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Luton-based business-class airline Silverjet has suspended flight operations this morning after failing to raise expected Middle-East capital following higher fuel charges.

The airline, which has been flying to New York and Dubai since January 2007 with prices starting from £999, announced on its website this morning that its last flight left for Dubai at 0730, and that no more reservations will be honoured:

To our dear customers,

When our inaugural flight took off in January 2007, we pledged to change the face of air travel. Your appreciation of our unique values and your belief in our product has allowed us to achieve this.

Your belief in us was shared by our investors - but regrettably, due to unforeseen circumstances, they were unable to unlock the finance that we needed. As a result, we are very sad to announce that from 30 May 2008, we will cease operations and we are no longer able to honour flight reservations.

We extend our sincerest apologies to those of you who have travel plans with Silverjet in the future and at present. You are advised to seek alternative travel arrangements with other carriers, and contact your credit card company or travel agent directly for information on obtaining refunds.

We are working actively with new investors who are prepared to inject new funds so we can recommence operations. If we are able to achieve this, we will make an announcement as soon as possible and we hope to be able to bring you our very 'sivilised' flying experience again.

Thank you for your support - it has meant everything.

The collapse of Silverjet has been preceded by the other two UK business-only airlines, Eos and Maxjet, this year - both blaming rising fuel costs.

Now, there's no way I'd pay £999 for a ticket to New York, despite the perks - flat-beds, first-class service, private check-in and security terminal at Luton Airport, and the fact that I don't have to travel to London to get the flight (admittedly, that's personal as I live near there) - but media workers with outstanding student loans aren't exactly target audience. But maybe that's the problem - the type of people that Silverjet were trying to attract - busy, cash-loaded city workers, weren't attracted to the journey to Luton to catch their flight.

Maybe if Silverjet were based at London City or London Heathrow airports - with direct DLR and tube connections to the city - they may have succeeded. This seems to collate with Eos' failure, who were based at London Stansted airport - arguably even harder to get to from central London than Luton.

But either way, and despite hating the "us and them" attitude with 'classes' on planes and trains, I can't help feeling that the collapse of the last-remaining business-class airline is a loss to the UK rather than a gain to environmentalists. Where does this leave other smaller airlines: the likes of Wizz, Jet2 and SkyEurope? Will we slowly return to a monopoly or duopoly of UK-based airlines: British Airways and a low-cost giant such as easyJet and/or Ryanair? What, then, will happen to air fares?

Most importantly, will I ever be able to afford to fly to Sydney - whether or not fuel keeps rising?

Read the mini-guide here on my website

First Capital Connect, the main train operator between Luton Airport Parkway mainline station and central London, have recently taken over the operation of the shuttle-bus service between the terminal and station, and made some changes on the way which even I find confusing. So, I've written a mini-guide for visitors to the UK using Luton Airport (predominantly easyJet and Ryanair flights from Europe) and heading to London.

Read the mini-guide here on my website

If you find this guide useful, please let me know using the comment function below!

Just over a week ago, Transport for London launched a series of excellent iGoogle gadgets for your homepage. I installed the Live Tube service updated widget, and now when I leave work to head home - whether at 7am or 10pm - I can see if I'm going to be stuck in a tunnel underneath London without having to leave my iGoogle page, which I keep up while at work.

I thought this was an excellent idea, and looked around at the Train Operating Company websites to see if any of them had something similar - nothing that I could find.

Then I thought about National Rail Enquiries - surely they would have something in this new, multimedia, whizzy-bang world of sharing content on the Internet? Nope. Not a Google gadget, Yahoo! widget or even a plain old RSS feed in sight - not even for the normally excellent (and award-winning) Live Departure Boards application.

So, what does an Internet geek with a few days off do? Create his own, of course!

It's currently only on my website and iGoogle (I'll see what the feedback and performance is like before branching out to other platforms), and you can find out more about it here.

Please let me know your thoughts on this application by leaving comments or emailing me.

Go straight to the document now (.doc, 10.6Mb)

For the last month or so, I've been communicating with a fine example of a perfect human being, based in Dublin, regarding his daughter moving into my flat. I moved out before my contract ended, and was looking for someone to take over the remaining period in order for me to avoid paying two lots of rent. So, I posted adverts on Gumtree and similar 'community noticeboard' websites, and got an email from this person in Dublin.

Except they weren't in Dublin.

Nowhere near, in fact. And you could hardly call them a fine example of a human being: they were in Nigeria, and were planning to rob me out of over £4,000.

