J,

That wouldn’t work, because after years of political correctness, our schools are not turning out people who are employable.

Would they stay in school long enough? Well, schooling is compulsory from the age of 5-16, yet one fifth of school leavers are illiterate and innumerate :- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7691919/Fifth-of-school-leavers-illiterate-and-innumerate.html

Why is that? What action is taken against these children’s parents? I could read by the time I went to school, because my parents taught me how to read. They made me learn my times tables as well.

Because that is what they felt their role was as parents.

A friend of mine is a teacher, and always witters on about how the parents of many school children are not bothered about their children and how well they do (or don’t!) at school.

Well, if children don’t attend school, action needs to be taken against the parents. No excuses, no sympathy. Fine them, jail them. Stop the excuses. Just because the parents live in a poor area, or are unemployed is irrelevent. If the children (and don’t forget, we are talking about children here, not adults) don’t go to school, make it a problem for the parents. And if necessary, make it a big problem for the parents.

But that is never going to happen when poor performance is excused, and blame isn’t given where it is deserved.

Until that happens, we are going to be creating generations of feral, unemployable chav scum (apologies for using that phrase, someone has just been on the BBC saying how offensive that is…..) and we are not going to be able to get out of this (worsening) cycle.

Quite surreal for me – I have spent two days out the country to come back to all of this!

I spent a bit of time at Myrtle Avenue watching the Heathrow arrivals, where I was approached by a guy on a bike trying to sell a night vision telescope – I wonder how he managed to come by that. I was rempted to ask if it came with a guarantee!

On a more serious note, though, some of the latter posts have asked if this is the fault of immigration, and I don’t think it is. What is the cause of all of this has been the rise of political correctness over the last 30 years.

Cameron was talking earlier about how people convicted of offenses will feel “the full force of the law”, and that is the nub of the issue. At the moment, people don’t. These people will get a nice community service sentence, maybe a short custodial sentence (which they will do little more than half of) or maybe get a small fine (that will be spread over several months if they are on benefits and which they probably wont bother paying anyway).

Until people fear the law, and the consequences of breaking it, we are always going to run the risk of things like what is happening now. The police service needs to become a police force again, and magistrates and judges need to be able to “punish” offenders (and if that means that sentences for other crimes have to be increased as well, so be it).

Heres hoping that the Parliamentary debate on Thursday will mark the start of the fightback, and our politicians (and, maybe more importantly, the media), will have the courage to stop listening to the media elite and take the action that is required to return this country to the people who actually make a positive contribution to it.

Comet – I read “New York” earlier this year,and really enjoyed it. I have read all of Rutherfurd’s books,and thought that he had lost his way a bit with with his Irish books, but New York sees him back on form.

I have just finished another cracking read – “High Risk”, the autobiography of Sir Adam Thomson, the chairman and founder of British Caledonian.

There are effectively two parts to the book. The first is a swashbuckling story of his short time in the Fleet Air Arm and then trying to find a job as an airline pilot. After a spell in West Africa (an area that was to play a key role in the development of BCal many years later) he found himself based at Manston where a group of pilots hitched plans for their own airline.

With the airline securing a lot of investment from Scotland, the name Caledonian was chosen, and the airline soon found itself operating charter flights around the world. The book continues with Thomson’s flying adventures, but the flying stories slowly start to give way to tales from the boardroom as the airline gradually expands and tries to compete in the scheduled market.

The merger with British United (to form British Caledonian) marks the start of the second part of the book. By now Thomson has given up flying, and with the airline now having a significant scheduled operation, the book is full of stories of sales trips and increasingly problems encountered by the airline as it finds expansion plans stymied by politicians in the UK, abroad or, more often than not, both.

By the 1980s, the planned privatisation of British Airways sees Thomson feeling (probably with some justification) that government policy was favouring BA to BCal’s detriment, and for anyone interested in Thatcher era politics his recounting of endless discussions with politicians and civil servants is fascinating. The book ends with the then newly privatised BA taking over BCal (some of his comments on BA’s management and negotiating tactics can’t have endeared him to BA when they read the book) and Thomson retiring.

