Zimbabwe and Mugabe – one year on and nothing’s changed

At the start of the year the papers around the world were full of horror stories from Zimbabwe. A flick through them now would show nothing, leading a reasonable man to think all was well. Nothing could be further to the truth.

The fragile coalition between Mugabe and prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai has increasingly looked to be a means of allowing Mugabe to keep control with a veneer of credibility. In recent months old problems have resurfaced, and behind the scenes much of the suffering continues.

Tsvangirai, for a long time seen as the best hope for change, increasingly looks like a busted flush. On a visit to Britain earlier this year he was, to his bewilderment, heckled and accused of selling out by Zimbabwean dissidents. A brave man, there is a feeling he appears to have lost much of his fight, understandable since the death of his wife.

The Mugabe regime has resumed pumping out the same propaganda and his henchmen are back in the business of doing what they enjoy doing best. And there are again signs that the courts are being ignored and the police used as Zanu-PF weapons.

The world’s had a break. Zimbabwe is about to resume being headline news.

Wilshire heads off into a lucrative sunset

So David Wilshire has been found out and forced to stand down. Despite his best bluster, in the end the truth came out. He will still have the last laugh. As he has managed to stay on until the end of this government sometime next year, he will still be entitled to the usual standing-down handout, he has one more visit to the trough at our expense.

It may be two. It is possible his reward for going quietly will be a knighthood if David Cameron wins the election.

In his constituency, the Conservatives will be breathing a sigh of relief. The Liberals has been making gains, although the odious characters they chose to represent them on the local council will hardly have helped their cause. With Wilshire there was every chance of an upset.

Now the Conservatives will pick a new candidate without the baggage Wilshire brought with him.

Why you should never fly Ryan Air

This is a quite superb summary of all that is wrong/disgraceful with the odious Ryan Air, the low-cost and even lower-quality airline.  Courtesy of The Times.

1. 1p flights are never 1p

Even if you strike it lucky and find a 1p flight you actually want to take, Ryanair charge you for the pleasure of paying for it. To the tune of £4.75. For each passenger. Each way.

And that doesn’t even include…

2. The check-in charge

If you want to book a bag into the aircraft hold you must check in at the airport, which will cost you £4.75 per passenger, per way, if you book online and a whopping £10 per passenger, per way if you pay at the airport or over the phone. And it doesn’t matter if only one person in your party takes a bag, everyone else still has to pay to check in at the airport too.

This week Ryanair announced that it’s all change from May when airport check in will rocket to £20 per person, per way. That is a grand total of £160 for a return flight as a family of four.

All without factoring in…

3. The baggage charge

Which is an extortionate £9.50 per bag, per flight. Or £19 if you book at the airport or over the phone.

4. The sneaky weight limit

Ryanair set its weight limit for hold luggage at 15kg catching the majority of passengers off guard.

You’re not allowed to pool bags either so, even if you have a party of four sharing luggage, if the bag weighs 16kg you will be charged £14 per additional kilo. Nevermind that it makes not a jot of difference to the weight of the aeroplane.

5. Queues glorious queues

If you’re still talking to your partner following the inevitable blazing row about why you shouldn’t just pay the bloody charges listed above, you won’t be after being told to join the back of the enormous queue at the ‘payments’ desk.

6. The additional baggage charge

Probably best to wear all of your clothes at once on the flight if you are travelling somewhere for more than a couple of days (until Ryanair start charging passengers for excess body weight that is). Check more than one bag in and it will cost you another £19 per extra piece of luggage, per way.

7. The website is rubbish. On purpose.

You have no choice but to book a Ryanair flight through its website so the airline may as well make it as stressful an experience as possible. The website is ugly for starters, and it crashes. All the time.

Because you can’t easily browse for dates when cheap flights are available you have to dedicate at least five precious hours of your life to sitting in front of the screen and laboriously trying different combinations to find a good deal.

And if you don’t understand what the hell you’ve just pressed there is no one to e-mail. Because Ryanair want you to spend more money and phone its…

8. Premium rate internet helpline

Calls cost £1 a minute to speak to someone in a call centre. Be amazed if you can explain what your problem is for under a fiver.

