'Ghost' flights highlight current airline tax problems

For the last 6 months a British Mediterranean Airways plane has taken off from London's Heathrow Airport every day except Sunday and has flown the 140 miles to Cardiff and then returned the same day. The plane's departures have never been advertised on the departure boards and on each of those 124 seater flights not one single ticket has been sold and not one single passenger flew on any of them!



Why on earth would an airline spend an admitted £2million pounds on empty aircraft flying pointlessly between two cities every day of the week and, at a time when environmental issues are high on the agenda, deposit 5 metric tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere on EVERY single flight?

The answer is because, although flights in the winter are not economic for British Med, it is vital to their summer trade that they retain their airline parking 'slots' at Heathrow Airport. Like most international airports Heathrow operates a 'use it or lose it' principle. In order to guarantee the preservation of those vital slots for their summer holiday schedule, British Med have to guarantee that at least one plane will take off every weekday all the year round. It is cheaper for British Med to waste £2 million on empty flights than to see the coveted Heathrow Airport slot go to a rival company, the consequence of which would be to lose a whole lot more in terms of coveted key holiday routes. The value of such slots is seen as between £10 and £20 million

This is nonsense. Not only is it a waste of money which is bound to be reflected in the cost of airfares, it is an almost criminal environmental scandal. There has to be a re think on the way airport slots are allocated to prevent this kind of thing. In Britain at least all the political parties are thinking up new forms of airline tax they can sell to the electorate which both encourage conservation and are not swingeingly prohibitive for the holiday traveller. No one has yet found the perfect balance and in fact the airlines are howling with horror at David Cameron's proposals to be enacted by any future Conservative government but if this ludicrous British Med airlines situation is an example of the sort of idiocy which prevails under the current framework, something needs to be done and done quickly!

What Katie did - or one up to the fuller figure

British actress Kate Winslet has just won a libel suit -and a grovelling apology - from the British fashion magazine 'Grazia' for suggesting that Miss Winslet was consulting a dietary specialist when she visited a Chinese healing institute in Santa Monica. Miss Winslet produced convincing proof that she attended the centre for treatment to a niggling neck ailment.

Kate Winslet has long been hostile to the attitudes of fashion magazines like 'Grazia' who forever harp on about the body weight of women and who constantly put celebrities in the spotlight when they appear to show a little surplus 'spare tire' when on vacation. She has long said that such attitudes are responsible for the increase in anxiety and depression among growing girls with their insistence on the slim hour-glass figure as the norm to aspire to. She has blamed the fashion industry for the rise in anorexic and bulimic conditions among young girls and has even said that such magazines create such a warped mind set among young girls that she won't have them in the house with her young daughter, Mia, now old enough to read and absorb such propaganda.

Sensing an opportunity to get their own back, 'Grazia' appears to have fallen flat on its face and , turning the screw nicely, Miss Winslet has demanded that the substantial libel damages are paid to a charity which specialises in treating eating disorders.

Katie, my sweet, bloody good for you!!!

Things are not always as they appear.

It's the kind of CCTV footage we have all seen before. A policeman grabs a suspect, this time a 19 year old black girl named Toni Comer, and as the camera rolls the two of them fall, wrestling down a fire escape steps. As they hit the ground three more officers are seen rushing to assist. They try to grab the girl while the arresting officer, seen clearly on the CCTV footage punches the girl four or five times as hard as he can. After that the melee clears and the girl is seen being dragged to a police van with her trousers down around her knees. An obvious case of horrendous police violence, that is clear!

Or is it?

It transpires that the girl has committed £3000 of damage to a car in a nightclub car park and then storms back into the club fuelled with anger, drink and drugs to confront , presumably, the car owner. Police are called and the arresting officer tries to escort Miss Comer out of the club. She is furiously angry and resists arrest violently, to the extent that a slightly built girl wrestles and hurls a six foot policeman down a flight of fire escape steps as he hangs on to her and they both tumble down.

As they hit the ground she kicks, bites and scratches like a tigress trying to claw at the policeman's genitals so, remembering his training he aims four or five hard punches at the muscle of her arm in order to deaden it.

As his colleagues arrive, Miss Comer starts to kick out at their genitals and, again following disarming procedure in these circumstances, the police unfasten her trousers and pull them down to her knees, rendering her unable to kick out.

Then finally she is arrested. When they arrive at the station, the arresting officer volunteers a statement to the duty officer that he has punched Miss Comer quite hard on the arm and that a doctor should check whether she requires medical attention.

