‘Sir’ Bob Geldof has accepted a role as poverty consultant to the new Compassionate Conservative (TM) Tory Party. Naturally he denies that he is deserting New Labour. After all, he was never a member so how could he defect? But it’s one more straw in the wind. Geldof & Co can spot a change in the wind a hundred miles away. Now all I’m waiting for is for Richard Branson to discover the attractions of the Cameroonies. Remember the way he showed up at the Labour victory celebrations in May 1997 after a decade of paying sycophantic attention to the Tories?
Daily Archives: December 31, 2005
Honour goes to Apple gadget guru
The ludicrous UK ‘gong’ system has given a piddling ‘honour’ to Jonathan Ive, the designer behind Apple’s iPod and iMac. He’s become a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in the New Year Honours list. Er, what empire is that, exactly?
Useful words # 2655
“Paradoxophile”.
Used by Frank Kermode to describe Adam Phillips, the soi-disant expert on flirtation, Freud and other fashionable topics, in the London Review of Books, 19 June, 2003.
Breaking the journey
Nice story in the Guardian.
When a middle-aged man swore at airline staff after he was refused a drink on a flight from Manchester to Tenerife, he got a sunshine break he had not bargained for. The pilot diverted the charter plane and dumped the troublesome holidaymaker 300 miles from his destination on a barren volcanic island off the west coast of Africa….
We use budget airlines a lot and I don’t envy the cabin crews. It’s become a horrible job, even when the passengers aren’t obstreperous. It takes about an hour to fly from Stansted to the various airports we use in Ireland, and each time I look on in amazement as the crews rush to get through the same deadly routine — passing through the cabin with a drinks trolley, then coming round trying to sell scratch cards and ‘duty free’ goods. Then tidying up and packing everything away prior to scrambling into their seats in preparation for landing. And then being expected to turn round the plane in 25 minutes. (That’s the RyanAir norm.)
When I was a child in 1950s Ireland, the profession of “air hostess” was regarded as unutterably glamorous. Parents prayed that their daughters might get a job in Aer Lingus, the state airline, thereby enabling them to land some rich businessman as a husband. Mind you, the prospective husbands would have needed to be well-off, because Aer Lingus fired its hostesses the moment they got married. (So, come to think of it, did church/state-run primary schools.) Different world, then.
Hmm… just noticed that the offending passenger is “understood to be an Irish citizen living in Lancashire” who “ignored numerous appeals to calm down when he was refused further alcoholic drinks”. Bet his Ma hadn’t been an Aer Lingus hostess.