Wednesday 23 December 2009

Don't blame the system for winter travel chaos. Stay put

Simon Jenkins says:
Hypermobility is now the opium of the people, an obsession that wrecks communities and planet. There are no free trips.

My solution to winter travel chaos? Don't travel. Stay indoors. Build a fire. Live and shop within walking distance of civilisation. Associate with neighbours. See distant relatives some other time of the year. Above all, do not complain if you insist on laying siege to motorways, stations and airports and the weather or the labour force let you down, as they do every year. It is not their fault, it is yours for being there.
I really don't know why people insist on not being London based journalists telecommuting from home.
If a hospital visit requires a drive of 50 rather than five miles, the NHS does not pay but someone does; indeed everyone does.
On the plus side, when you get to the 50 miles away hospital the economies of scale that entails mean that there might actually be some doctors and services there to provide you with at least a minimally effective service...that's if the doctors are allowed to get to work despite the fear of offending metropolitan pseudo-intellectuals.

Don't get sick this Christmas Dr Jenkins...and if you do don't you dare come to my hospital and screw up my already crappy Christmas day.