Salocin

In the UK last week, we had a few flakes of snow. This happens rarely in this country, and it's therefore perhaps not so surprising how terribly affected everyone was by it. The BBC has gathered reactions from around the world on the UK's reaction to the weather, and those from colder countries are amazed at how a developed country can be brought to a standstill by temperatures that barely managed to make it below freezing.

I was also a little surprised at the extent to which drivers became overly cautious. I suppose the argument goes that it's better to be too cautious than not careful enough, but the story was repeated around my office: Isn't it amazing how everyone drives so poorly as soon as there's a little snow?.

Indeed, my usual 20-minute commute to work turned into a 1-hour craw, as traffic snarled at junctions and roundabouts because people were unwilling to go any faster than a few miles per hour.

They forgot to grit the roads in Bracknell was another common theme - and my reaction, "why? there's no ice on the roads anyway" didn't really cut any ice (no pun intended) when some people thought the conditions were horrendous. BA cancelled flights because of the snow in Heathrow and drivers panicked when they had to brake, causing crashes (in my opinion) more because of their belief that conditions were bad, and their unusual reactions at the wheel as a consequence, than because their cars really did spin out of control through icy conditions.

One wonders what would happen in Chicago O'Hare airport during the winter if they closed because of ice or snow - or perhaps whether Helsinki would ever have any visitors outside of the summer months. On wonders how anyone would ever get to or from work in Russia, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Canada or any one of a host of other countries that can typically see up to 10 inches of snow overnight.

But I keep reminding myself that it's not usual for there to be snow in England, that the British are not accustomed to dealing with it, and that I should count myself lucky that there's still food in the supermarkets, because if it ever snows for 2 days running, they might assume it's time to stock up on emergency provisions. You may laugh, but it's happened before, and the supermarket shelves were bare for a week.

I wanted to give VW the benefit of the doubt, and thought that the extra cost was probably worth having the car serviced by the garage that bears the same name. Not only is it supposed to be 'better' (though heaven knows how), but I would get the benefit of the VW stamp in the service history logbook. All good. But then they go and make it really difficult, and I end up going to my local garagist - he's nicer, less pretentious, less expensive and more accommodating.

I'd like the free MOT retest for my car please"

"Of course sir, but the retest is only free if you come back within 14 days"

"That's Ok, I have another 5 days left then"

"Well, yes, but we're fully booked for the next few days. Actually, by some incredible coincidental stroke of karmic bad luck, we're fully booked until the day after your free retest is valid. Awfully sorry Sir."

I should've known, really. I mean how could I not see this coming? After the horrid quote for the repairs, and the fact that I deliberately dissed them by getting the car back and having it repaired elsewhere, they were clearly going to stiff me on the free retest.

Only this way they've also lost the 190 pounds they would have made servicing my car. I did explain this, but they didn't really get the picture. Besides, I actually don't trust people who overcharge that much - I think they're setting their prices high so that customers think, "Gosh that's expensive, they must be really really good," when in fact it's all a clever exercise in reverse psychology, and in reality you're probably going to find the spare wheel attached to the steering column, the exhaust pipe instead of the gearstick and the windscreen wipers on the inside of the car (specially for people with a lisp who like to sing while they drive).

I'll get it done locally. I get a good feeling helping out a little business, plus it's cheaper, and the VW stamp in that annoying little book is unlikely to make enough difference to the final resale value of the car that I'm going to notice the difference. It's already worth less than the rear bumper of a Merc.

This morning, people were driving exceptionally badly. The man in the car in front of me kept looking in the drivers seat - I could see he was turning his head because he was wearing a cap. I dropped back a bit because he was visibly not paying all that much attention to the road, and then he swerved violently and stopped doing it - one wonders what he was thinking.

I can think of few responsibilities we all enbrace daily that are more serious than that of driving a car. It weights upwards of 2 tons, has a motor inside it that will propel it at high speed, and does so in close proximity to other big heavy metal objects that are moving just as fast. Nevertheless, while people embrace this responsibility with arms wide open, they do so when they've been drinking, when they've not slept properly, when they're angry at the world (and they let it show in the way they handle their 2+ ton weapon).

