The joy that is Luton airport

Have you ever flown into or out of “London Luton” airport?

Ah, the joy of travelling through “London Luton” airport

The quotation marks are there because no one who lives in Luton, as I do, or even just knows it, would see it as in any way part of London. The airport is about 54 km from the centre of the capital, which is just over twice the distance of, say, Heathrow. I suppose turning Luton airport into London Luton is slightly less fraudulent than the name of Frankfurt Hahn, which is some 120 km from Frankfurt, but only marginally.

As with its name, so with Luton airport’s character. When we first moved to the town, in 2010, the drop-off area at the airport was free to use – as it is in many far bigger airports. Then a 50p charge was introduced. Today it’s £3, a 600% increase. That covers you for ten minutes, and you may not leave your car even if you’re back within the time – as I discovered when I saw a wheelchair user into the terminal only to find the car about to be towed when I got back.

Naturally, you can leave your car, after parking it at the airport, but only in a different area and at a minimum charge of £7, for up to 40 minutes.

Still, at least this experience sets the tone appropriately for the experience one enjoys once into the terminal.

You can enjoy peace and comfort inside the departure zone, in a pleasant area with comfortable seating, free snacks and drinks. That, however, is only if you’ve coughed up £29 to get into the executive lounge. You’re not prepared to pay that? Then jostle with the throngs outside – the place is never calm – and queue while you wait for someone to leave their seat. Cafes seem to make a dismal habit of closing and one of the few that has opened recently started out badly: when we tried to have breakfast there, we found they had no milk and several items missing from their breakfast menu. I’m sure that was a teething problem, but it certainly rather shook my confidence and I haven’t been back.

Poor service and rip-off prices? Yep. London Luton airport wins all the prizes.

Why am I telling you all this?

Because it seems that consumer magazine Which? has officially declared Luton the hellhole of British airports, the veritable pits, the worst of the lot. It has completed a survey of users which gave Luton the lowest marks of all UK airports, with an overall rating of just 29%. That’s the lowest ever score since Which? started doing the survey. It’s also the fifth year in a row the airport has come last.

At least it’s a relief to know that others share my view: Luton airport really is a particularly ghastly place to have to use for travel.

Still, passengers keep coming. As another Guardian article points out, despite the terrible customer responses, numbers are up, with 1.6 million users in July, a 6.2% increase on the same month last year. Even I find it hard to avoid completely: it’s on my doorstep, whereas Gatwick or Heathrow mean adding an hour and a half to the trip and paying scheduled airline fares. However, whenever I can, I use one of those airports or, even better, travel by train: that is the luxury form of travel these days.

It’s true that Luton is struggling with a development programme that still isn’t complete. Maybe things will be better once it is. Although, perhaps only for an additional charge, with anyone not prepared to pay extra stuck with the old service.

After all, what can you expect of an organisation which names itself after a city it takes the best part of an hour to drive to?

Brexit: a veritable chorus of muddled thinking

Some people were upset with me when I recently mentioned that the Brexit movement seemed dominated by muddled thinking. ‘Condescending’, they found my comments, not to say snobbish, prejudiced and dismissive.

Well, let me confess that I’m as muddled as anyone.

It seems to me that the entire subject is dogged by, shot through with, submerged under muddled thinking. That’s for a simple reason: no one has any idea of what the implications of Brexit are.

It’s easy to say “Brexit means Brexit” but what could possibly be more dismissive than that? When it comes down to it, we in Britain are going to have to tackle the details behind such a casual slogan. On that detail, there’s nothing but muddle.

A recent report by Gavin Shuker, our MP in Luton South, opened my eyes to some of the issues I’d lost sight of but which we shall need to address in leaving the EU. 

The United Kingdom has devolved much political authority from the centre to its constituent nations, most of all to Scotland. But when that happened, certain areas of responsibility weren’t even discussed because they had already been delegated to Brussels, to the EU. An example would be agricultural matters, covered by the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

After Brexit, those powers will be repatriated to the UK. But where will they go? Will they be handled by the central government in London? Or will they be transferred to the devolved governments in the constituent nations? Has given anyone even given thought to the matter?

Agriculture: when “we” take back control, who will that “we” be?
Westminster – or Westminster, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast?

