Lavengro in Spain

Transport of Non-Delight

So, the British Ministry of Transport of Non-Delight has now decided that laptops can be taken on planes after all provided that they are taken out of their bags before they go through the X-ray machines so that everyone can see that what is going through the machine really is a laptop, but there is still the rule that you can only take on board water, sandwiches, books, newspapers, cosmetics and so on that have been bought in the airport's own shops. At one time that sort of behaviour was called a restrictive trade practice and was widely held to be a Bad Thing; now it is called security and is widely held to be a Good Thing – despite the obvious fact that that these shops actively encourage passengers to buy glass bottles containing flammable liquid – and everyone can be quite certain that al Qaeda will never be able to infiltrate one of its Made in Britain agents into the secure airside zone of a British airport; you need the resources of an organisation like the Daily Mirror behind you if you want to contemplate a stunt like that.

Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryan Air, is an angry and worried man. He has every right to be. He knows what happened to Freddie Laker when he tried to take on BA with his cheap flights. Hand baggage restrictions work against low-cost airlines by increasing costs and turnaround times (easyJet is now charging for checked-in baggage), companies working on low margins are especially vulnerable to disruption, and as ever the question is cui bono?

Meanwhile on another front, there is the Government to deal with. Cheap airlines encourage people to travel around Europe in what is one of the most popular and most successful aspects of the development of the European project. In Britain this sort of thing is regarded as undesirable, even suspicious (except for tacky, alcoholic holidays in the Mediterranean coastal ghettos), as is shown by Britain's profound lack of interest in the Erasmus and other similar programmes. Eurosceptic Britain's stupid security regulations are making life difficult throughout Europe, especially with attempts to make other countries impose them as well, thereby helping to achieve the Great British Goal of fucking up the EU as much as possible whenever possible. Is it fanciful to suppose that the UK is ramping up a domestic security crisis in order to prosecute its policy of sabotaging the EU? It is not. This is after all the country that ramped up fake intelligence in order to justify its unnecessary and illegal invasion of a foreign country in direct opposition to the rest of the EU. It is the country that officially discourages its young people from learning languages. It is the country where for thirty years or more governments, oppositions and media have orchestrated a campaign of hatred against an organisation that the UK is a member of. It is the country that is still known as l'Albion perfide.

But there is a huge joke, or at least irony, in all of this. Britain's importance in the world simply is nothing like what the country's solipsistic world-view leads it to believe it is, and its attempts to cow other countries and bring them into line behind it will simply backfire; budget airlines will continue to exist and can be, indeed already are, based in other European countries and the EU can get on quite nicely by simply ignoring the awkward squad on their offshore island. Maybe in a few years' time even the British will come to see what the rest of the world is well aware of: the country is just cutting off its nose to spite its face.

Who controls air traffic?

Last week it was found that a message written on sick bag is enough to bring a plane down for an emergency landing; not as terrible as a real bomb attack but still annoying, unnecessary, and a victory for the terrorists.

Now it has become clear that if you are a British Fascist with a loud mouth you can decide who does and who does not travel on the same plane with you. The other day some Brits on a Monarch flight due to depart from Málaga decided that they didn’t like the look of a couple of their fellow passengers because they had brown skin and  were looking at their watches and not speaking English, so they kicked up such a fuss that the men were removed from the flight. In a sane world the captain would have told the objectors that if they didn’t like the other passengers, who had passed through Spanish airport security procedures, they could get off themselves; but Monarch Airlines clearly prefers to side with aggressors rather than victims.

The captain of an aeroplane is absolutely within his legal rights to exclude any passengers, and if he chooses to do so it is reasonable to call in the Guardia Civil to escort them from the plane, but it is improbable that the men were ‘marched off the plane by Spanish police’ as I have seen reported. In fact, once the men were off the plane the Spanish authorities had no further interest in them and did not even take their names. The displaced passengers later flew to Britain with a different airline, without noticeably blowing up the aeroplane they were travelling on.

