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I think we all agree that the Internet is a great British invention but like all great inventions there is often a price to pay, the spread of child porn, online bullying, identity theft to name but a few.

But generally the Internet has enriched our lives, we can communicate much quicker and when family live abroad you can now talk to them on Skype as though they are in the same room with the help of a large TV and X Box gadgetry. Whilst there are some great tools that appear to make life easier and cheaper (I’m thinking price comparison sites here) are we actually getting true value for money or is it leading to some sort of price fixing.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

My background is in accountancy, more specifically Cost & Management Accountancy. When my old company wanted to land a contract they would take the spec. provided by the customer and cost it in terms of materials, labour and overhead. Add a contingency for unexpected costs, a bit of profit and submitted the quote. You then rather unscientifically crossed your fingers and hoped for the best.

Whilst you didn’t always get to see what the competitors were quoting you would occasionally find out that you were 30% less than the closest bid. From the client’s point of view this was great but supposing we knew what all the other companies were bidding, wouldn’t we tend to bid a lot closer to the closest bid, maybe undercut by say 5%?

Well my fear is that this is happening in the car insurance industry which is in desperate need of a shake up. Online comparison sites allow every insurance company to see what each other is quoting and it is surprising how close the top 5 companies can be when you run a quote.

The insurance companies can differ greatly in size with completely different levels of overhead and staff costs to recover and yet they all quote within £20 per annum. You may think that this may be a way to make insurance companies reduce their rates but all we ever hear is that high cash for crash claims have increased premiums or bad weather leading to increased crashes have increased premiums – then they all follow suit, increasing premiums, acting like a massive cartel.

This lack of competition has led to laziness with lack of control. Poor cost controls lead to increased premiums which means that we all end up paying for super inefficiency. The insurance companies impose few controls on the body repair shops accepting wildly inflated repair bills, incredibly inefficient claims handling add to the cost and inconvenience to all drivers.

I’ve seen insurers pay accident management companies over £100 per day for a Ford KA replacement, they simply don’t care, they just increase the premiums. Even then they don’t do it directly. The rates on the comparison site may seem quite close but then come all the addons, legal cover, breakdown insurance etc. etc.

I understand that the Competition Commission is looking into car insurance, not before time, but will they make any difference? Time will tell and I will report it! Moan over – happy New Year! By Graham Hill

Meerkats (Photo credit: quisnovus)

Stop/start is an energy saving method that is now being fitted into more and more new cars as it saves fuel and cuts emissions. Great news. I have it on my car and although I had intensions of switching the damn thing off (which you can do on most cars) I am now used to it and it doesn’t cause any difficulty whatsoever.

It means when I am stop start in the middle of a town or attempting to crawl round the biggest car park in the UK, commonly known as the M25, my fuel consumption doesn’t drop to single figures. But one thing I didn’t mention in my ‘lease a new car vs HP a used car’ series of articles was the increased cost of service and maintenance due to this new technology. I hadn’t realised but the cars fitted with stop/start technology need a much tougher battery than those fitted in a standard car.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

English: Halfords at the Ocean Park retail park in Portsmouth. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And to make matters worse, until recently you could only buy replacement batteries from main dealers. I only found all this out when I read that Halfords are now able to fit replacement batteries into cars with stop start technology. The reason for the delay was that they needed to invest in new diagnostic equipment for its branches and be able to provide suitable replacement batteries.

Dave Poulter, head of trading at Halfords said that Halfords were the first national retailer to sell and fit the new Yuasa batteries at a cost of between £175 – £200 a go! Mr Poulter went on to explain that their prices were between 20% and 40% lower than main dealers. Kwik fit stated that are also able to replace batteries in stop/start cars with AGM batteries designed for stop/start cars.

So as this new technology expands so does the cost of service and maintenance. Another reason to lease a new car.

Whilst the Government seems to be moving green issues down the agenda, as people would apparently prefer to keep warm than pay a green levy to save the planet, the car manufacturers are steaming on with their objective of making cars more fuel efficient and kick out fewer CO2 gases.

It was only a couple of years ago when manufacturers were struggling to get below the 120g/km CO2 emissions, even in their smallest of town cars but that is all set to change. The new Vauxhall line up will include its latest 1.6litre diesel eco engines that will drop the CO2 emissions down to 85g/km.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

The engine is already fitted into the Zafira Tourer and is set to be joined by the Astra, Meriva and Mokka which will help Vauxhall keep to the European emissions targets. Alongside the new eco friendly Vauxhall engine is the Ford Focus Econetic (87g/km) and the Peugeot 308 (85g/km).