In any case, what’s going to replace the Common Agricultural Policy? Farmers are already getting organised. They want to see all the CAP’s subsidies maintained. In other words, they want the British government to go on paying them once they stop receiving them from the EU. That’s not to say that they’re not prepared to adapt to Brexit. They’d be prepared, you  may not be surprised to learn, to accept a lot less regulation than the EU tended to impose.

Those subsidies are paid for out of taxes. So there might be some outside the farming community who would take a rather different view. For my part, I’d be happy to see the subsidies continued, but I’d like the health and environmental regulations at least maintained. 

Things are no easier in the industrial or service sectors. Luton depends heavily for employment on the car industry (Vauxhall) and the airport. Can we count on similar guarantees for Vauxhall as were offered by the government to Nissan? Those guarantees persuaded the company to keep to its plan of producing a new model in Sunderland, North East England. It’s clear that other car manufacturers would like similar treatment. But can everyone be offered the same sweeteners? And if they were, wouldn't companies in other industrial sectors demand them too? 

So will Nissan turn out to be a one-off?

And what about aviation? Britain is currently covered by the European Common Aviation Area agreement. Other non-EU countries are signatories to it, such as Norway or Serbia. Nothing stops us coming to an arrangement with it too, though that would mean continuing to accept EU rules in the area. But is anyone making this a priority? 

Shuker didn’t mention this problem, but one that strikes me as important is fisheries. That’s principally because there has been real EU success in that area: fish stocks that were seriously threatened before are now recovering. But British fishermen are frustrated with the constraints EU regulation put on them. Do we want more cod wars? Do we want to go back to over-fishing again? Do we want to roll back that significant achievement?

There are huge numbers of other measures that need to be agreed and taken.

Only last week, the British representative to the EU, Sir Ivan Rogers resigned. He had warned the government that negotiating all the details associated with Brexit could take as long as ten years. That wasn’t information the government wanted to hear, so he went.

However, when we think about just the issues I mentioned above – who gets the powers repatriated from Brussels, how do we deal with farmers’ subsidies and regulation, how do we agree a fisheries policy, what do we do with the auto industry, how do we sort out aviation – and add that these are just a few of the myriad matters to deal with, ten years doesn’t sound like an exaggeration.

It’s been reported since that there is serious disquiet among the civil servants handling the negotiations with the EU. They feel there are too few of them and, as Rogers’ case demonstrates, their advice isn’t listened to attentively enough.

Too few people. A government that believes it can forge ahead without listening to expert advice. Far more extensive and far more complex issues than we or the government seem to be allowing for.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like muddled thinking to me.

Islamophobia and the unintended power of prayer

It’s always good to replace doubt by certainty.

I’m not sure whether anyone still believes that the basis of Islamophobia isn’t racism, rather than merely religious bigotry. Some perhaps cling on to that illusion. So an incident at Luton airport the other day is at least helpful in dispelling any such uncertainty.

Laolu Opebiyi is a British citizen living in North London. He’s also a committed Christian. I repeat: Christian, not Muslim. He belongs to a group called ISI Men. I repeat: ISI, not ISIS. ISI stands for Iron sharpens iron and is a reference to the Bible: “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend” (Proverbs 27:17).

Unfortunately, sitting on a plane at Luton he used his phone to text members of his group to suggest a conference call prayer, and received a most unwelcome lesson of the effectiveness of prayer, in a wholly unintended way.

The passenger in the seat next to him was reading the text over his shoulder.

“What do you mean by prayer?” he asked.

The neighbour was soon asking to be let off the plane as he felt unwell. And a little later, Opebiyi was taken off it himself by armed police, who questioned him about his beliefs and demanded the password to his phone so they could check just what he’d been texting. They asked him to confirm that he was not only Christian, but had never considered converting to another religion.

The police quickly cleared Opebiyi of the damaging charge of religious belief with intent to be a Muslim, and said he could travel on. Then the pilot intervened, refusing to carry him. So he had to catch the next flight. Seven other passengers who’d left the earlier flight to avoid him realised that he was going to be on the one they were taking instead, and there was another bit of a scene.

Eventually, he got to his destination. But when he returned, his passport was refused by the e-passport reader and border staff questioned him again. As he told the Guardian:

Someone felt I was a terrorist because they saw the word ‘prayer’ on my phone and now I stand in uncertainty about my freedom of movement in and out of the United Kingdom.

