I have heard of a similar scam to do with Sky customers, but the caller never mentioned Sky, merely if my reception was fine.
Sky have put some information about a similar ‘scam’ on their own website (Sky Protect)

In my case, it appears that they are cold calling UK numbers rather than targeting Sky customers with the aim of finding any customers who are currently experiencing problems.
The scammers then apparently try to “help you resolve” the problem by offering to contact Sky support on your behalf. At no time however do they mention that you will be billed by them for this support.

Just be warned that there is no such organisation as the National Television Control Centre, at least not in the UK. If you receive such a call, do not reveal any personal information.
If they do claim to be from Sky, or working on behalf of Sky, ask them for your contact number, account number, or the type of receiver you have been supplied. I can assure you that they won’t be able to answer and will give you some waffle as to why they can’t supply that information. 

Lotus are to return to Formula 1 for the first time since 1994 after being granted the 13th slot on the grid from next season.

They will line up as one of four new teams for 2010 - alongside Campos Grand Prix, Manor and US F1.

Great news for us F1 fans, especially those who remember the good old days when Lotus were last involved. Admittedly, it’s been a fair few years since they could be classed as one of the successful teams, but I’m just glad to have the badge back amongst the starting grid. I was born in 67, so not quite old enough to remember their best years between the 60’s and 70’s. Not a lot of people realise that despite withdrawing from F1 back in 94, they are still the fourth most successful F1 team ever.

In its new incarnation the team is a partnership between the Malaysian Government and a consortium of Malaysian entrepreneurs and is being led by team principal Tony Fernandes, the founder and CEO of the Malaysian-based Tune Group which owns Air Asia airline.

Mike Gascoyne - who has 20 years experience in the sport after working with Jordan, Renault, Toyota, and most recently Force India - returns to F1 as the team's technical director.

For more information see the original BBC Sport Article: Lotus will return to F1 in 2010

From the JustGiving page set up by Tess Morris.

Our little girl Eden Summer was born at 29 wks, 11 wks, early by emergency caesarean at Wolverhampton's New Cross Hospital, miles away from our local hospital which didn't have the facillities to look after a baby so small . Eden's incubator was donated to the hospital by Bliss and the intensive care unit was also referred to as Bliss. I eventually held Eden for the first time after 4 days and quickly started kangaroo care which Bliss says helps pre-term babies and parents,it did,after 3 wks Eden was transferred to our local hospital where she stayed another 3 wks after which we were allowed to bring her home. It was the scariest time of our lives but the staff at both hospitals and Bliss were fantastic .The work Bliss does is amazing and my husband and me are trying to raise as much money as possible for them to continue their work. So thats why we will be running 10 miles in The Great South Run so please help us help babies like Eden.

For more information on BLISS, you visit their website at http://www.bliss.org.uk

Bliss, the special care baby charity, provides vital support and care to premature and sick babies across the UK. Founded 30 years ago this year, we offer guidance and information at a critical time in families' lives. We also fund ground-breaking research and campaign for babies to receive the best possible level of care regardless of when and where they are born

Remember, these babies are too small to be able to help themselves. Help BLISS give them the best start in life. As I say above, even if you can't afford to give a few pennies, then forward this post to everyone you know, or send them the link to the JustGiving page.

Be warned and on the lookout for a new round of Hotmail accounts being hacked and suspicious links being sent to you from your contacts.
You might receive a message from a known contact that will contain a link to what initially appears to be a to a profile picture.
What it is actually doing is trying to get you to download a windows Trojan.
Hotmail Message from Hacked Account

The message you will receive could look something like the following:

The text will say something similar to the above: "ahha is this you?? hxxp://images-id.com/profile.php?=yahoo:shinerweb@yahoo.com"

How does the attack work?

If you receive the above message or similar, because it has come from a "trusted friend" in your Hotmail contact list, you are probably likely to believe the link to have come from them.
Most people will just click on the link, but don't worry, you haven't been hacked just yet. In this case of this attack it actually requires you to install it, but believe it not, many people will do just that.

In this instance, clicking on the link above will download a self-extracting zip file to your PC. (Yes, we are talking a Windows Trojan here).
But you still haven't infected your PC. You now have to actually run the self-extracting zip file by navigating to the location where it was downloaded and clicking on it. (Some chat programs allow you to open the downloaded file by simply clicking on it from within the chat program).
But you still haven't been infected if you do just that. All you have done is to extract the actual virus to your PC.
It still requires you to now navigate to where the file was extracted and open it.
Only now will you have infected your machine.

