Open Road

Friday Feb 16th 2007

Missing the Flight

Seasoned travellers on Ryanair know the form.  Unless you are lucky (?) enough to be travelling with small children, then it’s just one big bundle for seats when the doors open and last man on gets the rubbish middle seat in the back row (next to the small children).

Leave it too long, of course, and you might miss the flight altogether.

The current climate change campaign being run by Ryanair’s charismatic Michael O’Leary is the equivalent of falling asleep in the departure lounge while the rest of the passengers climb aboard.

Wednesday Feb 14th 2007

US: The Race Is On

If a week in politics is a long time, a few days in Washington DC - as I spent last week - can seem like a lifetime.

This is the most brutal of political market places. Who is up? Who is down? Trends, patterns, fads...only Madison Ave looks harder for the newest, hottest phenomenon.

Tuesday Feb 13th 2007

The strange death of the House of Lords

In 1066 and all that – probably the greatest work of history produced in the English language – reference was made to Mr Gladstone’s inability to solve the Irish question.  Whenever he thought he had an answer, the Irish changed the question.

The question of the House of Lords represents a modern version of the same conundrum.  Unfortunately for modern politicians, it is they who pose the question, and they invariably get it wrong.