Friday, May 20, 2011

Fifty ways to loose your luggage (The budget airline song)

The budget airline song - Fifty ways to loose your luggage

to be sung to the tune of Paul Simon's Fifty ways to leave your lover

This song is inspired by the endless frustration at airports where the glamour of air travel has given way to an experience not far removed from that of the coach stations of old. To make up for their government-subsidised cheap ticket prices budget airlines have resorted to all kinds of surcharges combined with cost savings which can tire the most seasoned traveller. Whilst the situation is global, in Europe, Ryanair, the airline whose executive pondered about charging for the use of toilets whilst in flight and suggested the introduction of planes with standing room instead of seats to pack in more passengers, is the most notorious contender, charging you for the privilege to print your own boarding cards, offering you "priority boarding", which is really "priority waiting", since after you've been allowed to go first through the barrier, you simply wait at the end of the corridor whilst the remaining passengers wait to be let through, after which all passengers are let out to the aircraft together scrambling for any available seat. As the saying goes: Time to spare, go by air. To make you buy expensive low quality food on board, the airline insists that even the sandwich you bought at the airport has to fit into your one piece of hand luggage. Many passengers are going through the embarrassment of repacking their bags to match the prescribed dimensions. Should your reading book not fit inside you will have to conceal it somewhere on your body to avoid being surcharged, which lead me to paraphrase Paul Simon's song. I could have added many more rhymes but wanted to keep as close to the original song as possible. You're welcome to add your own version via comments.

Air travel used to be a joy some time ago
Service was good but prices were not too low
Then along came budget flights at prices you'd afford
And with it came limits of how much to take on board
There must be fifty ways to loose your luggage

She sad it's really not my habit to be rude
But to defeat the constant checks, the method must be crude
To stop yourself from being pursued
There must be fifty ways to loose your luggage
Fifty ways to loose your luggage

Hide it under your hat, Pat
They'll never spot that
Put on an extra coat
And get yourself free
Hop on the plane, Jane
Don't let them drive you insane
Just fill all your pockets, Lee
And get yourself free

She said why don't you get a waist belt to conceal
All your belongings, so they don't look as real
Plus all the duty free you bought for the in-flight meal
There must be fifty ways to loose your luggage
Fifty ways to loose your luggage

Hide it under your hat, Pat
They'll never spot that
Put on an extra coat
And get yourself free
Hop on the plane, Jane
Don't let them drive you insane
Just fill all your pockets, Lee
And get yourself free

Monday, May 02, 2011

Did Osama kill Obama?

The news that Qaddafi's son and three grandchildren were killed in a bomb raid in Tripoli was soon eclipsed by the announcement that Osama bin Laden had been found, killed in combat and quickly buried at sea, some seven hundred miles away, and thus not the most obvious choice of burial location unless you wanted to hide something. But these days, journalists don't ask difficult questions anymore, and the world media were full with world leaders grasping the opportunity to sound jubilant and reassert their unswerving loyalty to America and the so-called war on terror. That war, we are told, is not dead with Osama, but likely to be intensified. Al-Qaeda, by now having outdone even McDonald's as a true American brand name, lives on and the soap opera continues.

For a soap opera it is, and bin Laden, one of the main actors, had eventually to be written out of the script, since he no longer participated in any of the episodes and his occasional appearances by audio or video tape lacked the credibility of the real actor in the flesh. The war on terror needs its success stories, and tracking down, confronting and eradicating bin Laden fits the bill perfectly. It also puts to rest the pertinent questions about the whereabouts of the absent actor. Happy with the "mission accomplished" statement, there is no longer any need to speculate about the frail man on a dialysis machine who could not possibly have survived the aerial bombardment at the start of the Afghan war hiding out in a cave in Tora Bora.

Does it matter? Actors change and the show goes on. Now and then a "radical" Muslim youth guilty of the equivalent of the pub banter that those in authority "all ought to be shot" and that "he'd be the first send them to hell" gets arrested, as recently in Germany, proof that terrorism is alive and kicking although incapable of going beyond the stage of wishful thinking, possibly helped by a good measure of entrapment from the security services. When this doesn't suffice and people stop tuning into the series, something more dramatic gets orchestrated to attract the crowds back to the set: a real explosion in a place where security is easy to evade, for example Marrakesh. The entrance roads to all major Moroccan towns now sport police check points where police do exactly what their Western counterparts do: cash in on the suffering of ordinary people. In Morocco they specialise in taking bribes of motorists (akin to the use of speed cameras in the West), whereas in Europe and America they sell expensive body scanners.

Incidentally, amongst the innocent victims of the carnage in Marrakesh was an Israeli who lived in Shanghai and visited his relatives in Morocco for Passover, putting paid to the lie that Jews (at least those who were not persuaded by the Zionists to migrate to Israel) could not live peacefully amongst their Muslim neighbours in Arab countries. But who pays notice to the facts? Who goes back to the original 9/11 videos and wonders how comes that airoplanes made from lightweight metal penetrate undamaged through buildings made from concrete and heavy steel, melting into the structure and even popping out the other side? It does not matter whether the attack happened as presented on the television screens, what matters for the ordinary viewer is who ordered it, and since Osama has now sunk to the bottom of the sea, the good guys have finally regained the upper hand again in this cops and robbers show. Two questions are never asked (or allowed to ask): who wrote the original script and who benefits from the outcome?

Since the war on terror is mainly fought in the media, anything goes. New wars can now be fought without a declaration of war upon the spurious excuse that we must protect rebels who want to overthrow their government against the repercussions from the the machine of state. By that logic America should have supported the IRA aforetime against the British government who did not willingly give in to their demands. Or the Palestinians against Israel, for that matter, but for sympathy for the underdog to go quite that far is, of course, unthinkable.

Sadly, the people are always the losers. Playing on their hopes of real democracy and fears of terror and violence, the world is being restructured. European countries are turning into police states in order to deal with the expected disquiet over the economic meltdown caused by fraudulent bank created credit. Sudan is partitioned in order to put an end to the war over the oil fields found at the disputed border line. Egypt retains a military government but is given a secular, rather than Islamic, constitution. American stooges who willingly agree to be written out of the script are rewarded with a gracious pension, from Idi Amin to Husni Mubarak. Those who refuse and want to carry on playing a major role, are punished severely, such as Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. And with some, the script writers had simply forgotten to carry on their story, so Osama, long since dead, had to be publicly killed once more to achieve closure. Maybe Obama, having only just recently released his own birth certificate after many years of agonising hesitation, can now proceed to fake his near namesake's death certificate.