At the time of writing, only one anti-virus vendor was giving a warning, with two other vendors marking the file as suspicious.
It will take most of the leading Anti-virus companies up to another 6-12 hours before they release new definitions to catch this one.
It will probably be a few days before the rest of the bunch catch up with some taking up to a week.
So even if you have the most up-to-date virus definitions, you are not going to detect this trojan just yet.

Despite the number of manual steps involved in order to become infected, many hundreds of thousands of users around the globe will still do just that.
Some will do it primarily because the link and the files came from someone in their Hotmail contact list that they probably trust.

So why did my Hotmail contact send me this link?

Actually, your contact didn't. The bad guys have gained access to your contacts username and password and have control of their account.
There are a number of ways that the bad guys can gain access to these details.

Trojan: The payload in this instance is a trojan that installs other software to capture personal information from the infected machine. The user could already have been infected with this trojan or another similar and the Hotmail account details stolen (via a Keylogger for example).

Phishing: There have been a number of incidents already this year whereby legitimate sites have displayed adverts or malware inserted by the bad guys. This presents the visitor with a dialogue box very similar (almost an exact copy) of the Hotmail Login screen. The user then blindly enters their Hotmail Username and Password. The bad guys scripts will then usually display a failure message before redirecting the visitor the genuine Hotmail Login screen. But by this stage it is too late, they already have your Hotmail account details.

In this instance, this is what I suspect to have happened in that the user has fallen foul of a phishing attempt on a site they have recently visited.

The short answer is that your Hotmail contact did not send you the message. In fact, they probably have no knowledge what-so-ever of any messages being sent to you.
They will probably tell you that they didn't even have their computer switched on at the time so it could not have come from them.
The bad news is that it didn't need to be. The bad guys already have their username and password and they use a program of their own to login and send the messages from any computer they like.

At a later date, I will post an update on how to prevent or reduce the chances of falling foul of these types of attacks.
Some quick advice though is:

• Never to trust any files sent by friends no matter how much you trust them. It might not be them sending it in the first place.
• Always have your chat program configured to run an anti-virus scan of ALL downloaded and transferred files. (Though this would not have protected you in this instance).
• Any file you are not sure of, upload it to Virus Total and see what they have to say about it.
  

The information below is the technical information about how the virus works.

In this case, the link will attempt to download a file called PICT0573.JPG.EXE

The following is the initial report from Virus Total.

Additional information

File size: 97281 bytes

MD5...: cc259a2aa044d105d7159b2c5a8aa5eb

SHA1..: f3a9f1de1243683fce79d29dcfa2338cb5b3d57d

SHA256: d71788cfd5d99af611fee16e9c2b6abddda6505ed851a836298e2971a3a72e08

SHA512: 208e2d97247b406a3aa179b237549b6251342f022bdb7f81e4b1b939a0b21aa3 e1b6a1894e0f45981880b3ac0aa8cc1f8877cb6e374ea43510e52d17d7823cc4

ssdeep: 1536:b5GJEhlcbW5sk1BlfLvveIbXWm+nwN6J3rs5gqtXZPoeSVfOgRJNVB5uulU 6EE:VGu9BlfzWIbXWm+w0Jg5TSVfRJNYulU4

PEiD..: -

TrID..: File type identification Win64 Executable Generic (59.6%) Win32 Executable MS Visual C++ (generic) (26.2%) Win32 Executable Generic (5.9%) Win32 Dynamic Link Library (generic) (5.2%) Generic Win/DOS Executable (1.3%)

PEInfo: PE Structure information ( base data ) entrypointaddress.: 0x645c timedatestamp.....: 0x480251cd (Sun Apr 13 18:32:45 2008) machinetype.......: 0x14c (I386) ( 3 sections ) name viradd virsiz rawdsiz ntrpy md5 .text 0x1000 0x99c8 0x9a00 6.58 fd7744c26c2bf4d279968be94b283b11 .data 0xb000 0x1be4 0x400 4.25 99858e86526942a66950c7139f78a725 .rsrc 0xd000 0xd9f0 0xda00 6.72 37630b96b2c90e9f0a4951e15d50197f

The file is actually an executable (self extracting) Zip archive. (Note it ends with .exe and is just made to look like an image).
Usually they do a better job of hiding the .exe by using multiple spaces, but not in this case.

