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As most cars have in car computers fitted these days wouldn’t it be a great option to have incorporated, whereby you input the cost per litre of the fuel that you put into your car and at the end of each journey or possibly during the journey, it showed you the cost of the fuel that you’ve used. Now wouldn’t that stop a few unnecessary trips, especially short trips that might return on 10 miles to the gallon compared with the average of say 40mpg. Any views? By Graham Hill

The AA has revealed that we are seeing a North South divide open up when it comes to fuel. Apparently prices are rising faster in the south than in the north. Recent drops in oil prices should have resulted in pump prices dropping but the garages in the south seem reluctant to pass on the savings. The average price of a litre of petrol in the north is now 115.5 pence but in the south it’s 117.2 pence. The gap has opened Read more »

My gadget of the week is a tool. It’s made by Dremel and is simply called the 8200 multitool. It’s a cordless electric battery operated tool that can cut, sand, grind and carve. It is claimed to have twice the speed of its rivals and has reduced weight due to the size and weight of its smaller lithium battery that takes around an hour to charge and can hold that charge, according to Dremel, for up to 2 years. The increased Read more »

Beware of service intervals. As most people know service intervals have been extending and it’s not uncommon for cars to have 18,000 or 20,000 mile service intervals. If you are a low mileage user this could suggest that if you had a car for 3 years, covering around 6,000 or less miles per annum, you wouldn’t have to carry out a single service to retain the car’s warranty. But this is unlikely to be the case as most Read more »

Moving on to legitimate parking fines, it turns out that local authorities may follow the Westminster council lead and name and shame the worst culprits for not paying their fines. It seems that some of the worst culprits are the very wealthy and Westminster has taken the unprecedented step of announcing the worst offenders on it’s website. It would seem that many of those that refuse to pay the fines are Arab Read more »

On the 14^th September I attended a meeting of the good and great in the vehicle finance industry at the London offices of Grant Thornton. The purpose was to debate the challenges of the industry which would be reported in the journal of the industry, Motor Finance. There were many conflicting views but the bottom line is that we are still in for a tough time. Clearly there is a lack of liquidity in the vehicle finance Read more »

As more Brits decided to reduce their holiday costs and drive to their European destination this year many were caught out by the different European laws that apply to safety equipment that you must carry or face an on the spot fine. In a survey carried out by Sainsbury’s Finance they found that a third weren’t aware that they needed a reflective jacket, 15% didn’t know about the need for a warning triangle. 2% said Read more »

In the course of one week I’ve had what could be best described as a lively debate with two customers, over the contract profile that they took their cars on. One had his car on a 3+23 profile and the other 3+35. I have explained the way the profile works to the point of tedium, reported it on the blog and given examples but people are still confused and I really can’t see why? I think we all accept that a car Read more »

There are new accounting rules being worked on by the International Accountancy Standards Board in order to standardise the way that leases are accounted for. Years ago we made a big issue about the fact that contract hire type leases were ‘off balance sheet’ and simply recorded as a revenue expense. This was quite important for large corporates but for smaller companies it didn’t actually carry a lot of Read more »

After allowing local councils to levy workplace parking charges it seems that few are actually taking up the opportunity. Nottingham was the first to make a move and it was thought that all local authorities would follow suit but after seeing the reaction of local large employers, who announced they would move their offices rather than pay the parking levy, other councils have viewed the opportunity far more cautiously. Read more »