Flying to Britain

On Wednesday 16 August I flew from John Paul II International Airport in Krakow to John Lennon International Airport in Liverpool. From what I had seen on CNN (my only news source while I was in Poland) it seemed that the security situation had eased. I went to an Internet café in the morning to check the easyJet site, which told me that restrictions only applied to departures from British airports; I checked the Krakow airport site and found no mention of any problems. All seemed well.

The flight was due to leave at 21:15. We arrived more than two hours before check-in opened and found an easyJet flight to Dortmund checking in normally. Then the Liverpool flight opened, with an announcement that no hand baggage would be allowed on board flights to the UK, USA, Canada or Israel. As a result my camera, a new Nikon digital SLR, had to go in a soft handbag that was not designed to be checked in (the camera was in its own case, but even so…); my laptop was in a proper travelling case, but a computer case is a rather distinctive object and is highly susceptible to theft. Both these bags were to be labelled as fragile. Everything else, including mobile phones, had to go out of pockets and into checked-in baggage to be consigned to the tender mercies of the ground handlers. And so to security.

Everything, including a nun’s rosary, had to go through the machine and all passengers were frisked. The Polish border guard checking me found my wallet in my trousers pocket and took it out to examine carefully. Interestingly, he also certainly felt a security pouch inside my trousers and also presumably spotted its loop on my belt, but he chose to ignore it. I set off the alarm and had to remove my shoes. The departure area was small and had no toilet; that meant going back through security and returning. With all this procedure we had no time to visit the duty-free shop and were left with 100 złoty (about 25 euros) in cash.

The easyJet flight to Liverpool was due to take off 35 minutes after Ryan Air to Stansted so we were surrounded by people clutching the clear plastic bags with their minimum papers and belongings in them that they had had when they left for their weekend away. Of course their flight was delayed with the general security operation but the situation was not helped when almost their last passenger reached the boarding gate with a largish handbag. She was sent straight back to security, where she and her husband mounted a huge scene about the iniquity of not being allowed to take phones, car keys and so on on board with them. Eventually they boarded and Ryan Air took off. We boarded without event and then there was a twenty-minute delay on the plane. Because everything that would have been taken as hand baggage had been checked in for the hold, it had all been weighed and as a result the plane was technically overloaded. The captain assured us that it was just a matter of paperwork, but there was still a delay. We took off 45 minutes late and landed twenty minutes late at 23:30 British time.

For two arriving flights Liverpool airport had eight uniformed police officers prominently displayed and a number of non-uniformed toughs just standing around looking at people. The luggage arrived and one important requirement was to be at the right end of the carousel when it started (I guessed wrong) to be able to pick up my computer before anybody else did (and, by the way, when travelling with a computer nowadays you should always have it charged in case it has to be turned on for security). The luggage arrived with one case damaged and the fragile labels turned out to be stickers, one of which had adhered to the light leather of the handbag in such a way that its removal damaged the surface. Damage claims have been submitted; we will see what happens.

I have no way of knowing whether this security procedure was instigated in Britain or Poland; I do know that if I had gone to Krakow railway station and bought a train ticket to Liverpool I would not have faced any similar security procedure. As far as I know, people travelling by train or bus from Scotland to London can take books to read on the journey and passengers on the London Underground are not deprived of their cosmetics. Can it be that terrorists have never thought of attacking trains? I rather think not. But this is what Britain is now: the country’s international reputation has been wrecked and the security of its air-transport system has been reduced to that of Israel; moreover, it has dragged Canada down to that level with it, which will make for some interesting Commonwealth discussions.

As for the actual state of national security, the hire-car driver who picked us up was highly supportive of the action of the police, saying how wonderful it was that they had managed to identify and stop the threat. But when I told him that I had seen CNN reporting an official British Government statement that the arrests were the result of a tip-off from within the British Muslim community without which they would have known nothing about it, he was not only surprised but also, initially, incredulous. Sadly, I find it only too easy to believe that the British authorities haven’t much of a clue about what’s going on in their own country.