If you run the file, it extracts another executable which is the trojan itself. The name of the file in this instance was: buriminew.exe

Only when you actually run buriminew.exe will you now infect your PC.

Currently this is what VirusTotal has to say about this file:

Additional information

File size: 31744 bytes

MD5...: fe546d6dece496a4e4a3ca47f15e5937

SHA1..: 4acc9a1196539919238387863d8585e4fd43f017

SHA256: a3d90312ab961adbeb7062350643b74d5b43d35dcc963eccf4295ce375b29908

SHA512: c0f2aab84a75e8dd0a30743de66332cb058148544cb68514bee588b13b0bf92c e9d5c6e5ffdaf5f6f8553191dff0dcfb4d3aae2cb594446531c099f86bafcacd

ssdeep: 768:qrOV9YKGFjCZXwNKLWBOp07uu51xlXTOm/q:egYRcW7uIxRKm

PEiD..: -

TrID..: File type identification Win32 Executable Generic (42.3%) Win32 Dynamic Link Library (generic) (37.6%) Generic Win/DOS Executable (9.9%) DOS Executable Generic (9.9%) Autodesk FLIC Image File (extensions: flc, fli, cel) (0.0%)

PEInfo: PE Structure information ( base data ) entrypointaddress.: 0x1e80 timedatestamp.....: 0x49b0f1a1 (Fri Mar 06 09:49:21 2009) machinetype.......: 0x14c (I386) ( 3 sections ) name viradd virsiz rawdsiz ntrpy md5 .text 0x1000 0x11be 0x1200 6.25 a0f569558af5fc265be797139ffd38d8 .rdata 0x3000 0x60b6 0x6200 7.97 3fe31e2297e4fb70643d182fd955d7d2 .data 0xa000 0x163e0 0x400 5.54 629e2248ee12ab91a5a46c4c0c17d51e ( 1 imports ) > KERNEL32.dll: GetProcAddress, LoadLibraryA, lstrlenA, GlobalAlloc ( 0 exports )

The file appears to be a new variant of a Trojan called Buzus.
When run it will display a dialogue box.

From the site ThreatExpert, it has the following information:

Trojan.Buzus opens a backdoor on the infected machine and tries to steal various information like personal financial data (like credit card numbers, online banking details etc.), passwords from various email and FTP applications (like Trillian, Microsoft Outlook, CuteFTP etc.) It also tries to compromise security settings of various security related products.

At the time of writing, only Microsoft was identifying the threat as: VirTool:Win32/Injector.gen!U

If anyone wants a copy of the trojan to do their own analysis, you can contact me via the contact form on my profile page

You can also check the status of anti-virus detection by visiting the VirusTotal page for buriminew.exe .

That is a number from Bulgaria and more than likely, a premium rate number.
I had a quick check online to see if there are any other reports on this number and low and behold, there are plenty. It does however appear to be a new number in use.

I was amazed to read some of the comments on one site and a few of the questions I have listed below:

"How do they get my number?"
"Why are they ringing me at that time of the morning? I'm not likely to answer".
"Why do they only let it ring once, I will never be able to answer the phone that quick"

Some people just don't seem to understand when they are about to be conned even when it jumps up and bites them on the nose.
They didn't "get your number".
And the reason why it only rings once is because they don't want you to pick it up and answer it.
(If you do, that costs them money and they don't want to actually spend any money, they just want to make as much as possible).

Here is a copy of my reply I posted in reply to one comment.

A company based in Bulgaria for example, has a a few people or a bunch of computers that basically start off dialling +44 0000 000000 and work their way up to +44 9999 999999. (it's not quite that crude, but you see my point. i.e. they didn't get your number from anywhere, it was just the next one in the sequence of numbers they called).
So they didn't get your number from anywhere, you just happened to be the next in the queue.

The system dials the number, let's it ring once, and hangs off.

Why? There are two possible reasons.

1. Any number that rings is a valid number and could be added to a database of UK numbers to cold call at a later date.
2. And this is the most likely answer, and is becoming a major scam. Assume they call 100,000 numbers.
   It costs them nothing to ring a number and put it down before someone answers.
   It's free to them. But the number they provide as their caller ID is actually a premium rate line.
   If just 1000 people (i.e. 1%) of the people they call hit re-dial, that is 1000 calls to a premium rate number.  
   