I have nothing but sympathy for his view that:

Even if I was a Muslim, it was pretty unfair the way I was treated. I don’t think anyone irrespective of their religion should be treated in such a way. If we keep on giving in to this kind of bigotry and irrational fear I dare say that the terrorists will have achieved their aim.

An excellent point. The triumph of terrorism doesn’t lie in a bullet or a bomb. It happens in our minds and hearts.

Finally, here are some test questions for you.

What colour do you think Mr Opebiyi’s skin is?

Laolu Opebiyi: victim of Islamophobia.
Without even being Muslim

Do you still think that Islamophobia is all about the finer points of conflicting religious doctrines?

Aren’t we good in the West at illustrating our unshakeable commitment to the principles of democracy and human rights?

The joys of a winter break. Even without the sun

Luton, where we live, boasts an airport.

In fact, many only know the town for that reason. “Oh, the airport, right?” they say.

Some who are better informed, think of it as the home of that enlightened organisation, the English Defence League. It stands for… well, you don’t need me to explain, do you? The word “League” is a bit of a giveaway, isn’t it? To say nothing of “English” and “Defence.”

Another group think of it as “Stab City.” Trainee emergency doctors love our hospital, as there are few places that offer such an exciting variety of knife wounds. They even get quite a respectable number of gun shot victims – I mean, nothing like a US hospital, of course, but still quite substantial by more civilised standards.

The airport is one of those cheerful little ones. The kind you might expect to provide reasonably good regional services – human in scale, unhurried, uncrowded, generally comfortable. Sadly, it has given way to ambitions way beyond its natural limits and become a major international centre. You know the sort of thing: flights to places whose names contain far too many consonants to be real.

Why, it’s even changed its name to London Luton, because if you don’t mind a ten minute bus trip, a forty minute train ride, a twenty-minute tube journey, and probably another ten minutes in a cab at the other end, it’s really quite convenient for London. And the experience won’t set you back anything like the cost of your first night in then hotel.

Well, not a lot like it.

Because it has the aspiration to be a Sylvester Stallone despite having the body of a Woody Allen, it’s always struggling to make better use of its space. Which it means it spends an inordinate amount of time making lousy use of its space, as building workers close huge areas off to transform them into something much more efficient and comfortable. In other words, something delightful which we’ll all enjoy, at some far off day in the future. Like Conservative economic policy, for instance.

They’re doing it right now. I’d been impressed by the way the airport had hugely improved the security check area. After a false start when it took about 45 minutes to get through, they managed to reduce it to under fifteen, which I feel is a reasonable amount to ask for, as the price for not getting blown up at 30,000 feet. Now, sadly, the pursuit of progress has led to massive regression. There has to be a PhD thesis waiting to be written how often that happens, if there haven’t already been several.

The ruthless pursuit of efficiency means that you now wait about twice as long in the queue. When you get to the front of it, you use a huge tray into which to place your things, so big that the number of people who can be dealt with at a time is cut pretty much by half. If you’ve brought a laptop, you need two of them things, one of which looks empty with a MacBook Air in it.

You then shuffle along in a forlorn little line reminiscent of the newsreel film of refugees trying to get into Hungary. Eventually, you get through to the other side to wait in another queue to collect your gear from the oversize trays at a counter far too small for them.

Next one walks through acres of spacious rooms, wide and high-ceilinged and palatial, all screened off for the builders. Eventually, you reach the departures area where the handful of seats have been taken and you’re left standing in front of a board which, for ten minutes, announces cheerfully that the gate for your flight will be displayed in 1 minute.

Still, that’s the price you pay if you want a winter break. I’ve often felt their beneficial effects. A great way to recharge the batteries. Of course, most people use such a break to go in search of sun and warmth, but we have more original and unorthodox ways. I’m on my way to rejoin my wife in Cracow, Poland. I’m glad to say that the clouds have cleared from the view I’m enjoying through the window next to me. It’s been replaced by a delightful pattern of snow-logged fields interspersed with snowbound cities. I’m glad to say that the pilot has just announced that the temperature at our destination has risen significantly, and has now reached -four degrees of frost. Nighttime’s going to be fun.