Of course it isn’t the social conscience of ex hippy retail buyers that are snapping up these low emission cars, it would seem that large companies with high emissions have to pay for each tonne of CO2 they release into the atmosphere and that includes the emissions from the tailpipe of their vehicle fleet.

Other small businesses simply want to keep emissions down although if you think you may avoid congestion charges in London, think again as you need to drop down to 75g/km before you are exempt.

Related articles

• Report: EU compromises on loosening CO2 emission limits (green.autoblog.com)

Department for Transport (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The news of the moment relates to the raft of new driving laws that could end up with on the spot fines of £100 and 3 points on the offender’s driving licence. In addition the old bill’s powers have been increased when dealing with existing offenders in order to reduce the number of cases going to court.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

Much of the industry feels that this may be a bit of a cash cow and with targets set for the number of tickets issued it could also cause tickets to be issued in a somewhat ruthless manner even though lives are not apparently put at risk.

So what are the changes? First of all it is illegal to now hog the middle lane of the motorway. It is also illegal to tailgate, either of which will attract a fine of £100 and 3 points on the offender’s licence. In the case of serious offenders the police can still opt to issue a ticket that will require the driver to attend court.

There will also be a degree of flexibility as the authorities will be able to provide training as an alternative to the points on the licence, as currently happens with speeding first offenders. As with other fixed penalties drivers will still have the right of appeal through the court system.

Some fines will increase such as using a phone whilst driving, up from £60 to £100 as will also be the case with less serious speeding offences. Non endorsable offences such as not having a visible tax disc or failing to give way at a junction will attract fines of £50, up from £30.

Not wearing a seatbelt will now cost the driver £100 and 3 points, up from £60. Finally driving without insurance will increase from £200 to £300. Defending the new fines the Department for Transport said that fines hadn’t been increased since 2000 and were now out of step with other non vehicle related offences.

My personal view is that some of the more serious offenders may get off lightly with a fine when previously they would have ended up in court which is much more of a wake up call than a fixed penalty ticket which is simply an inconvenience for many offenders.

Mobile phone laws need to be tightened, I’ve seen so many potential accidents whilst drivers have tried to negotiate a roundabout or weave their way through parked vehicles with disregard for pedestrians, that something more needs to be done but will an increased fine be enough – probably not!

Let’s see what happens in 12 months when I report the road accident statistics. I suspect they won’t be any different to now. We need education, not random penalties.

Related articles

• New Powers Given to the Police to Issue Fixed Penalty Notices to Careless Drivers (sbwire.com)

Possibly not but it might be useful to know what you are likely to face in the future. I can help there because Auto Express has carried out a survey amongst 46,000 readers to come up with the best and worst dealers by manufacturer.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

I can’t reveal all but I can give you a rundown of some of the best and worst dealers. In the best category Lexus heads the list for the second year running. Suburu and Toyota come in at positions 2 and 3. Honda was 4^th and Jaguar 5^th. Porsche, Skoda, Mitsubishi, Renault and Kia finished off the top 10.

Strangely not many Germans achieved a top 10 position. But what abouth the bottom of the list, the last 10 places. At the bottom was Seat at position 31, Chevrolet was 30, Ford at 29, Fiat 28, Citroen 27, Peugeot 26. Next up the list were a few Germans, at 25 was VW, just above was BMW at 24, Audi 23 and Chrysler/Jeep at 22.

A few surprises there and very interesting. Probably won’t influence too many buying decisions but interesting to know all the same.

Bits&Pieces: I think most of my readers know my feelings about statistics, most of them leave me scratching my head thinking – so what? Someone, whoever decided to carry out the survey, needs to get a life.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

For example did you know that Seat drivers are most likely to make an ‘at fault’ insurance claim? Really??? Oh there’s more, Kia and Mini owners were next most likely to claim with Subaru, Smart and Fiat owners putting in the least claims.

Astonishing or what? So who carried out this totally pointless survey? Money Supermarket that’s who. Totally bloody pointless – Money Supermarket – get a life!

The AA has warned that fuel prices are set to rise by 5p per litre over the summer months. Apparently petrol stations have already started to pass on higher wholesale prices to customers at the pumps.

They said that costs had already increased by 1p per litre in July – not at my bloody Tesco, more like 3p!

Who do you use to insure your car? Think twice about Swinton as they were fined £7.4 million for miss-selling policies between April 2010 and April 2012. They were found guilty of using an ‘aggressive sales strategy’  over the phone and failed to tell customers that some of the add-ons were optional extras.