Remember, it doesn't cost you a penny to dial a number, you only start getting charged the second the other party picks up the phone at the other end.
If no one ever picks up, you don't get charged.
It doesn't matter if you dial it and the line drops the call at the other end immediately, it's too late. Once you have connected to the line the other end, you've been charged the minimum call (usually quite a few pounds). At their end, the system is designed to answer the call and drop it immediately. They don't want to talk to you. They just wanted you to call back.

Assuming it was say £1.00 a minute, for just 1% of people they call returning their call, they just made £1000. And it cost them nothing to earn that.
But they don't just call 100,000 people. Their computer system can call millions of people. And if just 1% of people hit redial, that is an awful lot of money they've just made.
And with most overseas premium lines, it isn't £1.00.
If you did dial the number, go have a look at your next bill.

So unless you are expecting a call from overseas, and unless you recognise the number, never ever dial them back. If someone wants to speak to you, they would always call you back. Go look up the country code. If you are not expecting a call from that country, forget it.

Every time you ring back one of these numbers, you become part of the problem. You are contributing to their profits giving them the excuse to carry on doing what they are doing. It's easy money for them.

It is also incredibly difficult to have them shut down, since they don't usually do this from within the UK or the EU. The caller ID they are supplying can be easily spoofed.
Even though it says "03598815400011", you could be being called from next door. "03598815400011" is just the number they want you to dial back and is not necessarily the number you were called from.

I think it was 2006 or 2007 that I joined Ecademy which is a great UK based Business Social Networking tool (and here you can see my Ecademy Profile).

Another reason behind my decision to let my account lapse is the sheer number of totally “free” Social Networking sites.  Whilst I wasn’t able to commit the time to work, there was no sense in throwing good money after something you can actually get for free anyway.  I won’t create a list of those free sites here, because I am not knocking Ecademy in the slightest.
So why would I go back to Ecademy? Simply because of the people that exist on Ecademy or rather the quality of the people “you can” meet on Ecademy.

It is the members of Ecademy that make it so worth while and provide the power behind the site.  Quite simply, the site could have been done in Notepad and have the crappiest web front end in the world, but the members of Ecademy are what gives it true value.

So back to my rant. Who is Anthony Benner and what did he do to get up my nose.
Back on the 14th October 2008 he send me a contact request in order that I would join his network and vice-versa.
I still kept an eye on requests and any that are relevant and non-spammy, I would at least try and respond to, but to be honest, I had never heard of this guy, never had him recommended to me, he wasn’t on any of my contacts friends lists, so I gave it a low priority to respond back to. (So low that even after 3months I didn’t get round to responding).
After all, his initial request for contact had no information about why he wanted to contact me, contained no information on why I would want to contact him. So what was in it for me? Where was the ‘attraction’?

Then I get a message from his account on the 4th January that simply said: “No Response”. (Which I am not sure if that came from the system, or from him directly). But on looking closer, I also see he has “blocked me” from contacting him?
WTF?
Blocked?
Why? Because I didn’t respond to his “spammy” request to be on his contact list.
Ok, I say let’s have a look at this guys profile and see what I could have done to piddle him off.

I see he is ranked #1 in Australia. Ok, that looks fairly impressive.
Globally ranked #16, which sounds equally as impressive.
Maybe I’m too small a guy to be worthy of being able to communicate with him, so let’s read on.
So let’s have a look at some of the 69 testimonials. (That number appears quite apt as it happens).
Most of his testimonials are from people who have never even met with him, let alone worked with him, yet they give him a testimonial. And again, most of them are from people who are unlikely ever to work with him.
So what kind of testimonial is that? What has ever done for them that would inspire me to want him to do anything of any use for me? Not a lot..
A testimonial is only ever worthy if it reflects something you have done for someone, or a summary of a service you have provided.  When ever I look at someone to do work with, I research them to the nth degree and if possible, try to speak for former clients, read reviews, do a web search etc.