As I write, the officer PC Anthony Mulhall has been put on desk duties but NOT suspended while a police enquiry continues.

It is clear though from the evidence thus presented and the unblemished appearance of Miss Comer that first impressions are so often misleading and that the police have an ever more thankless job in arresting people, particularly when they are high on a lethal cocktail of fury and alcohol.

Don't you just love stubborn old buggers!

You may not always agree with them, you may not take their causes to heart but there is always a tiny wave of the metaphorical flag for the old timers who, when faced with the intransigent face of 'Laura Norder' say 'bollocks!' and do exactly what they think is right.

We've had two examples of this today, the first and comparitively minor one being 70 year old Brian Hollingworth from Huddersfield who has styled himself 'The Yellow Pimpernel.' Faced with never ending potholes appearing in his road, and tired of calling his local council only to receive the response 'Its all due to be done in the next financial year', Mr Hollingworth armed himself with a pot of luminous yellow paint and, in the dead of night, crept out and painted huge circles of garish yellow around every pot hole in his area.

The local council was hopping mad and accused Mr Hollingworth of 'irresponsible graffiti' and that 'his actions had no influence on the programme of works undertaken by the council'. But guess what, all the holes have been repaired!


The case which has attracted more national attention is that of Mrs. Patricia Tabram, aged 69, who has been found guilty today of growing her own cannabis plants with 'intent to supply'. This elderly lady is not a supplier of dope to the masses but a chef who has long suffered from a rheumatic condition which was considerably eased by the medicinal use of cannabis which she ground down into a herbal mix or chopped up and put in cake. So effective was it that she supplied her cuisine to all the grateful pensioners in her area.



She was arrested in 2005 after proudly advertising her produce on TV, and given a 6 month suspended jail sentence. The current conviction comes following a breach of the conditions of her original sentence when police, acting on a tip off, raided her home and found cannabis plants growing in the wardrobe.

Mrs. Tabram is totally unrepentant and told the police they might as well take the cannabis based cooking powder while they were at it. She maintains that the law is an ass and that some legislation should be enacted to allow the use of cannabis for conditions such as arthritis and rheumatism.

The courts and the law of course have no choice but to enforce the current law as it stands.

Like I said, you may think some of these old timers go about making a protest in the wrong way but somehow you have to admire their grit and determination in the face of great opposition. Maybe being a stubborn old bugger is what keeps 'em alive!

Are Britain's divorce settlements fair?

For many years, wives who suffered the experience of an often painful divorce were given scant recompense for their contribution to the marriage, despite being wife, house-minder, mother and all the intangible unpaid qualities that any woman brings to a relationship. In the 80s and 90s the proverbial worm began to turn and legal changes were made which recognised the unfairness of the system and strove to improve the legal settlements given to a divorced woman.

This came to a head in the landmark case of White V White in 2000, where a precedent was set that a wife was entitled to 50% of the assets of the relationship, regardless of who had earned the money and such has been the basis of our legal judgments ever since.

I am compelled to ask, as has Mr. John Charman, the former head of Axis Capital Holdings, whether we have now reached a position which has gone too far the other way. Mr. Charman was ordered, two years ago, to pay his wife, Beverley, £48 million as a divorce settlement. This is the highest divorce settlement in British history. The couple had been married for 26 years and had two children and it was clear that Beverley Charman had been a committed wife and mother until the time Charman met another woman and told her the marriage was over. He offered her £20 million but she fought for 50% of his assets using White v White as precedent, and the Law Lords agreed with her.





Now I don't know Mr. Charman but from what I read he is a nasty piece of work, certainly hard and aggressive in the way he does business and I have no real sympathy with the monied rich. I do have concerns however, on a point of principle, for this 50/50 split on the ending of a relationship. John Charman has challenged the courts award saying surely £20 million is enough for anyone to live out their lives in luxury, that despite his wife being a fundamental and key element in their partnership it was he who had the business brain, took the risks and made the money. He has also claimed that if the award is confirmed he will have to sell off part of his business as much of his assets are contained therein and are not liquid.

I do have some sympathy with his argument and I do think if we have reached the point where a wife, no matter how loving and supportive she has been, can walk off with 50% of the joint assets of a relationship, much of which she had no practical hand in generating, then we are creating an opposite injustice to the one we have tried to rectify.

Another couple watching developments in this saga very closely are Sir Paul and Heather Mills McCartney. Sir Paul must be hoping that 'Can't buy me love' is very much reflected in the decision of the appeal court.

Oh what a tangled web we weave...........