What's more, the act of sitting in the drivers seat, closing the door and starting the engine seems to turn quite a few people into their dark inner twin. Out comes the most amazingly selfish behaviour, regular flashes of recklessness and a willingness to risk the wellbeing, peace of mind and tranquility of all and sundry just to get 2 places ahead in a line of 500 cars.

In my many years as a consumer of film media, I have developed a rare skill, considered quite an art in certain circles, of managing to pick the most godawful movies to watch when the urge to stare at a screen suddenly takes me on a weekday night. You could hide the movie on some dark shelf behind the failed action movies of the 70s, and somehow, provided it's recent and awful, I will home in on it like a bunker-buster bomb on a mission of self-destruction.

In a rare trial of this strange talent, I recently rented a movie called Spartan, and I'm happy to say that my mysterious skill has not left me. Not one little bit.

Spartan is the story of a secret service agent (played by Val Kilmer) who speaks as though he's reading his lines off a prompt sheet. Despite this unusual handicap, he's quite highly respected by the marine buddies he frequents, and he hangs out at a training camp where he gives the local cadets a hard time, mostly by not smiling and speaking woodenly without looking at them, which seems to engender yet more respect. He's not the only one with a social handicap.

For reasons that we won't go into, because the movie doesn't either, he gets assigned to a case regarding a missing girl, presumed kidnapped. The way this happens is that he drives his pick-up to a building site, where a builder with a protective helmet gives him a note with the words "stand to" on them. He looks gravely (one might say 'woodenly') into the distance, and a helicopter comes flying out of the night sky to pick him up. This clearly is very mysterious, and remains unexplained for the remainder of the film, the better to deepen the mystery.

He walks into the investigation and is immediately given all of the most important tasks, even though most of the agents on the case don't know who he is, he knows little or nothing about the case, and he's violent with witnesses in a way that makes you wonder whether he was beaten up as a child, and is now doomed to spend the rest of his life passing on the misery he received in the school bathrooms.

Fortunately, everyone who he beats up turns out to be a bad guy, and he eventually manages to screw up the investigation without their help anyway, at which point we wonder what was supposed to be so amazing about this character anyway.

By this time, we're quite bored, so the film takes us to places foreign, strange, and probably soon to be redefined as the axis of something or other, in the hopes of reviving our flagging enthusiasm. Unfortunately, even strange foreign places are drab and boring when the budget is so low that you have to film it all in the same garage, and Val Kilmer is busy doing an impression of Pinnochio, but without the soul of a little boy, just to be different.

If you're still watching at this point, the girl turns out to be the daughter of the potential next president of the united states, and I'm not giving anything away because I think they meant to tell you that at the beginning, but it just kind of slips between the cracks. At least it explains why the secret service is crawling all over the place. After a particularly awful scene involving a secret agent as a surrogate mother and most of the characters being killed off in ways that make the audience care less and less, we come to the climax of the piece, and the film fades to black amidst a soundtrack as dull as the script.

So Apple is going to court to try to find out which of it's employees has broken their contract, gone against non-disclosure agreements, and shared private information on forthcoming projects with the press. If I were Apple, I also would be fairly pissed that someone who is supposed to be on my side is getting his/her kicks out of breaking trust with the company. They've gone about it in a way that has the EFF, and privacy/rights activitists up in arms.

As you may have guessed, I'm not totally averse to Apple's point of view here. Some jackass is getting brownie points (perhaps even getting paid) for breaking a contract with the company. Maybe they're doing it because it makes them feel special, maybe they're doing it because they think 'the public has a right to know', perhaps it's because they're disgruntled, who knows.

Implicit in any employment contract is a duty of loyalty to the firm, and that that contract is being broken (not to mention the explicit non-disclaimer that's in every tech contract out there). In the UK at least, no industrial tribunal would stand in the way of a company firing an employee for this sort of behaviour, it is a clear breach of contract and worthy of being thrown out on your ear with no severance pay and less sympathy.