Now let’s have a look at his website. A blogspot blog set up in August 2008 with the grand total of one post.
And what does he do? He’s in to PR ? erm. Public relations. Ah, someone who knows all about personal images. So blocking someone for not responding to a random connection request creates a good personal image. Not.
Even his main domain simple redirects back to the blogspot blog (which has a PR of 1).
Somehow he has been rated good by 746 people. 90% of which have probably never met him, exchanged a ‘contact' request and that’s about it.
For some ranked so high, who is not even a Blackstar immediately makes me suspicious of that persons activities.
So I still don’t have a clue what he does, or what he has done for all those people who think of him so highly.

Doing your research on someone BEFORE you connect is a much better way of doing business.
I can’t stand people who think the number of followers, or ‘friends’ is some sort of “willy waving” contest.
You can bet he hasn’t even heard of Twitter, and guarantee that if he had, he’d have one of those accounts where 2 people follow him, yet he follows 10,000 plus.

Block me will you. Thanks, you’ve done me a great favour.

Best thing is, I only have to visit Retaggr to update any of my 'points of presence'

Still, I expect there is bound to be more fun ahead with 'Obi'

I must give credit to Ike Pigott (@ikepigott) for the idea of a "Top 10 People to Unfollow" list.  Although I can easily think of several individuals I’d like to place on this list, I figured it would be too mean to actually call them out by name (and possibly result in a libel suit).  So the list below contains ten archetypes that I’ve noticed on Twitter.

From the post “Top 10 List of People to Unfollow on Twitter” on the blog by Shannon Whitley.

I’m hoping I’ve never fallen into any of those categories, though looking at my main “personal” Twitter account, one or two (erm, try most) are getting pretty close to another Top 10 reason category of “Too Drab to be of any interest”.

Pop over to Shannon’s site and add any categories you can think of to the comments on that post.

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Quite a lot has happened since my last post, and in fact it was when Pompey dropped out of the UEFA Cup last night that I remembered that the last time I posted was when the draw for the first round had been made (back in August 2008 - Pompey in the UEFA Cup).  I didn’t get to watch it last night, but I did catch poor old David James howler on the news this morning.  I think we can forgive him his error seeing as he probably earned us 75% of our points last season).

Anyway, I am hoping that I’ll be updating a lot more often over the next few weeks as I begin to put into practice what I learned at St. Thomas’.

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So Pompey have drawn Vitoria SC from Portugal in the UEFA Cup.
I could do with an away trip to sunny Portugal, just not so sure I could get away with it right now.
Oh well, I’m just glad that Pompey are in Europe for the first time in my life time that I can remember.
I shall just have to find out which non-terrestrial station will be broadcasting it and bemoan the fact that I don’t have a subscription for it.

The rest of the draw looks pretty good for British clubs too:

Portsmouth v Vitoria SC (Portugal)
Manchester City v AC Omonia (Cyprus)
Nancy (France) v Motherwell
Everton v Standard Liege (Belgium)
Litex Lovech (Bulgaria) v Aston Villa
Tottenham v Wisla Krakow (Poland)

Jogue acima o pompey, pompey jogam acima as they say in Portugal.

I forgot to post these a few weeks back, but despite the delay and the fact the event is no longer relevant, I think a few of the images are still worthy of a post all on their own.

Trust me, the hairs were standing up on the back of my neck as this marvel of British Engineering flew over the house, and I mean right over the house.  

I can’t even remember which of the two nearby air shows it was, but it must have done 3 laps of the air field during a display and each time it’s turning point on it’s approach back was directly over my back yard.  The first time it came over I watched and listened in awe to the unmistakable sound of those engines, and then ran indoors to grab the first camera I could find in case it came back (for which I was rewarded).

Image via Wikipedia

A few months back PIPEX changed my fixed IP address without warning. Ok, so I lost a few days in fault finding a few network issues when a few things stopped working because of the IP change. The fact that PIPEX changed my IP wasn't so much an issue, it was the fact that they never told me about beforehand. For operational reasons, I understand that sometimes an IP has to change, it just can't be helped. So I really wouldn't have minded. But to be not told beforehand is just bad business practice and causes a lot of unnecessary work. But PIPEX's ineptitude doesn't end there.

I would be grateful if you could let me know:
1. Why was the IP address changed?
2. Why were no notifications sent out?
3. Is the IP address change permanent?
4. What intend to do to prevent this from happening again in the future.

