Lots of referrals to my site come from Dave Wesner's nice history of balloons site.
If you want to buy or sell a balloon in
Next the balloon site to list all balloon sites. Joop de Wilde's balloon pages lists every known site relating to balloons, it has a super search engine for the site, the links are checked monthly, and it is now in around it's 10th year. No need to bookmark lots of balloon sites, you only need this one.
A very nice set of photos was circulated after the Balloon metting in Metz 2009. The photos are here. Click to advance to the next photo.
In the early 1990s one US manufacturer was notorious for making shall we say slightly exaggerated claims for their products. Someone, possibly an upset customer - I've really no idea who it was - produced a web site mocking their claims which was hosted by Geocities. Sadly Geocities has now closed it's doors. Since the mocking site was so appropriate for the time and even though the proprietor responsible for these claims has now departed the company I am happy to reproduce the site, The Balloons Work. Here are some current FireFly tank fittings I saw in France in 2009 and 2010: Photo one and photo two The owner assures me that he has checked with FireFly US and that they have confirmed that these fittings have approval in the US. They don't look very safe to me but hey, what do I know?
The Banque Populaire Val de France is not popular with me. After taking money out of my account and not telling me why, they closed my account when I objected to their not telling me. I sent many emails without getting a reply until I handed out this pamphlet around the town, then I had a response within 40 minutes! They did some advertising for the bank, but here is how I think they should have done it. Note. As it is a power point presentation, you need to press the right arrow, or left click to continue. Here or here are a couple more parody versions of the same advert. I later found out that it was my ex wife who had forged my signatute on a bank transfer form in order to pay her wealth tax but the bank refused to give me any indication where the money had gone which might have helped me discover that. Avoid this bank!
I've been making a web site for a neighbour who is a specialist in foie gras. It's got a little way to go yet………..
Over many years I saved for a pension with the oldest life assurance company in the UK, Equitable Life. During the 1990s they produced glowing bonus reports and I therefore consolidated my pension with them. Then I discovered that the glowing bonus reports were a pack of lies, that they were being forced to pay out a massive amount in guarantees that they had not allowed for and could not afford, and that they had not been correctly watched by the financial watchdogs - the DTI, The Treasury and the FSA. Equitable Life nearly went bust and the value of my annuity was cut dramatically, by around 50%. In July 2008 after many delays the Parliamentary Financial Ombudsman produced a report which recommended that a compensation scheme should be established within 6 months. So far (August 2010) the UK Government has done nothing except make promises quoting suggested compensation figures well below anything anyone else would consider reasonable. EMAG - Equitable Members Action Group - was formed some years ago to fight for compensation and is now fighting even harder. More info can be found on http://www.emageurope.org Click on one of the dots for info.
Here's a couple of old photos I just dug out. Kasterlee 1973 and Kasterlee Balloon 1973
I'm just developing a new site. It's very much in the early development stages but I need to put in a link to it so that the search engines can find it. It's here http://davidbarker.perso.neuf.fr/
