Dear Mr Eavis,

What you do is ass-kicking. It’s awe-inspiring. It’s applause-tickling. I don’t think that last one is even a word, if it’s not, then I just created one for you, Mr Eavis. Firstly, even if I could, I would never have around 160,000 people camp in my backyard for a weekend. It seems a bit of a hassle, but you seem not to mind the drunkards, the merry-go-arounds, the chip-shops and the hundreds of thousands of tents – literally, in your backyard (I mean I could see your house from my tent). I have no idea where you keep the cows during the festival but thanks to your patience and theirs, I and all the other happy campers get to experience one of the most unique festivals, and weekends, of our lives.

This is only about 1/10 of the tents at Worthy Farm

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British Airways CEO Willie Walsh might be wishing it were all an April Fool’s joke. Bloomberg News reports that BA — largest occupant of London Heathrow and sole user of Heathrow’s newly-opened Terminal 5 — is still managing the meltdown of T5’s brand-new baggage handling system. Unable to deliver the world — or rather, the luggage — on time, BA is using Memphis, Tennessee-based Federal Express to reunite passengers with about 20,000 bags. FedEx is moving about 800 bags per day at Heathrow.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Already saddled with the notoriety of being Europe’s worst carrier for lost luggage, BA was going to turn around its reputation. But if anything, the airline’s biz cred has deteriorated. Since T5 opened on March 27, malfunctions in its computerized baggage system have caused more than 300 flight cancellations, and travelers say they will defect to BA’s two biggest competitors at Heathrow — BMI and Virgin.

So… what happened? Opinions are hitting the radio airwaves. American Public Media’s “Marketplace” reports that Everet Meyer of Jacobs Consultancy blames the glitches on inadequate training of workers and, possibly, industrial sabotage too. And John Hansman, director of MIT’s International Center for Air Transportation, says T5’s barcode scanning technology is outdated.

One thing’s certain: BA’s woes are far from over, and could add up to European Union fines of US$10,000 per stranded passenger, according to Larry Miller’s report on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.”

According to BBC News, on Sunday Virgin Atlantic pulled off the first partly-biofueled flight by a commercial airline. The Virgin Atlantic jumbo jet flew from London’s Heathrow over to Amsterdam, fueled partly by a babassu palm nut that grows wild in the Amazon. Virgin says that it believes such flights will become routine in 10 years. That’s all good, right? Well… depends who you ask.

Reuters reports that environmentalists are not pleased, for two reasons – doubt that biofuels will significantly reduce carbon emissions, and concerns that biofuels will divert staple food crops away from people’s plates. This from Friends of the Earth, an international environmental network:

There is mounting evidence the carbon savings from these crop-based fuels will be small at best. Even if every plane leaving the UK was able to run on biofuels from tomorrow, any carbon savings would be wiped out in less than 10 years by the rapid growth of the aviation industry.”

As for another concern — that biofuels may divert food crops from people’s mouths and into fuel production — Virgin said that it was ill-founded:

[Virgin] said the babassu tree, native to Brazil, and the coconuts did not compete with staple food sources, but rather, came from existing mature plantations. … Both products are commonly used in cosmetics and household paper products.”

Virgin founder Richard Branson insists that biofuel technology is viable, saying he believes algae produced in sewage treatment farms will be a likely source of renewable fuel for the airline industry in the future.

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If a budget airline makes it more affordable for people to travel, isn’t that a good thing for economic activity? Not so much, says Greg Dawson, director of communications for Travelodge Hotels Ltd, a large hotel chain which serves the UK, Ireland, and Spain, and is a £675 million investment for Dubai International Capital. Businessweek.com and The Guardian UK have reported that Dawson gave evidence on the travel sector of the UK economy, on January 29, before members of the UK Parliament. An “uncorrected transcript of evidence,” on the UK Parliament website, records Dawson as saying that discount airlines such as Dublin-based Ryanair and UK-based EasyJet are creating a deficit of domestic travelers in the UK. According to the transcript, Travelodge Hotels Ltd CEO Grant Hearn has said that for every two foreign visitors coming into the UK, five British nationals are going the other way.

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No other part of London excites and fascinates the soul in quite the way that Soho does. Its ability to condense the very best and worst of this great city into one square mile remains unparalleled. Soho, like all the best areas, is a place of absolute contradictions. It has sleaze yet spirituality; it has the poor but attracts the rich: it is stylish but always slightly edgy.

Soho has so much to offer that its streets are packed with all classes. Some are driven by food, heading for classy restaurants such as the Italian Quo Vadis on Dean Street (whose upstairs flat Karl Marx once lived and wrote in), or the Indian Red Fort on Frith Street. Some are heading for the musicals, in particular Mamma Mia at the Prince Of Wales Theatre on Old Compton Street, the Abba musical which has run for years. Some are here for the clothes, tailor made by the likes Mark Powell on Berwick Street, bought from individual clothes outlets such as Pop on Great Monmouth Street, or taken from huge outlets such as Ben Sherman on Carnaby Street.

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The British are rightly proud of their currency. So proud, in fact, that while the UK is one of the linchpins of the European Union, it has steadfastly refused to become a member of the so-called “Eurozone” – the group of countries that use the euro. Some recent entrants to the EU, like Hungary, have adopted the euro in fits and starts. In Hungary, the old national currency, the forint, still circulates side-by-side the euro. Even countries as remote and poor as Romania and Bulgaria may soon adopt the euro.

Great Britain, however, remains the great outlier in so many things. The British drive on the left with steering wheels on the right, have an unwritten constitution, think Kylie Minogue is entertaining, and hold resolutely to the venerable old pound, or as people in posh financial circles like to call it, “sterling”. Continue Reading…