ONE-WAY TICKET TO DISASTER

The week ended with success for airlines and with failure for BA and our climate.

According to an agreement between the European Union and the United States, British Airways will lose its monopoly on conducting flights between America and Heathrow. From now on, all airlines, not just BA, are permitted to offer customers cross-Atlantic flights from Heathrow.

Airlines and customers are jubilant. The so-called ‘open-skies’ agreement means more business for the former, and cheaper flights to the US, for the latter. With competition fierce, ticket prices will decline. And it is only a matter of time until cheap airlines like Ryanair will jump on the bandwagon. Surely a good thing.

But after reading the Financial Times article about the agreement I was left wondering. After weeks of hearing about climate change, carbon footprints, and how humans should stop flying in order to save the world, the agreement seems the ultimate irony.

What will happen is this: there will be a rise in the number of people who can afford flights between America and Britain, and hence, a rise in the number of flights. Human beings are a weird bunch after all. We know climate change is bad, and that we need to do everything to stop it. But if you are offered cheap flights to far-off destinations, show me the person who will not accept gladly.

Simply put, what governments should be doing now is closing the skies, not opening them. This agreement is in no way beneficial to our climate. It is in no way designed to change our mentalities about flying. And without a change in mentalities, climate change will be irreversible.

CELEBRITY POLITICS?

If there is one resilient politician in British government then it has to be Tony Blair. The amount of criticism and disparagement from public and media that has come his way is astonishing, and in late weeks he has even had to contend with a police inquiry.

Any other politician would have given in by now and left the podium. Not Blair. Despite assurances that he would be gone by May 2007, a date he has now changed to September 2007, he is still hanging around, holding on to power with his bare hands.

Why? Is there a possibility that Blair, despite the Iraq war, the dismal situation of health and education, and the quagmire of scandal through which his party is wading, is still popular with the public?

I would argue, no. What it comes down to is just apathy. Pure voter apathy. The British public no longer cares about its politicians. The only way a politician can really arouse interest today is when he (it is still mostly a ‘he’) lets down his trousers and becomes intimate with his secretary. Only then will magazines like Hello or OK acknowledge their existence.

And therein lies the key to the question, why the British public no longer care about politicians. Politics have been replaced by a celebrity craze. Look at the amount of righteous feeling awakened by Jade Goody’s racist outburst on Celebrity Big Brother.

Basically, the British can no longer be mobilised by politicians, so they can not be incensed by them. Instead, celebrities are now impacting emotionally on public opinion.

And as long as British politics continue in this state, this situation seems unlikely to change.

The Russian Bear is growling again

Vladimir Putin is by no means an angel. In fact, it might be hard to find another democratically-elected President behaving so much like a dictator. But recently, I have found myself agreeing with him.

It was at a meeting in Munich with other top-politicians that Putin metaphorically slammed his fist on the table to extort America against its “unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions.” His diatribe was caused by the news that the USA were planning more anti-missile defences in Europe, ostensibly aimed against Iran.

The European press once again accused Putin of overreacting. But in view of Bush’s record for provoking completely unnecessary wars, was the Russian president really being over-sensitive? Because I don’t think so.

The United States are rapidly becoming the most dangerous country in the world. Bush and his cronies are not satisfied with having made a complete mess-up of Iraq. Next down on the list appears to be Iran, then Syria. And then?

It seems entirely suitable for Putin, leader of a former superpower, to be uncomfortable about the thought of American military bases expanding in Central and Eastern Europe, an area notoriously close to Russian influence.

What is most irritating though, is they way the western press portrays Putin as the baddie and Bush as the good guy. And this even now, after it is evident that Bush cannot be trusted and is a complete liability for his country and the world.

We need to stop seeing Russia as evil and America as good. Past events have proved that this old world view is no longer applicable. Not as long as Bush is President, anyway.

CONSUMPTION OVERLOAD

Despite all the talk about global warming and the, frankly appalling, state of our environment, it seems as though we are still unable, even unwilling, to do anything about it.

I’ve come to this conclusion after reading a recent article from The New Statesman which portrays the British as the consumer junkies of Europe. Basically, it seems as though the life expectancy of any electric item in a British home is limited, to say the least, with people throwing away their cameras, mobile phones, computers or ipods left, right and centre.

As a result, toxic waste heaps are building up around the country, fuelling climate change by the minute, thanks to the British attitude (or non-attitude) towards recycling.

What the hell is wrong with us? Are we so consumed by the need to get the newest item of electronic equipment, so obsessed with gadgets and showing off that we are not giving a damn about the world we live in? Quite honestly, if we continue in this crazy quest for the most recent PC or digital camera we will soon have no world in which to use either.

It could be argued that part of the fault lies with the electronics industry and our capitalist world, which aims at selling as many of its products as possible, to as many consumers as possible. And on the whole, it is successful.

But it is easy to blame the industry. Each one of us is responsible for those heaps of methane-blasting, unused products heaping up in the British countryside, blasting out CO2. And as long as we don’t start a dramatic re-thinking process things won’t change.

Here goes...

I wonder how many people start their blogs by saying: So, i've finally opened a blog...So i am not going to go down that route.

I'm still surprised at myself though. Up until September (basically until starting the IJ course) I was absolutely dead against blogs etc etc. My opinion has always been that my life is only interesting to me and maybe a couple of other people (I hope...), so what's the point of putting details about myself on the web? Blogging is a form of self-advertising, and I find that very irritating. So it's going to take more than coercion by my IJ lecturers to feel convinced by blogging...

I mean, what the hell are you supposed to put in a blog? Is it a diary? Is it citizen journalism? As an aside, I am getting pretty annoyed at the constant harping on about 'citizen journalism'. If it was really that big a deal, why the hell are there still real journalists in the world? Personally, I don't believe in citizen journalism. People sitting in front of the TV on a saturday night pushing that red button on their remote control are hardly 'journalists', citizen or otherwise. Neither are people calling/texting BBC Breakfast on a weekday morning tellign them their views on some random news item. Things like that have been going on for decades on your average radio and TV shows across the world - why the sudden interest in it? It gets my back up...

Ah, I think I have discerned the way this blog is going...basically it will be an opportunity for me to do some good old ranting! And there's a lot in this world I could rant about...Forget the diary/citizen journalism idea: this space will be my personal letting-of-steam page!

Just to clarify, in case there are some people who have ventured on my blog: I've named my blog after the novel by E.M.Forster which I love. It's about this girl who lives this incredibly sheltered life in Edwardian England, but gains a wider world view during the course of the novel. It's great, I'd recommend it. And the film with Helena Bonham-Carter! Watch it!