Solar eclipse and hotel prices. Water problems. Add consequences of digital and AI stuff.

 There’s going to be a solar eclipse tomorrow. The media is giving us information about the best places to see the eclipse. And hotels in those places have reportedly been putting up their prices. In Reykjavik tourists have been paying £587 on average to secure a room for Wednesday night, a 98% increase on the same night last year. As well as Iceland, Spain is said to be a good place to see the eclipse, and they expect 460,000 overseas tourists to go there just for the celestial phenomenon. (I can think of better reasons for going to Spain.) So the rate for rooms in A Coruña has gone up 135%! The increase is less steep in Mallorca, where you should be able to see the eclipse on the horizon at sunset, room prices have gone up by a mere 24%, while in Santiago de Compostela and Bilbao, hotel room prices have risen 34% and 67% respectively. What a strange situation, all about something you won’t be able to look at directly, but will need special glasses! No doubt lots of eclipse-selfies will be posted.

Today the sun keeps shining normally. Imagine your taps suddenly running dry in this summer weather. Well, according to this article residents of flats in Tower Hamlets, London, have had that happening to them, it’s probably nothing to do with the heatwaves. There seems to be some argument about the cause of the problem. 

But here”s a cartoon by Martin Rowson on the drought and Britain’s water companies, commenting that while the hot summer and hospipe bans continue, bosses at many utilities firm recieve payrises.

I was talking to my brother-in-law the other day, putting the world to rights as usual. He was predicting that banks will have to rturn to “physical banking” with chequebooks, etc because of AI facilitation of digital fraud and theft. Shortly after that I came across this report:

“Don’t bother trying to download a digital ticket from Vauxhall to Waterloo, the terminus for many trains to London from the west – or on a number of other routes, apparently including from Norwood Junction to London Bridge, where many services from the south coast hit the capital. For those and some other routes, you will now need to collect a physical ticket from a physical ticket machine, after operators found that up to 95% of tickets on some short routes were being used fraudulently.”

Cheque books and actual tickets for trains! Attempts to put the genie back 8n the bottle!

There”s some interesting vocabulary connected with the travel fraud business:

“short-faring” – a trick by which passengers buy a last-minute digital ticket only for the final part of their journey, even if they boarded in a station without barriers much further away.

“quick scanning” - buying a ticket on your phone seconds before being approached by an inspector.

“tailgating” - squeezing behind a paying customer as they pass through a ticket gate. 

“donutting”, a scam by which a passenger buys a cheap ticket covering the first part of their journey and another covering the last, but avoids paying the higher cost of the full trip.

Interesting times! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!