In order to contact support, I had to :

• Log in to my account using my username and password.
• Fill out a protected contact form submitted via SSL
• And then wait… and wait… and wait…

And then imagine my surprise when I get an email back saying:

Unfortunately, due to Data Protection laws we are unable to act upon your enquiry as we cannot access any account without the proper means of secure evidence. To enable us to access the Pipex Internet account in question and advise you on your query, please forward the following verification details:
- Your name
- Your account number
- Your Pipex Internet phone number
- Your full address and postcode

Why? In order to have created the ticket, I had to log into my account with my username and my password.

During a subsequent call to PIPEX I asked the support guy why I had to supply these details, he said it was in case someone had gained access to my username and password. When I pointed out that the account number, PIPEX internet phone number and full address and postcode could all be read from the account by anyone with the username and password anyway, he put the phone down on me. Just to piss me off some more.

Oh, incidentally, their initial “automatic suggestions” were:

Title: How do I cancel an account on behalf of a customer who has passed away, what should I do?
Link: http://support.mypipex.net/cgi-bin/tiscali3.cfg/php/enduser/popup_adp.php?p_faqid=728&p_created=1196255896
Title: Will my MAC code expire?
Link: http://support.mypipex.net/cgi-bin/tiscali3.cfg/php/enduser/popup_adp.php?p_faqid=755&p_created=1196259530

The first one had me laughing so much, I nearly changed to Sky Broadband (ok, so nothing can be *that* bad).

So having waited 4 days for them to even respond to the ticket, they wanted information which they didn’t really need in the first place. I supplied the information and nothing else (didn’t want to complicate the ticket with anything else).  I then had to wait another 14 days for a reply.

I’ve replied to their ticket at weekly intervals asking for an update with absolutely no reply.
And then on the 22nd August, some 40 days after creating the ticket, I get the following:

Unfortunately, due to Data Protection laws we are unable to act upon your enquiry as we cannot access any account without the proper means of secure evidence. To enable us to access the Pipex Internet account in question and advise you on your query, please forward the following verification details:
- Your name
- Your account number
- Your Pipex Internet phone number
- Your full address and postcode

And their reason for asking for this again:

Incident created due to reply to expired incident

The original ticket had been open for longer than a month, so they closed it.
They closed it.
And because I replied to a “closed ticket”, it opened a new ticket, to which they don’t have the username and account information they asked me for in the first reply associated with the new ticket. So now we have to start all over again.

PIPEX used to be the best for value, best for performance and best for customer support.  I have been with them for 99% of my “online time” whilst in the UK since “the net” has existed.  My only break was for the 3 years I lived in Texas.  As soon as I saw that Tiscali were going to be taking over I knew this was coming.  Tiscali have ruined a great company and dragged it down to their level. So in the next few weeks I’ll be moving over to someone that actually has a clue about customer care.  I have never in all my time online or in dealings with customer support, met such an inept bunch of numpties as I have done at Pipex/Tiscali.

And this moan about my IP is nothing compared to what they have done to my main account which I shall save for another post. (But lets just say that they tripled my monthly bill for no reason, and I mean tripled !!)

Image via Wikipedia

It must have been the third week of the summer school holidays in most places around the UK.  My wife was still working and wasn’t due her vacation for a few more days, so I had to keep the kids entertained until we could all do something together.
As is always the case this time of the year, the subject of "what to do and where to go" was all over the national and local news.

But I am confused?

Two adults, two children, 9-10 hours of watching top class motor racing at one of Europe's best racing courses (and I really do mean one of the top circuits in Europe!). Total cost? £24 (£20 if you had booked your tickets online). 

But the most confusing part, was that the place was virtually empty, and I mean really empty.  There were more family members of the drivers than actual visitors. I would even go as far as saying there were probably more circuit marshals than their were spectators.

Admittedly, the weather forecast for the day wasn't too good, but it wasn't that bad either. Yet again, perhaps people know just how crap the weather forecasts are in the UK because actually, the weather was horrendous. It was cold, windy and the rain came down like stair rods which played havoc with my back, but made for better racing rather than having just the one or two cars speeding off into the distance (as happens in F1).
We got to see drivers driving which sounds quite daft until you think about it.
There was also the small matter of the Olympics starting today, but I can't believe for one minute that people would have preferred to have watch that on television in preference to a day out.

So where was this all happening?