I plan to go to Cambridge in mid-October for a weekend’s writing; I hope that this shambolic state of affairs in air transport will have been resolved by then. I will want to take my computer with me but will I be able to keep it under my control or will I have to check it in? I would obviously not wish to do that even placing it inside a normal suitcase, so I might decide not to take it and to work on paper instead. In November I have to go to Britain for my father-in-law’s ninetieth birthday and at Christmas I have to visit the family as always. Are my journeys really necessary? Yes they damn well are – but I just wish that I were visiting any country but Britain. Will I have to go through this security farce again each time I get on a plane – or would it be easier just to masquerade as a twelve-year-old boy and simply get on a plane without the inconvenience of actually buying a ticket?

A full report of my holiday in Germany and Poland will be posted here in Spetember, when I am back in Spain with the broadband connection that I will need to upload the photos.

The Sick Man of Europe

Well, the UK has done it again.

In 1996 Britain gave the world mad cow disease, with foot and mouth a couple of years later, because it couldn't manage its farm policy properly.

In 2003 Britain's Labour Party set out to break the EU by backing the USA's premeditated and illegal invasion of Iraq in clear opposition to European policy*. This assault on the EU continued during and after the French and Dutch referendums, at the accession summit and during the British Presidency.

In 2004 there was much smug Anglo-Saxon ho-ho-hoing when French Muslims burnt thousands of cars. 'It just shows how much better our system of multiculturalism is, doesn't it?' asked many commentators. Then we had 7/7, and now we have a couple of dozen British al Qaeda members arrested and chaos in the air transport industry, all because the UK can't manage its community relations and internal security policy properly, and the idea that thay manage things better in France no longer seems so silly. After all, it isn't the closure of Charles de Gaulle, or Schiphol, or Tegel, or Barajas, or any other major international airport, that is causing worldwide chaos.

I am writing this in Krakow. I had sworn that I would not touch a computer during my holiday until I was in Britain but with the chaos that I have heard about I needed to check what restrictions there would be on my Krakow-Liverpool flight on Wednesday. Fortunately, it seems that the real problems are only for people leaving the UK; otherwise I would have had to buy more luggage here. Will things be back to approaching normal when I leave the UK for Barcelona in early September? I hope so. What will happen when I travel to and from Britain in October, November and December? Will I have to put my computer and camera into checked-in baggage? Will I be able to take a bottle of water on the plane? Just what will be the consequences of the UK's latest contribution to the world: al Qaeda with a 'Made in Britain' label? It is certain that when I arrive in Liverpool on Wednesday I will not only have to change currency to move from one EU country to another but will also have to stand in a queue to show my passport to some bureaucrat, all part of waging Bush's Great Worr on Trrr and -- fatuously in the light of events -- ensuring that the British homeland is safe from infiltration from abroad by foreign agents of terrorism.

Just when will the UK get its act together and start behaving like a serious, grown-up, responsible country? I suppose we have to be grateful that the Metropolitan Police have not, as yet, shot any passing Brazilians.

*It is true that Spain's PP also supported the invasion, though it did not commit Spanish troops to participate in it (they did go afterwards). It is also true that the PP lost the ensuing general election, has lost all subsequent regional elections, is regarded as the pariah of Spanish politics, and has not led the Socialists in the polls at any point of the two and a half years of this four-year Parliament.

Holidays / Vacaciones

I am going on holiday on Sunday. I am going to Berlin, Dresden, Warsaw and Krakow (including Auschwitz). I had hoped to put an introduction here but I simply have not had enough time. I will post a diary with comments when I reach Britain, in a fortnight’s time.

Estoy de vacaciones a partir de este domingo. Voy a Berlín, Dresde, Varsovia y Cracovia (incluyendo Auschwitz). No he tenido tiempo para poner aquí una introducción, pero habrá algo cuándo llegue en Inglaterra.