Take to the skies.

Well it looks like Lord Adonis has announced that all UK airports are back in business again. Which is good news for holiday makers, those stranded, plane spotters and airline companies. It probably isn't so welcome by those on the Heathrow / Gatwick /Manchester airport flight paths, Greenpeace and people with a phobia of flying. But it does seem to draw a line under a situation that uniquely left Europe without the ability to use (pretty much all of) air travel since about the early 20th century.

It's been a funny old week without the sound of jet engines, or the presence of vapour trials a few miles up. The stranded passengers that were caught up in it (my own parents couldn't go away on holiday.) seem to have pretty much taken it on the chin, resigned that it is just one of those things. It also gave several tabloid writers an excuse to bemoan the "health and safety, nanny state, PC, whatever; gone mad Britain" despite the fact that most of Europe was under lock down. We also had attempts to blame Gordon Brown for geological phenomena. Lame ass jokes about Iceland giving us ash not cash, which wasn't funny when I first heard it, and gets exponentially rubbisher on repeated hearings. Lastly it brought out all the armchair speculators, saying it was an overreaction. Those who had the advantage of subjective "good old common sense", and not the responsibility for passenger welfare. So I think it's fitting that perhaps the last of the articles we will get on it is this slightly barmy one by Harry Phibbs. It seems that the EU has used it as a plan to steal good old British Airspace (airspace is; for obvious reasons, quite a transnational affair. Making it more parochial would be a headache for Air Traffic Control, to put it mildly.) with the "elf n safety zealots." Phibbs comes to this conclusion that it was all a bit of a waste of time, with this priceless observation.

"Safety first,’ is a powerful mantra. But looking up at the sky it appeared safe enough to me. No ash to be seen."

Truly an embodiment of the spirit of the scientific method. Harry asks rhetorically; which professionals can we trust. The answer should probably start off with, not Harry Phibbs.