HomeFlying
In which travel is a bad idea
Well, I’m glad I’m not going anywhere today. Not just in a plane, but anywhere that might involve driving past an airport, because no doubt the traffic around them will be awful too.
Today demonstrates the horror of 24-hour news. I’m just as bad as everyone else, refreshing the BBC News site every five minutes to get the latest on the Terror Alert. The news reports, meanwhile, are filled with hyperbolic phrases such as “mass murder on an unimaginable scale”.* No it isn’t. People have imagined it. To quote The Princess Bride, “I do not think you know what that word means.”
The government seems to be stuck between a rock and a hard place, when it comes to statements. “We have arrested everyone involved, apart from the ones we haven’t”. “This is nothing to do with race, but we’re talking to Community Leaders about it.” How do you become a Community Leader, anyway? Are there elections?
No doubt bottled liquids will be confiscated on planes for the next few months, before everything goes back to normal, and the next terrorist attack comes along with something completely different. The ones that get through are never the ones you expect, after all.
* To be fair to the media, it was a police spokesman who came up with that exact phrase.