These '419' scams are now commonplace, and mostly originate in west Africa or Amsterdam. The most-used scam is a the story of a rich leader, forced into exile or killed in their own country, and whose close relations (sister, son, wife...) are trying to get large sums of money out of the country and into a western bank account - and your reward is 10% of the total of $28m if you help them out with the paperwork.

Except it won't happen.

They build up trust with you over the course of a few emails, make big promises, get you to email them (or 'their client', the same person on the end of a separate Hotmail address) basic details, and then sting you: in order to get your slice of early retirement in a mansion in the sun surrounded by cocktails and servants, you must pay a processing fee to their phoney 'clients' in the bank. This fee must be paid via Western Union, without delay... and, after the fee has been received, the big money can start moving.

Except it'll never happen.

Your £5,000 processing fee has just disappeared into thin air and re-appeared in the scammer's bank account, never to be seen or heard of ever again. And, as for the $28m, well, that'll be offered (perhaps with interest, who knows?) to the next person unfortunate enough to receive an email from them.

So, there's now a community of Internet users who are retaliating: they're scamming the scammers, with surprising and hilarious results.

I got a slightly cleverer (is that a word?) scammer emailing me about my vacant flat, unfortunately I didn't manage to scam them, but I did get sent a fake cheque for £5,500. Still, I (and my colleagues) think it's quite funny, so if you've got a spare 5 minutes, have a gander through and hopefully it'll raise a smile - perhaps even a chuckle...

Download the document (.doc, 10.6Mb)

This is the first in what I'm planning will become a regular(ish) post - five things I've done, seen, found or otherwise which you might just possibly enjoy, too. There'll be no particular themes, categories or order: just 5 things which have amused me, helped me, tickled me (not literally...) or changed me in some way or another.

1. Nabru
Tucked away in an industrial estate in Uxbridge, North-West London, is the Nabru showroom. Selling 'slot' furniture, this was a godsend when we needed to buy a new sofa for our Victorian cottage - with tiny doors and windows that only open at the top. Delivery is free - to anywhere in the UK except the highlands and islands - and they offer a huge choice of styles, materials and options as it's all custom-made. Just don't put the base on the wrong way round and only realise towards the end of the flat-pack build like I did. D'oh.

2. MSE
My girlfriend has been subscribed to the MSE - MoneySaving Expert - newsletter for a while. It has amazing discounts, offers, money-saving tips and more financial goodness than you can shake a 50-quid note at. I thought I'd give it a go as well - if only to see the discounts a few hours before she does...

3. Moneydance
I've been searching around for a Quicken-a-like for a while and haven't found anything worth shelling out for (or even an open-source alternative I liked). However, just yesterday, I came across another blog listing '6 Great Free Alternatives to Quicken and MS Money' and one of the suggestions was MoneyDance. I liked it straight away and duly handed over the $40 (£20) asking price.

4. Airmiles
As you may have guessed, I like to travel (although I haven't yet been out of Europe, unless you count Iceland...), so I'm on a bit of an Airmiles frenzy at the moment. I discovered the scheme from the MSE newsletter (see #2, above) - apply for a new Lloyds TSB Airmiles credit card (APR 15.9%) and you get 1,500 airmiles automatically - enough for 2 free return journeys to Zone 1 (Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Jersey, Guernsey or within the UK and Ireland) or one return journey to most of mainland Europe. Then continue collecting by using your credit card, shopping online, exchanging store loyalty card points for miles, filling up at Shell garages, and signing up for the big mile offers - I collected 750 airmiles just for getting this year's car insurance with Lloyds TSB... and it was cheaper than the Admiral renewal quote! Our aim is Sydney in a few years' time: 10,000 miles is the target...

5. Luton FM
I have to declare an interest with this one: I managed the station with 6 student colleagues last year. Therefore, I have a vested interest in this year's management team (it acts as a final project and is worth about 60% of the final degree) doing badly in comparison. Only joking. Somehow, when I went to see them to catch up with my ex-course lecturer a fortnight ago, I got cajoled into making their station website for them - with just a few days to go before they launched on-air! I've just made the website public today - although I know it still has a few issues, particularly on Internet Explorer (damn it not being standards-compliant...)

spEak You're bRanes: If you like it so much, why don't you go live there?

Loved it instantly. It's the anti-thesis to site such as the BBC's Have Your Say, which are infiltrated with messages, complete with appalling spelling and grammar, against everything and anything - whether it makes logical sense or not (I'm sure it does in the posters' heads).