9. You can only fly cheap mid week

To get the bargains that make the pain of Ryanair worth the gain you have to be prepared to fly on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, which can rule out the bargain European weekend break. Kind of why you wanted to book with Ryanair in the first place.

10. You have to travel at obscene hours.

Not only are you travelling on a Tuesday you also have to be prepared to wake up at 2am to get to the airport two hours ahead of your 6.55am flight. Or, if you choose a more civilised evening departure time, arrive in your destination at midnight with no where to stay because…

11. The destination airports are in the middle of nowhere.

Don’t expect to fly to Frankfurt if you book a flight to Frankfurt, to name one of many examples. Frankfurt Hahn airport where Ryanair land is 120 km from the city centre.

12. A bottle of water on board costs £3

I know the moral of this story is to buy a drink from WH Smith before you board, but it’s still annoying.

13. Sweaty, plasticky seats

Whatever you do, don’t wear shorts or you might be stuck to your seat forever and forced to listen to…

14. The in-flight musak

Pray that your flight is not delayed before it takes off or you’ll have to put up with the bleepy, computer-game inspired musak that is played on loop as your board, over, and over.

15. The fanfare

Do we really need the shrill fanfare that sounds when/if the flight lands on time? Or does it just ruin the first three minutes of each passenger’s holiday?

16. You can’t book a seat

As if the British holiday ritual of crowding round the baggage carousel isn’t enough to warrant the use of blood-thinning medication, Ryanair invite you to partake in the extreme sport that is racing across the tarmac to get a seat next to your companion. Flip flops are a distinct disadvantage.

17. No refunds, ever

Unless you have a spare few days to waste do not even bother trying.

18. Poor compensation

A report by the UK’s Air Transport Users Council has found that the world’s airlines lost more than one million bags in 2007 and more than 42 million pieces of luggage were mishandled worldwide.

Guess who it named as the worst airline for compensation if your bag goes missing or is damaged?

19. You are always being flogged stuff

No we don’t want your ridiculously overpriced travel insurance, car hire or Ryanair tea-towels. Go away.

20. Michael O’Leary himself

Don’t tell me you can bear to make him any more smug?

By Laura Whateley

Suicide by recorded delivery

It would be hard to think of a more idiotic decision that that of the postal workers to strike. At a time their core business is under the spotlight because of its ingrained inefficiencies and capacity to hemorrhage hundreds of millions of pounds, they are playing into the hands of those who think the whole thing ought to be broken up and privatised.

At the moment there is huge public support for the Post Office and its workers. It is rightly seen as a valuable national service at a time when such things have all but been wiped out in the name of profit. But a strike in the build-up to Christmas will erode that support rapidly. Cards are one thing, but many of us now do large amounts of Christmas shopping on the web, and with no deliveries, it will mean back to the dreaded shops.

In the mid 1950s there was a railway strike. At the time the industry was uneconomic and appallingly run. Much freight was lost to the roads, goodwill squandered, and the railways never recovered. A decade later came Beeching. Lessons from history.

Welcome to the UK

The long and winding queue

Full credit to the US immigration authorities. For years, their humourless and aggressive treatment of those entering the country was a major deterrent to visiting. But in the last year or so they appear to have been sent en masse to charm school. Smiles, friendliness and even helpfulness has replaced the dead-pan obstructiveness. Arriving at an airport in New York is almost a pleasant experience,

Contrast that with returning home to Heathrow. Aside from the airport suffering from years of mismanagement and underinvestment by BAA, the UK border controls are marked by curt signs verging on the bullying (better not tell them that not everyone is an illegal asylum seeker) and a seeming desire to create queues at any opportunity. If you didn’t know better, you might think they are running an internal sweepstake to see if the queue for UK/European nationals can be kept at all times longer than the already ridiculous one for non EU passport holders.

Welcome to the UK.

The land of the self interested

After spending the last week in the USA, some of the arguments surrounding President Obama’s healthcare reforms have been little short of disgusting, reflecting the obsession of many, largely Republicans, to hold on to all they have and hang the rest. They seem to fail to understand – or perhaps they simply don’t care – that their greed and ignorance makes the society they have to live in more divided and hostile.

