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Is anyone really surprised? Does anyone who has ever used British Airways actually have anything good to say about them?
Last year when I flew back from Nicaragua, British Airways lost my bag. I was left with a phone number to call to try and trace it.
I called it. It was so busy that I couldn’t even go into a queue. My God, how many bags had they lost?
They recorded message simply told me to ring back another time. I tried and tried and tried and I never got through to one human being on that phone line. I didn’t even get to join the queue – not even the luxury of being exasperated by hold music.
I started ringing all numbers. I no longer cared that I was ringing the wrong hotline. I just wanted to speak to a person. Nothing, nothing and nothing.
Some weeks later I came home and wandered what that was in the backyard. It was my bags. I hadn’t been in so they just chucked them round the back.
No letter of apology or anything. No follow up phone call or email. Can you imagine any other organisation behaving like this?
Traveling by air is not fun. It’s almost as if the airlines know they are the bad guys. Like they’ve decided to cut back on every customer comfort and maximise their profits before the green lobby catches up with them.
If their customers hate them in the meantime then what do they care? If it’s all going to come crashing down then they might as well be architects of their own downfall. Better that, they must reason, than letting the Greenies do it.
I liked this from author Anthony Horowitz who was caught up in the debacle with his family:
The one thing I didn’t see at Heathrow was the expected demonstration by environmental groups such as Greenpeace or Plane Stupid. But perhaps they weren’t needed. There were, after all, thousands of people protesting for them, albeit in a rather lacklustre and disorganised way. They were called passengers.
And at the end of the day, it is their voice that may put an end to the vexed question of airport expansion. The bigger it gets the worse it gets, and I’d guess that modern air travel carries with it the seeds of its own destruction. There will have to come a time when everyone decides that anything is better than seat 27K behind the lavatory… even staying at home.
The environmentalists only have to wait, because in the end they’ve simply got to win.
Only Louise Taylor of the Guardian could pen this article about Roy Keane and let him get away with calling everyone else (except him) a hypocrite.
Because remember we’ve already proved that Louise loves Roy.
Interesting thought that depite some very dark times for Newcastle United recently, Louise has kept pretty quiet by her standards regarding the goings on at St James’ Park. Maybe the Guardian have finally listened to all those Newcastle fans who complain on its forums about her admitted bias.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning that in the piecel linked above she writes:
As Keane’s overseer at Nottingham Forest, Clough would not tolerate dissent and his players were famously respectful towards referees. If, as a United player, Keane sometimes forgot those strictures, he has now ordered everyone at Sunderland to adhere to them. “I have made it very clear to the players and the staff at our club – whether they be with the Academy, reserves or my first team – that you have to show the officials respect,” he insisted
Even so, the former United and Ireland captain stresses that there are more heinous footballing crimes than ‘disrespecting’ the men in black. “There has been so much rubbish spoken in the last week or two,” he said. “I have spoken to many old players and they used to go out and try to break people’s legs.”
Of course you’d never get that kind of behaviour from Saint Roy. See below and see the horrible taunting afterwards. But Louise doesn’t question Roy, she only prints what he says.
