Even pre-all-that, airports and flying had become an ordeal to get through before the holiday fun starts. After a three-year break, I’d forgotten the degree to which air travel has become an exercise in queuing before you finally get on the plane. BA, it seems, are going for the nostalgia effect, not just by rebranding as BEA and BOAC (kids etc.). No, our beloved Downton class system is revived, alive and well: ‘We’ll be serving our EuroClub customers with a choice of meals and drinks from the bar. And we’ll be throwing EuroTrash, sorry Traveller customers a complimentary bottle of water and packet of crips’. About as classy as a cheap yet still ridiculously snotty golf club. At least you know where you stand with RyanAir.
“Arrest of alleged spy raises questions around UK’s China policy”
If you’ve read Ben MacIntyre’s “The Spy and the Traitor”, you’ll know that Russia, then the Soviet Union, was recruiting both MPs and their staff left (of course), right and centre in the Cold War 60’s and 70’s.