As with any autobiography, it is some times self serving, and Thomson doesn’t pull his punches when it comes to criticising competitors. However, that doesn’t detract from a fascinating story of the emergence of Britain’s “2nd Force” airline, and a reminder of what the pre deregulation airline industry was like,and how difficult it was for independent airlines to compete.

Thomson died over 10 years ago, and it would be fascinating to get his views on the industry today, and see if they have changed since the book was written. He was particularly strident in his belief that even in short haul markets deregulation would see the quality of service provided to passengers rising, and also commented that Virgin wouldn’t last very long!

All in all a fascinating read of a now long gone age.

Thanks to everyone who has posted in this fascinating thread.

Just two from me, both from the late 1980s. Firstly, here is 748 XS789 arriving at East Midlands with the then PM Thatcher on board:-

XS789 by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

Looking back at this photo, it makes me think back to how security has changed. Even though the photo was taken at the height of the IRA threat, the aircraft parked right in front of the terminal, and Mrs. Thatcher disembarked in full view of everyone in the terminal (both land and airside) – something that would be impossible to imagine today.

My other photo was taken at about the same time, and is of Hercules XV191 arriving at Exeter:-

XV191 by IndiaEcho Photography, on Flickr

The aircraft spent the day at Exeter in support of the Falcons parachute display team. Once the Hercules had arrived at the terminal, one of the crew members invited the spectators on the viewing terrace onto the aircraft, and 7 or 8 of us trooped down to the departure lounge and persuaded the guy on duty to let us in! Again, something that would be impossible now.

Happy days!

Dr. Pepper,

I have a certain sympathy for you here, as I was in a similar situation.

I was with my wife for 15 years before we decided to get married, and while I always earnt more than my now wife, I always felt that her father always looked down on me, not least as a consequence of his ‘perfect’ English accent and my very strong regional accent, and, like you, although I got on very well with her family, I never really clicked with him. This was awkward, as she was very close to him.

We decided to get married together, rather than the big surprise proposal, but she did say that she wanted me to ask him first. When the time came to ask him I was absolutely cr*****g myself, but did the deed, and luckily he said yes.

And it totally tranformed our relationship. While we are not exactly best mates, we do get on now when we meet, and he has said to my wife that he was very impressed that I asked and it did change his opionion of me that I was willing to do the ‘proper’ thing when so many these days dont.

So it might be worth the risk – but do what you want to do, rather than what annonymous people on the internet say!!

Good luck.

Hi,

A great thread, and one that has encouraged me to register after a long time lurking.

My life literally changed on the Queen’s Building. The story starts in the autumn of 1981 when I got my first radio. I discovered that in those days if you went to the ‘high’ end of FM you could hear the police, and I became a keen listener. Christmas came, and my grandmother didn’t know what to get me, so my parents suggested that she got me a a radio that you could receive aircraft on.

So, sometime in the summer of 1982 the IndiaEcho family set off for my local airport, East Midlands, to try out the radio. We soon found the viewing area, which at the time was a field where the UPS terminal is now. It was all very pleasant, and we made several visits to watch the comings and goings before autumn came and it was time to put the radio away for the winter.

Next March, it is time for a family weekend away in Windsor. We arrived Friday lunchtime, and decided to go up to Heathrow for the afternoon. On the Queen’s Building roof I went into the shop and bought a copy of Civil Aircraft Markings. Went outside and looked up the nearest aircraft to learn that PH-CHB was a F.28 Fellowship from NLM Cityhopper.

The following day we were scheduled to return to the airport to get the tube into London for the day, but we got their a little earlier than planned to see a Concorde take off. I took my CAM with me, started to tick off the aircraft that I saw, and life was never the same again…..

I have visited airports over 1,000 times since then, and as a consequence the Queens Building will always have a special place in my memory as I think back to that day.