I’m all for environmentally friendly ideas, but I think they need to be practical. If they’re not, environmentalists are going to get laughed at and ignored. So well done to this particular urban planning charity, which has come up with the entirely feasible concept of moving Heathrow airport to the east of London. That doesn’t make greens look stupid at all. Oh no.
Travel is stressful
It’s not fun, driving down the motorway. There’s the monotony, the roadworks, the constant risk of falling asleep (bet you’re looking forward to driving behind me). Case in point: yesterday. It took us seven hours to get home from Swansea, a trip that normally takes four and a half hours or so. You see, there’d been a really nasty accident on the M4 that closed down junctions 17-19. So we ended up diverted to the middle of nowhere and it took us two hours to get to junction 17 from junction 18 via Cirencester. Not good.
The first services we came to, we stopped. 10.30pm and most places should have been shut. But Burger King was very nicely keeping itself open past the point it should have closed. It was doing that to help out us and all the people like us had been stuck on the motorway.
What was their reward? Abuse. Abuse because they didn’t have enough food of the right variety. Abuse for the whole motorway incident. No good deed goes unpunished, huh?
Stress is understandable. Taking it out on people who are trying to help you isn’t. So thanks Membury services Burger King staff. Thanks for helping us out. And all you nasty people who abused them: shame on you!
Not very useful list
I’m sure there’s a reason why icWales has posted a list of celebrities who are afraid of flying. It just escapes me for now.
Some interesting ideas on how to improve airports
Salon’s regular Ask the Pilot feature highlights some of the best features from airports around the world that should be made universal.
Possibly the world’s stupidest survey
Someone reckons the UK is the most loved country in the world, based on a survey of 26,000 Internet users. Anyone spot the flaw in the methodology?
Teen reporters unmask man claiming to be a British duke
From today’s Romensko:
High school journalists in Stillwater, MN investigated a man pretending to be teenage member of British royalty who wanted to enroll at their school. They discovered that “Caspian James Crichton-Stuart IV, the Fifth Duke of Cleveland” was actually Joshua Gardner, a 22-year-old convicted sex offender from Austin, MN. “Why would a member of the royal family come to Minnesota to go to school?” asks a school newspaper staffer. When quizzed last month by student journalists, “his accent started to falter, and he became agitated,” says a student editor.
Wow. Just like Scooby Doo.
Still, all it would have taken was just one English person to have heard his name and that would have been “case solved”. For Americans reading this, claiming to be called “Caspian James Crichton-Stuart IV, the Fifth Duke of Cleveland” is to being English as claiming to be called “Brittany Mary-Lou Faffermeir-Kerry from Springfield, Hawaii” is to being American.
By the way, if he’d actually described himself as a “British duke” or having a “British accent” that would have given the game away even quicker: we only talk about English, Irish, Scottish or Welsh accents here and only ever Scottish or English dukes. Only Americans talk about British accents or dukes. Just some advice if you’re ever planning on passing yourself off as someone British…
PS Did you see what I did there?
French taxi drivers beat British ones for rudeness hands down
If you think British taxi drivers are rude, how about this Parisian driver? I can’t personally attest to the rudest of Paris’ hire car industry, since the last time we tried to hire one, it didn’t turn up.
Do socialists ride buses?
It’s always the poshest people who become the most vehement Marxists. Think of Anthony Wedgewood Benn – Tony to his friends; think of Kitten off Big Brother 5, who despite claiming an impoverished background and a life of enforced prostitution, turned out to have had quite a nice Berkshire upbringing and a stint in boarding school; then, of course, there’s Timandra Harkness, whom I’ve already mentioned once today.
Fair dos and more power to them.
However, there is a certain irony and Islington-ness about it all that makes my blood boil. It just feels oh so patronising.
Take this Spiked article, all about how the demise of the Routemaster bus is an indication of the new nanny state we’re all living in and the death of democracy. Now, I don’t think anyone’s going to argue too much that either of those is an incorrect summation of modern life in the UK. But choosing the Routemaster bus as a symbol of it all? What’s up there?
When was the last time you were on a Routemaster? I’m guessing, if you’re a writer or editor for Spiked, approximately ten to 15 years ago. Here’s why I’ve come to this conclusion:
The cost of Vegas
Ah, there’s nothing I like better than mocking an organisation that’s thought about its needs enough to put together a press pack, yet hasn’t bothered to update it in two years. Congratulations, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority! You’ve managed to create a dozen or more inaccurate articles by now that no doubt you’ll have to correct, if ever you hear about them – which is unlikely.
Anyway, there are some fun nuggets of information in this particular press pack, including the fact the Venetian hotel (my favourite) cost $1.5 billion to build. That’s a lot of money.
Travelling to the US is rubbish for journalists
For those of you who don’t know, the US is one of about three countries in the world that (officially) treat journalists differently to other visitors. If you’re in the UK, you can normally get into the US with a visa waiver form (that’s the green one). But a close study of the visa waiver form reveals that that you can’t use it if you’re representing “a foreign media service”.
That means one of two things:
- Entering the US under false pretences – i.e. using the visa waiver form and claiming you’re on holiday
- Paying £50, making a trip to the US embassy for an interview, getting a letter from a magazine saying they’ll be responsible for you financially and a week or more without your passport
Continue reading “Travelling to the US is rubbish for journalists”