I grew up  and lived in the Medway towns for 20 years (until I left and joined the Navy in 1987). It wasn't until today that I found out that we lived less than 35mins away from Brands Hatch. (When we did go to watch motor racing, we used to visit Lydden near Dover/Canterbury and occasionally Iwade near the Isle of Sheppey).
A few weeks back I had decided to take a slightly different route to my parents, choosing to go via the "fairly new" Medway Tunnel, (which incidentally also happens to go close to the area of Kingsnorth Power Station that has been in the news of late due to a bunch of tree huggers).  It also takes you quite close to the M20 and I was surprised to see signs for Brands Hatch.

Thinking of what to do with the kids whilst my wife was working her last set of nights before her holiday period,I remembered the signs for Brands Hatch.  On the off-chance, I had a quick look online and Brands Hatch had a day of racing scheduled for 9th August 2008 which consisted of:

• VdeV
• GT Cup
• Pinto 2000 (This is a link to the results of the day

I knew that my eldest 14 year old son wouldn't be so keen and thought something else would be arranged for him (which is another post).  I had an inkling that my middle 12 year old son and 9 year old daughter might enjoy it so phoned my parents and arrange to come up.  All 3 of them are petrol heads in the making, except the eldest tends to watch Top Gear for the comedy rather than the wheels.  That will change in the next few years as he moves closer to his licence. Now I hadn't heard of VdeV before, but I had heard of the other two, and I wasn't disappointed when I found out the schedule either. VdeV was a 3 hour endurance race in the afternoon, with 2 practice sessions and one qualifying round during the morning.  The GT Cup and Pinto 2000 both had practices in the morning with the GT Cup having the first of two races just before a 40minute lunch break.

The VdeV had 13 entrants of  which 12 actually managed to race (due to a mechanical failure he said, but I'm sure it was he was just afraid of the monsoon like driving rain).  A few cars even had problems with water in the electrics during the race such was the weight of the rain coming down.  The 3 hour race required a driver change to be taken at some point and with the cars burning almost a litre of fuel a minute, there were probably 2-3 pit stops taken by the leaders. Those 'damper' cars or those that found the occasional gravel trap might have visited the pits a few more times. But the eventual winner of the 3hour endurance race was the same team that qualified first (Car number 2. I say that, because I forgot to actually get a program so I cant tell you any of the names of the teams or drivers and since I don't have access to the net during writing this post, I will have to come back and edit it later).

The GT Cup had around 30 entrants with the two morning sessions both occurring in bright sunshine on a dry hot circuit with plenty of grip, whereas the main race took part in torrential rain.  You would have expected some contact in the first corner, but to their credit, not one driver tried to win the race within the first 30seconds/1000 yards. In fact, I don't recall a single incident whereby cars crashed out as a result of a collision throughout any of the races, and yet in this race alone, there was plenty of bumper to bumper racing.  I haven't watched such exciting racing in years.

It had to be good to keep a 12 year old boy and 9 year old girl glued to the racing despite the dreadful weather conditions.  I was extremely proud when another couple there complimented me on the behavior of my two children.  There was not one whine or moan throughout the old day which shows just fast they are growing up (and reminds me of just how old I'm getting). My dad was also with us and to be honest, I don’t think I was as well behaved as my two kids were.

But finally, back to my main point. I just could not believe how empty the track was. Entry fee’s for two adults and two children for a racing program that started at 8am and finished at 6pm was £24.  That’s right! £6 per person for 10 hours of entertainment. The longest break was for 30mins for lunch so cars were on track for pretty much most of the day.
I cannot honestly remember such a great day out, let alone value-for-money, and I’m not even a ‘total petrol head’.  Yes it got cold, and yes it piddled it down like there was no tomorrow a few times, but that just made the racing even more thrilling (and again, hats off to the drivers, not once did anyone try and win the race at the first corner or in the first lap. I don’t know if it was because a fair few of the cars were driver owned and they just can’t afford to pay for the damage, but the skill level was pretty amazing which only added to the excitement).

The last time I went to a motor race, was at the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth (from which I lived about 30-35minutes away from). On that day there was over 250,000 to watch NASCAR and trust me the weather on that day was a billion times worse than at Brands Hatch, but that is a completely new story which I’ll save for the next rainy day.

But on the off chance you are reading this and you can’t think of anything to do one weekend, have a look for a race track near you and check out what they have going on.
It was a grand day out that I thoroughly enjoyed thanks to my kids and my dad and something I intend to repeat more often in future.