Cracow. Or Krakow.
Not exactly Luton. Not exactly hot, either

Talking about announcements, I did enjoy the safety briefing from our cabin purser. She delivered it in sentences that alternated between English and Polish, but it took me a while to work that out: at first I didn’t realise that every other one was actually in English. Not that it mattered: I think I remember about pulling the mask over my face, fixing it with the elastic band and breathing normally; I also fully intend to deal with my own mask first before helping others with theirs, if the situation ever arises. There didn’t seem to be much talk about lifejackets but, hey, unless we land in the Oder or the Vistula, I don’t see how there’d be much call for one.

Not that I want to be ungracious. I’m happy to admit that she was, at least, making the attempt to speak my language. I certainly couldn’t have replied in hers.

Anyway, I’m on my way to Cracow. Should be fun. A break. A new experience.

I suspect I’m unlikely to regret having forgotten to bring the sun cream. The scarf I left at home, on the other hand? I might need a new one.

Airport rapacity: an economics lesson. And, by the way, Happy New Year.

Airports: they’re so much more than just the places we go through to get somewhere else.

Socially, they play a key role in our lives. They’re funnels: because huge numbers of us go through them, they’re where coincidental meetings aren’t that much of a coincidence. Our sons belong to the English community in Madrid, and one of them, travelling back to this country just before Christmas, ran into three acquaintances taking the same plane. 

The airport was funnelling the homebound expats.

But they also illustrate key economic principles. They demonstrate, in particular, that prices have nothing to do with costs, and everything to do with demand.

Take airport parking. What’s the cost of a car park? Well, initially a bit of land, but the airport probably already owns that, having acquired rather a lot of the stuff when it first put in terminals and runways. And then, unless you’re going to build something on multiple storeys, all you need for a car park is a bit of asphalt.

Not a lot of cost. And for many years, airport parking was pretty easygoing. You used to be able to drive right up to the terminal and drop people off. You could even stand chatting to them before they headed indoors.

‘See you at Easter, then?’

‘Sure. And if you do find my scarf/glasses/ipad [delete as applicable], just bring it with you.’

Relaxed. Easy. Congenial.

Well, that experience has become a luxury these days. Airport authorities have worked out that demand vastly exceeds supply, and they can start to exploit that imbalance in their (financial) favour.

In Luton, where we live, the pickup/drop off area isn’t even next to the terminal any more. But, as though to compensate for that additional inconvenience, the authorities decided to charge of a pound to stop there for ten minutes. Overstay your welcome, and you’re in for an eye-watering penalty.

You don’t have to pay that fee. There’s a parking area rather further away where you get half an hour free of charge. Brilliant, especially as it has a shuttle bus service. Except that by the time you’ve waited for the bus and reached the terminal, you’ll have used up ten or more minutes, which is about the same time as it takes to walk. If you spend more than another ten minutes tracking down your friends, you won’t be back at the car before the half hour’s up, and then you’re in for a fee worthy of a far larger airport.

It’s the perfect trap.

But the stroke that really won my admiration came a few months ago. The one-pound fee at the pickup area went up to two pounds. A 100% increase. At a time when inflation is under 3%. Now that takes truly outstanding brazenness.

And a market wholly skewed towards the seller.

But Luton is special. Today we dropped off our Madrid delegation, two sons and a daughter-out-law, for their flight back home. But we were at Liverpool not Luton.

The yellow submarine at Liverpool John Lennon Airport

I’ve had a certain fondness for ‘John Lennon’ airport ever since the year Liverpool was European City of Culture. At the time, the terminal sprouted posters announcing that it was the official airport of the culture festival. I loved that. I wondered what the competition had been. Heathrow, maybe, a few hundred miles to the south? Or perhaps Edinburgh, much the same distance in the opposite direction?

Liverpool hasn’t quite caught up with Luton’s financial genius. It still allows a free drop-off period. But for just five minutes. I’ve never said goodbye to anyone so quickly, and I noticed the people in most of the other cars were being just as brief. Nothing’s so painful as a long farewell, so I suppose one might feel that Liverpool Airport was doing us a favour.

Or it hasn’t yet quite caught up with how markets really work.

The boys and the girl got home fine, if an hour or so late, and are now making ready for their New Year’s festivities. As we should. So it only remains for me, after sharing this edifying insight into the working of economic law, to wish the same to you.

Happy New Year.