The problem is - how do you find out who they are? Since the only people who know are the press, and they're arguing that they're protected from any subpoenas by the laws protecting journalists, does this mean that the employee in question can get away with this? Does it mean that, despite evidence of a breach of contract, and knowing perfectly well where the information lies, Apple is simply going to have to suck it up? Does it mean that this sort of behaviour is to be condoned?

That's ridiculous.

While I have every respect for whistleblowers and their right to be protected because of their situation, this is not whistleblowing - it's the sharing of secret information that has been entrusted to that individual, and it's not far different from using secret information about a new product launch and trading on the market to benefit from the rise in company share price. Someone's sharing the information, they're getting something out of it - perhaps money, perhaps just a feeling of power, it doesn't matter - there has to come a point where the law says to journalists, "no - this information was obtained because someone did something that is essentially against the law, there is an injured party as a consequence, and there must be redress". Otherwise you open the floodgates, and some disgruntled employee in every company with a legitimate secret will be selling it to the first journalist who'll take it. I don't want to live in that world.

Given the scrutiny and standards that companies are now required to operate under, I don't believe it's too much to ask for journalists to consider the circumstances under which they receive information, and to be asked to make judgements about whether the law has been broken - if you're getting information from an insider and you're publishing it, you should know better, and to hide behind laws that are supposed to protect whistleblowing, standing up to your government and fighting the good fight is cowardly, and a misuse of the safeguards you operate under.

If this is indeed a "right" under the laws that protect the freedom of the press, then those rights have been too broadly defined, and they are being abused. There is no justification for damaging the economic potential of a new product through what amounts to journalistic industrial espionage. The control over the release of such information resides with the company in question, and to remove that control from them through illegitimate means, if justified by the laws as they stand, requires that those laws be amended, because clearly we cannot rely on those subject to the laws to act with restraint or moderation.

I recently had my VW Polo taken to the garage for its annual MOT (mandatory technical inspection) test. VW very kindly sent someone to the company parking lot to pick it up, drove it to Reading where it promptly failed the test, and they put together a list of what would need to be fixed before it could pass the test. They gave me a quote for how much it would cost.

Oh boy.

I had to get them to replace the two front tyres or they weren't going to let me have the car back at all - but the quote for the remainder of the repairs was absolutely off the chart.

• 2 new tyres, 100 pounds
• brake fluid change, 88 pounds
• rear brakes adjustment, 45 pounds
• thermostat housing replacement and coolant change, 216 pounds
• rear wheel bearing adjustment, 45 pounds
• driver-side license plate light replacement, 37 pounds
• off-side side light change, 37 pounds
• off-side brake light change, 37 pounds

The list goes on. And on.

Needless to say, I was not amused. After pondering the situation for a couple of days, I called another garage up - one not affiliated to VW (which, I am now assuming, must stand for Very Wealthy). They laughed out loud, and gave me a quote that was, in all cases, less than 50% that of VW. In some cases, it was a 90% reduction on the cost quoted by the branded garage.

Now I'm sure that from the point of view of someone who's been through this a number of times, this is pretty obvious, but that doesn't change the basic reality that there's a very large number of people out there who have no idea that they're getting ripped off quite to this extent. I wanted to go to a VW garage because the car's service history is entirely through VW and I'm sure that has a positive effect on the value of the car, but if it's going to cost me 400 pounds extra to get the rubber stamp, then the value for money simply isn't there.

VW's website claim that their parts are engineered to a superior level. That's all well and good, but how can it cost 37 pounds to replace a lightbulb? The last lightbulb was from VW, and that one's broken, hence the need to replace it - clearly superior engineering only goes so far. Three lightbulbs and you're talking about 111 pounds. To replace lightbulbs. How do you justify that?

Anyway, since the retest is free, I'm going to get the car fixed elsewhere, then get VW to do the MOT retest, which hopefully should come out clean this time, and I'll still have a VW stamp on the MOT certificate, even if they didn't do the work on the car. I'll probably pay them the 125 pounds to do the 90000 mile service and get that stamp in the book too, but if there's any serious work arising from that service, then my local garage can do it - not only does he charge less, but he's actually grateful for the work.