While Obama’s election was heralded around the world as the dawn of a new era, the possibility that the Republicans might force him to scale back his reforms shows that money and greed still controls many areas of modern life in the USA.

Snouts in the trough

Derek Conway is a throwback to the Tony’s who oozed round Westminster in the twilight of John Major’s time at No. 10. Self interested and sleezy. Sadly, he has offered little and left politics with any fragment of its credibility – and there’s not much left – removed. But at least he’s been stripped of the whip and forced to stand down at the next election. Good riddance.

In recent months sleeze and snouts-in-the-trough has been a Labour speciality. Blair encouraged it by his refusal to force disgraced ministers from David Blunkett to Steve Byers to Peter Mandelson out. At least Peter Hain quit on his own, but the reality is that he had run out of friends, not that he had many in the first place according to Westminster insiders. His excuses even before the matter of donations received by him was referred to the police lacked any credibility.

Mbeki … Africa’s embarrasing disgrace

In an era when politicians worry increasingly about their legacies, President Thabo Mbeki should worry more than most. Inside his own country he will be remembered for his disgraceful refusal to acknowledge the devastating AIDS crisis and the untold suffering and mass of orphans his pigheadedness caused. On the world stage, his supine pandering to Robery Mugabe has brought shame on his country.

Mbeki is like a rabbit in the headlights as far as Zimbabwe is concerned, unable to act because of Mugabe’s reputation as a war hero and revolutionary. Even thought the evidence is there for all to see, he ignores it, and his comments this week that Zimbabwe’s elections had been free and fair were greeted with amazement and incredulity, even inside South Africa. It is unlikely that he would have been so fulsome in his praise had Mugabe actually lost.

Of countries from the – supposed – free world, South Africa was the only one allowed to monitor the Zimbabwe elections, mainly because of the reputation of their monitors as being utterly pathetic. In 2002 the international media, not known for their outbreaks of emotion, burst out laughing when the SA monitors announced the elections had been free and fair. Perhaps it was the sight of one of their number with a head swathed in bandages after being thumped by an over-zealous Mugabe thug at a polling station that did it. Anyhow, they were about as feeble this time.

Mbeki has shown himself to be one of Africa’s most weak and embarrassing politicians. A man who was the one who perhaps could have saved millions from suffering chose to sit by and actually encourage it. But, then again, given how he left millions of this own people to endure a wretched death, why on earth should anyone be remotely surprised?

Politicans now beyond redemption

I actually thought the politicians got what they had done wrong, I really did. But yesterday’s decision to publish the lurid details of their expenses claims with many details blacked out and others missing just shows how woefully out of touch they all are. More than that, it shows they still think we are all idiots.

At every turn those running this country try to pull the wool over our eyes. Earlier in the week Gordon Brown called for an inquiry into Iraq … behind closed door. Two days later the establishment showed its true colours with this feeble attempt to cover up the worst excesses.

From the Hutton report to parliament’s attempts to exempt itself from the Freedom of Information Act, too many of those in positions of power have shown themselves to be untrustworthy, devious, dishonest and greedy. Nothing short of a complete clear-out is needed.

David Wilshire … the noose tightens

Now that the full list of MPs claims are revealed, David Wilshire, the Spelthorne Conservative whose protests of innocence have looked increasingly weak of late, has more explaining to do.

It now appears that Wilshire – who owns three houses – claimed £160,542 in 2007-08, including nearly £200 for newspapers, £2,000 on meals and more than £9,000 on “communications”. In March of last year he spent over £2,500 on printer ink!

Between 2004 and 2008 Wilshire was the sixth-highest claiming MP, despite having a fairly compact constituency within 20 miles of Westminster. However, he has a house in Somerset and sees nothing wrong with claiming for travelling between that and Westminster, despite also having homes in his constituency and in central London.

He has refused calls for a constituency meeting, but pressure increased on him with news that Ian Taylor, from the neighbouring Elmbridge constituency, quit this week after a string of embarrassing stories about his spending. Taylor, of course, insisted his decision was unconnected to those stories.

Rumours have been circulating that Wilshire may face opposition from a high-profile celebrity at the next election. If he does, then his explanations will have to get much better than he has managed so far.