The cash for honours scandal is tightening its grip on an ever more discredited British government which has seen Lord Michael Levy , the Government's chief fund raiser, arrested and interviewed under caution, likewise Ruth Turner the Head of Government Relations. Ms Turner was subject to the humiliation of a dawn raid on her home and was forced to dress in front of a policewoman. Tony Blair has been interviewed as a 'witness' - but has become the first serving Prime Minister to be interviewed in connection with a criminal investigation which has now been going on for over a year.







The basic question is whether the Blair government offered the promise of peerages in exchange for sizable donations to the Labour Party, a criminal offence under the 1925 Act. It now seems to have spiraled from that to investigations into perverting the course of justice.

The BBC was thwarted last Friday in its attempts to broadcast some breaking news on the issue as the Attorney General took out an injunction to stop the programme being aired. However since the Guardian newspaper successfully appealed against a similar injunction, the BBC is now free to air its story...and a squalid story it seems to be.

It transpires that an e mail was sent from Ruth Turner to Jonathan Powell, the Prime Minister's Press Secretary saying she was 'uncomfortable' with a request made to her by Lord Levy concerning a statement she had made to police. One suggestion coming from this cryptic exchange is that Levy tried to get Ms Turner to change her statement. He denies this and says there have been 'distortions and misunderstandings' but there is growing evidence that Levy could well be charged by the police in connection with this matter.

All this leaves a giant egg on the face of Tony Blair - and so it should. Almost from the start of his Premiership and the hidden donations from Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One car chief, Labour's financial dealings have been mired in sleaze. The question being asked tonight about the 'cash for honours' issue is did the Prime Minister know? I believe he damn well should have known....and if he didn't it was because he didn't WANT to know, provided the money for his political party continued to roll in. His 'See no evil, hear no evil' approach to this issue has led him down a tawdry path of being a suspect - or at least an involved witness - in a criminal investigation.

Blair must wonder what is coming out of the woodwork next because an angry Lord Levy feels he is the government fall-guy and I don't think he will go quietly. He is a high profile figure in Blair's scheme of things too, being a major contributor to Jewish causes and the central figure in The Labour Friends of Israel. He has been described by The Jerusalem Post as the most significant figure in British Jewry. The Jewish fraternity in the UK is furious at his treatment and there are even mutterings of an anti-semitic undertone to the way Levy appears to have been hung out to dry.

Whether this is true I have no idea but without doubt the fall-out from this affair must be a nightmare for the Prime Minister and deservedly so. He has given the green light, overtly or otherwise for the Labour Party to acquire funds by whatever means were possible and he employed Levy, former pop star manager and owner of Magnet records, for just that purpose. Blair has clearly not set rules in place and boundaries which should not be broken, or if he has then he has neglected their enforcement and I fear that he and his government are soon to reap what they have sown.

Once again, let's salute our judiciary!

Today the High Court once again has produced a judgment which will upset the establishment and has fearlessly upheld the rights of an unpopular litigant to be heard in public. They ruled that Muhammad Al-Fayed, the father of Dodi Fayed, had the right to demand that the inquest into the deaths, 10 years ago, of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed be heard in public.



At an earlier hearing Baroness Elizabeth Butler Sloss, the Royal coroner, announced that she would sit alone to determine the outcome of the hearing.



In a stinging rebuke to their extremely respected colleague, the High Court ruled that she was 'wrong in law' to announce that she would sit and determine the verdict alone and that she was also wrong to adopt, for the purposes of the hearing, her mantle as 'Royal Coroner'. The High Court ruled that such a decision might 'give the impression' that the inquest was being stage managed by the Royal Family.

Give the impression? Damn right it would - particularly given the accusations against the Royal Family - and it is great to see the High Court fearlessly opting for a full public hearing, despite the fall-out that may occur from such a hearing.

Muhammad Al-Fayed has publicly claimed, and continues to do so, that Princess Diana and his son, Dodi, were murdered by the British Intelligence Service, MI6, on the instructions of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. The motive is claimed to be a fear that Princess Diana, once married to Fayed, would take her children, the heirs to the British throne, out of the country, creating a constitutional crisis.






Al-Fayed has demanded that Prince Philip be called to give evidence and has given authorities the names of two MI6 agents he claims were present in one of the vehicles at the time of the fatal Paris crash.

I don't suppose for a minute anything conclusive will come out of this, and Dame Butler Sloss still has the right to determine which witnesses are called, but at least the greatest conspiracy theory in recent British history will be examined in public and not in camera. Once more I thank heavens for our independent judiciary!