLaren from the beginning. In 1985 he switched to management, with the shortlived, Ford-backed Beatrice Lola formula one team, after which he ran the British manufacturing base for the famed Penske Indycar team in Poole, Dorset. He remained a consultant with Penske until 2007.

Mayer was divorced from his wife Sally. He is survived by his son Tim, now chief operating officer for the US-based International Motor Sport Association and the American Le Mans series, and his daughter Anne.

• Edward Everett Mayer, lawyer and motor racing manager, born 8 September 1935; died 30 January 2009