The recent volcano crisis has taught me one thing above all else; never consider buying cheap travel insurance – and when you DO buy a policy check out word by word their exclusion clauses. That is something I doubt the majority of those stranded travellers did. One fellow stuck in Florida with his family was complaining to a local radio station – via his mobile – that his el cheapo policy with Insure and Go (which is underwritten by the Halifax Bank…enough said ) gave him little to no protection or assistance whatsoever for the problems he was experiencing. Of course it wouldn’t – the reason it was cheap was because it gave you next to nothing but you need to know this BEFORE you travel to somewhere like the USA.

As travellers begin to arrive back the UK from all around the globe the compensation claims are ready to start flowing in, there will be some justified claims of course but for those people who paid a mere £10 for a ticket with a budget airline like Ryanair their hopes for being compensated hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds will be simply that – hopes. Ryanair is refusing to refund a penny. An airline that carries passengers paying less than a hundred pounds a ticket is not going to be able to afford huge across the board payouts, if the airline is forced by European regulations there is a good chance you will be waving bon voyage to your favourite way to get to the Spanish Costa’s.

I feel sorry for those people; they went on holiday and ended up in a nightmare spending money they did not have, sleeping in airports with small children, paying thousands to greedy car rental companies to get themselves to ferry ports across France and Spain, but honestly what do these people expect…? they would have been flying on tickets that cost anywhere from £10 to £40 and yet they expect hundreds if not thousands to be refunded to them for their troubles. Do you want budget air travel to continue or not ?…go ahead and sue for what you think you are entitled to but you can then kiss goodbye to your el cheapo trips to Tenerife and Salou because the airlines will simply close up shop.

The same goes for those who bought bottom end of the market travel insurance from companies like ‘Insure and Go’ for next to nothing and then complained about the poor service and exclusion clauses…what do you expect when you pay peanuts? how many people actually check their exclusion clauses before travelling – not many obviously but I bet they will in the future.

I would like to bet that it has been quite a while since you took a look at your domestic boiler. I suppose it lives out in the garage – like most of them do – and I would not be a bit surprised if it looked something along the lines of that particular boiler pictured here. The fact is we really pay the old thing very little attention at all and we only notice it exists when something goes wrong…and when your boiler goes wrong it means inconvenience and money. Right now we have decided that ours has reached the end of the road and, yes, it does resemble that one there because it was installed well over 25 years ago and every time I see it when I go out the back it gives me the creeps. Judging by the way the hot water has become unreliable in recent months I’d say it is time to take a look at the Boiler Scrappage Scheme which I have only just learned about.

Actually we do need to replace ours and I like the idea of this scheme which is just like the one that encouraged people to trade in their old cars. Old cars and boilers – two things that leave the biggest carbon footprints these days and we are all aware of being environmentally responsible in this day and age. Basically it works quite simply; you apply for a voucher and this will give you £400 off the cost of a new A-Rated boiler when you scrap your old G-Rated boiler. We really need to get behind this scheme, apart from the fact that you can save hundreds of pounds, the new Green Boilers are much kinder to the atmosphere by being 90% more efficient and  use far less fuel. This will cut CO2 emissions drastically and our children’s children will be the one’s who will thank us for this. So what kind of boiler do I need to have to qualify…? here’s some examples and they can be gas or oil…

* AFOS Solo

* AGA RAYBURN Gcb model

* ALADDIN INDUSTRIES Brick Central

* BARLO Blenheim…

There is quite an extensive list so most should qualify. Right now this scheme is open to all English postcode addresses regardless of whether you own or rent privately – it only takes ten days from date of application to when you get your voucher.