I can see that it won’t be long before we start to see congestion charges in all towns and cities. Cambridge, who dropped the proposal for a congestion charge 3 years ago, are now considering this as an option to reduce traffic gridlock. Before going ahead they will need to convince local businesses.

After the recent F1 disasters with their tyres exploding on a far too regular basis you would think that Pirelli would concentrate on making them safer.

Used Tires (Photo credit: www.ericcastro.biz)

Well in an effort to multitask it would seem that the designers have not only improved the reliability but they have brought out a new series of road tyres that they say reduces the road noise in a car by 50%.

Assuming that we won’t see a repeat of the F1 blowouts it’s worth noting that developments continue on road cars. The first cars to benefit from this new technology are the Audi RS6 Avant and RS7. They will be offered as optional extras (no I don’t know how much), but I guess they must be expensive if they are only offered as options on two of their top of the range cars.

In order to reduce the noise the tyres have a layer of noise cancelling sponge under the tread blocks. Pirelli says it reduces the amount of vibration and noise through the steering wheel.

Let’s hope the tyres don’t suffer the same problems faced by Hamilton & co.

Related articles

• Webber slams F1 tyres (sbs.com.au)

My first ever automatic was a big old Jaguar. It worked perfectly with just 3 forward gears, 1^st, 2^nd and Drive. Having just 3 gears wasn’t a problem, after all it was an automatic so after a while you didn’t even realise the car was changing gear.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

Move on the lifetime of my children and my latest car, an E Class Mercedes has a silky smooth 7G,  7 speed automatic gearbox with paddle changes on the steering wheel for those that like to play at F1 racing drivers – in an E Class Mercedes – I know, I should grow up!

So I was surprised to read that the next E Class will come with a 9G, 9 gear automatic gearbox. The box will be launched in Europe later this year and in the UK next year. Mercedes say there is method in their madness as the new gearbox will reduce CO2 output and improve MPG but changing gear 8 times simply to get out of your garage seems a tad over the top to me – but what do I know?

If it means I contribute to the well being of Sussex and save money on fuel who am I to argue?

OK here is today’s test, what is an STD. Nope – you’re wrong according to an article in the Antipodean periodical – The Australian. They ran an article that gave advice to their readers on how to reognise, avoid and treat disgusting STDs.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

The piece was written by Larke Riemer (that’s a woman with a very strange name), director of women’s markets at Australian bank – Westpac. With the holiday season underway and the fears attached to drunken nights whilst enjoying the benefits of sun, sea and sex one may welcome a few words of cautionary wisdom from Larke (no I don’t know how to pronounce it either).

But the article was nothing of the sort, Ms Riemer, being a true banker, wasn’t talking about dodgy rashes in intimate places but something completely different, she called it Sexually Transmitted Debt.

She was referring to the unwanted burdens that people (mainly women) coming out of relationships can find themselves stuffed with. So the advice was not about the dangers of unprotected sex but more about unprotected debt, telling people to talk honestly to each other about money issues, make sure that you read everything that is financially committing before signing and don’t leave your name on utility bills before leaving.

I think I had better suppress any further comment before I dig a serious hole for myself. Goodbye.

For years I have campaigned for the inclusion of ‘personal finance’ into the National Curriculum. It is tragic to think that our youth are now expected to stay on at school till they are 18, an age when they can legally sign a contract, without the slightest knowledge as to how the finance systems work and how to manage their debt.

Thinking of a change but unsure as to the best way to finance your car? Then you need a copy of my car finance book, Car Finance – A Simple Guide by Graham Hill. Click on the link below to buy the best car finance book on the market, available as a Kindle Book and Paper Back.

They are seduced into taking out loans and HP for all sorts of goods from phones and computers to cars and even mortgages without fully understanding the commitment they are entering into and the consequences.

In my book Car Finance – A Simple Guide I have a whole section relating to ‘when things go wrong’. It shows you what your rights are and how to deal with debt, something that most lenders would prefer you didn’t know. But it is important that everyone knows, especially school leavers.

So I am delighted that personal finance has now been included in the new National Curriculum for England. This move means that financial education will be included in Mathematics and citizenship education lessons in all maintained secondary schools from September 2014.

This will make a huge difference to the future lives of millions of youngsters. The only downside is that it isn’t compulsory in all schools. Academies and free schools are not bound by the National Curriculum, we need to work on them to complete the circle and encompass all of our youth.

In my opinion financial health is as important to kids as physical health, both can destroy you if you don’t take good care of it.

Related articles

• ‘Money’ to be taught in schools – with lessons on state spending (telegraph.co.uk)