Ashes to Crashes

"Did you know the Government is using the Icelandic volcano as an excuse to keep planes from flying?"

"Why?"

"Er....er...dunno. But you know what the Government's like"

"Do I?"

"Like, totally dude"

No, you're not reading an excerpt from the latest Dan Brown thriller, nor are you getting a sneak peek at the next Judd Apatow movie ("It's about a lazy jewish guy who's in an infeasible situation, then a stunning bird fancies him and his gang of stoner mates hang around. Nobody's done that before"), What you're reading is admittedly made up, but is a good example of the kind of cack being peddled by tired, annoyed travellers stuck in the nation's airports due to the aforementioned volcanic gubbins.

Put simply, planes + ash = dead. There's no hidden agenda; no cost-cutting exercise; it's just a scientific fact. Ash gets in the engines, melts, solidifies and (borrowing from the official Boeing 747 handbook) "proper fucks up the engines".

You can understand the airlines' reluctance to fly under these conditions. Ignoring the fact their planes might get a bit exploded in a firey pile, there's also the matter of the relatives of the dead, who'll quite reasonably enquire why they risked flying when volcanic ash "proper fucks up the engines". It's not worth the risk to life or hardware, so they're reluctantly having to sit tight on the apron until the ash clears and they can crack on.

It is an unprecedented event in aviation history to have a complete lock-down of air traffic. Even in the aftermath of 9/11 at least one plane carrying material removed due to Bush administration cover-up squad was allowed to fly, so this is something completely new.

Of course, that means the square root of knob all to the British public.

Quite rightly, they're annoyed, but I'd bet a sizeable chunk of money that they'd be a shite side more annoyed if they met their untimely doom thanks to engine up-fuckage. As I stated earlier, it's nobody's fault, but these tools are using the airtime afforded to them by bored BBC correspondents to have a right old moan. Multiple people have asked why they don't just fly a bit lower. That's a good idea, squire; it's not like there are any obstacles down here. The airlines fly extra high on purpose as a gag. In fact, why don't we go the whole hog and drive down the motorways, then sail across the Channel, Sullenberg-style?

The piece de resistance, however, was some no-mark suggesting that this was somehow a deliberate act by the Icelanders. No word of a lie, his quote was "first they ruined our banks, now they've taken our holidays". Such an ill-considered view was this that the newsreader had to apologise and clarify that they weren't suggesting the natural phenomenon of a volcano was some kind of vengeance for us asking for our money back (in case that's what we were thinking). Jesus Christ.

Now, I wasn't the interviewer of that simpleton, but I'm reasonably sure that had I been there, my succinct response would have been along these lines:

"Look, I'm sorry that your holiday's been royally buggered, but there's nowt you can do about it, and whinging to the press only seems to result in someone writing about it in a poorly-visited blog, so sit down, shut up and have a four quid cup of tea. Dick."