Gordon’s Ashes.

We were due to go to the UK last Saturday, returning today. Thanks to Iceland not only helping to bugger up our banking system but disrupting our travel arrangements, we didn’t. So Candy was unable to go out with her friends on Saturday evening, have lunch with us and Deborah on Sunday, or a birthday dinner with us and Matthew and Charlie on Monday. 

   And, if we’re to believe the Tory shadow minister for transport, it was all Gordon Brown’s fault. A line which will no doubt be taken up by the Sun and the Daily Mail and purveyed to and swallowed by the half-wits who imagine that the Tories - even ‘eccentric’ ones like Samantha Cameron who went to day school - have the common people’s  interests at heart. 

   While the volcanic eruption wasn’t Gordon’s fault, the length of the disruption may have been avoidable. If it were, though, we should look somewhere other than No. 10  for those responsible. To those same airline bosses - the repulsive Willy Walsh pre-eminent amongst them - who have successfully clamoured for the skies to be re-opened. Since 2008 the ICAO has been trying to get the airlines and the manufacturers to agree to what constitutes a safe level of volcanic ash. They wouldn’t because airlines were afraid of the potential damage to their reputation and finances in the event of one of their planes being lost due to dust after an all-clear had been announced, with a fear of legal actions arising from the deaths of all those who had been on board. As one source at the ICAO put it: "The bottom line is that there is a huge liability issue for the industry here, so they have been super cautious on providing information. If they say it is safe, and there is an accident, they will get slaughtered." However, faced with losses running into hundreds of millions as the effect of Eyjafjallajokull spread and lingered into a sixth day, it was the airlines who began to call for the regulators to determine and set such a safe threshold, to avert the severe financial consequences of planes idle across Europe and passengers claiming refunds for cancelled journeys.

   In other words, the airlines are interested in passenger safety if a threat to it could affect their profits. If it threatens those profits, they’re not. And fair enough, one might say: they’re commercial enterprises not charities.  What sticks in the craw, though, is their hypocrisy, pretending that they’re motivated by concern for their stranded passengers rather than their balance sheets. That the prolonging of the crisis was caused not by that self-same greed, but by the Labour government.

  And it’s not just the airlines who peddle a phoney concern for their customers’ well-being. This morning - the 21st April, the day flights are resumed -  I received an email from Hertz which, inter alia, read:

    Hertz Special Measures to Help Customers Affected by Volcanic Ash Crisis.

    As a member of Hertz #1 Club we want to give you an update on the specific  

    measures we have put in to place to support our customers who are trying to get

    home following the closure of air space due to the volcanic ash situation. …

    … 100% refund on prepaid rates if customers cancel online or by telephone at 

    any  point prior to the pick-up date, if their travel has been affected by the 

    volcanic ash disruption (up to 27th April).

However, when I went on to their site last Friday, when the crisis was in full swing, to cancel the car I’d booked I found it would cost me £45 to do so! So when the ban was there and people would have been glad of the saving it wasn’t on offer, now that the emergency’s over and hardly anyone qualifies for the concession it’s available.

   But they’ll be able to parade their compassion, and show how they were doing something. Unlike that incompetent in No. 10 who had to be pushed by good old Willy Walsh to get us airborne again.