Foiled again
There was chaos on the roads and trains last week, as people tried to reach their families in time for Christmas.
When Bing Crosby dreamt of a white Christmas, I’m guessing he didn’t have Britain in mind. For anyone who had anywhere to go, and most people do in this ‘festive season’, it was more like the white stuff of nightmares.
There was chaos on the roads and trains last week, as people tried to reach their families in time for Christmas. But the most pitiful had to be the disaster-like scenes at Heathrow Airport. Four inches of snow in one day and you could have been forgiven for thinking a natural disaster had struck. People were sleeping at the world’s busiest airport wrapped in tin foil for warmth, looking like the turkeys they may never get to eat. Others shivered outside in tents, waiting for their cancelled flights to be rescheduled. Charities handed out free hot drinks.
If a company can be a hate figure the British Airways Authority (BAA), which runs Heathrow, achieved that status. The Conservative government, upholders of free enterprise and deregulation, prepared a law giving the Civil Aviation Authority greater powers to intervene and fine the BAA in the future. The head of the BAA, who earned more than a million pounds last year, made the ultimate sacrifice by declining his bonus for this year.
They may have something to learn when it comes to clearing snow, but one area in which white men consistently excel is psychopathic murders. Stephen Griffith, a serial killer known as the ‘Crossbow Cannibal’ pleaded guilty last week and was sentenced to spend the rest of his natural life in prison for the murder of three women. Griffith, who ironically was doing a PhD in Criminology when he was caught earlier this year, boasted to police that he had eaten the flesh of his dismembered victims adding: “That’s part of the magic”. Described by a psychiatrist as a sadistic schizoid psychopath, Griffith told the police that he didn’t “have much time for the human race”.
BAE Systems, the British arms manufacturer, is no great lover of humanity either. The BAE has been dogged by corruption charges for years and last week was fined 500,000 pounds for ‘accounting irregularities’ in relation to the sale of an overpriced radar system to a poverty-stricken Tanzania that had no use for it. The judge commented that he was ‘astonished’ by the denials of corruption by the company.
The company’s management had concealed payments of more than $12 million to a middleman (who they called a ‘lobbyist’) who helped secure the $40 million contract. Under the terms of a plea bargain agreement between the BAE and the Serious Fraud Office, BAE will now pay the ‘people of Tanzania’ a total of 29.5 million pounds as an ex-gratia payment. In 2006 an investigation into BAE’s sale of arms to the Saudis had to be stopped by then prime minister Tony Blair when the Saudis threatened to retaliate by not sharing intelligence with the British.
It’s a strange place to find myself, but last week I began to feel sorry for politicians. Not only is every idiotic thing they ever said to a US ambassador now public knowledge, they now have to watch what they say to virtually anyone.
In a ‘sting’ conducted by the Daily Telegraph, journalists pretending to be constituents met government ministers belonging to the centrist Liberal Democrat Party (which is the junior partner in the coalition government led by the right wing Conservative Party) and got them to talk freely about their coalition partners. They fell into the trap leading to much embarrassment the next day as papers were full of their injudicious utterances. An ageing Vince Cable, the UK business secretary, boasted to the two pretty young females he thought were constituents that ‘he could bring the government down’. Another referred to their coalition partners as ‘the enemy’. And so on. Not one of journalism’s finest moments, I think.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 27th, 2010.
There was chaos on the roads and trains last week, as people tried to reach their families in time for Christmas. But the most pitiful had to be the disaster-like scenes at Heathrow Airport. Four inches of snow in one day and you could have been forgiven for thinking a natural disaster had struck. People were sleeping at the world’s busiest airport wrapped in tin foil for warmth, looking like the turkeys they may never get to eat. Others shivered outside in tents, waiting for their cancelled flights to be rescheduled. Charities handed out free hot drinks.
If a company can be a hate figure the British Airways Authority (BAA), which runs Heathrow, achieved that status. The Conservative government, upholders of free enterprise and deregulation, prepared a law giving the Civil Aviation Authority greater powers to intervene and fine the BAA in the future. The head of the BAA, who earned more than a million pounds last year, made the ultimate sacrifice by declining his bonus for this year.
They may have something to learn when it comes to clearing snow, but one area in which white men consistently excel is psychopathic murders. Stephen Griffith, a serial killer known as the ‘Crossbow Cannibal’ pleaded guilty last week and was sentenced to spend the rest of his natural life in prison for the murder of three women. Griffith, who ironically was doing a PhD in Criminology when he was caught earlier this year, boasted to police that he had eaten the flesh of his dismembered victims adding: “That’s part of the magic”. Described by a psychiatrist as a sadistic schizoid psychopath, Griffith told the police that he didn’t “have much time for the human race”.
BAE Systems, the British arms manufacturer, is no great lover of humanity either. The BAE has been dogged by corruption charges for years and last week was fined 500,000 pounds for ‘accounting irregularities’ in relation to the sale of an overpriced radar system to a poverty-stricken Tanzania that had no use for it. The judge commented that he was ‘astonished’ by the denials of corruption by the company.
The company’s management had concealed payments of more than $12 million to a middleman (who they called a ‘lobbyist’) who helped secure the $40 million contract. Under the terms of a plea bargain agreement between the BAE and the Serious Fraud Office, BAE will now pay the ‘people of Tanzania’ a total of 29.5 million pounds as an ex-gratia payment. In 2006 an investigation into BAE’s sale of arms to the Saudis had to be stopped by then prime minister Tony Blair when the Saudis threatened to retaliate by not sharing intelligence with the British.
It’s a strange place to find myself, but last week I began to feel sorry for politicians. Not only is every idiotic thing they ever said to a US ambassador now public knowledge, they now have to watch what they say to virtually anyone.
In a ‘sting’ conducted by the Daily Telegraph, journalists pretending to be constituents met government ministers belonging to the centrist Liberal Democrat Party (which is the junior partner in the coalition government led by the right wing Conservative Party) and got them to talk freely about their coalition partners. They fell into the trap leading to much embarrassment the next day as papers were full of their injudicious utterances. An ageing Vince Cable, the UK business secretary, boasted to the two pretty young females he thought were constituents that ‘he could bring the government down’. Another referred to their coalition partners as ‘the enemy’. And so on. Not one of journalism’s finest moments, I think.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 27th, 2010.