Blogging-Related Program Activities

We will be doing lots of blogging over the next week. If, that is, we apply the Dubya definition to such a positive statement by which we actually mean the exact opposite. As a result of a top-secret meeting (at the Bread Line restaurant for lunch yesterday) with an unnamed White House official (Condi Rice), P O'Neill has been tasked to investigate a report that Saddam dumped his WMDs at the bottom of Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania. So that will take us out of action for about a week, until our top-secret report is posted on this blog when we get back.

Let us just briefly note some intriguing news stories today:

1. It was noticable from the start that most of the gloating about Hutton and BBC seemed to be happening amongst reactionary hacks in the USA, whereas public opinion in Britain seemed to be adopting a much more nuanced position; check out for instance the skeptical tone even in fomer Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy member, the Daily Telegraph.

2. Not a good week for Ireland's and Europe's biggest low-cost airline, Ryanair. It's been known for sometime they achieve their advertised low fares by charging for just about everything else connected with getting passengers from A to B (often via C with bags via D), and one of those charges would certainly horrify our vast American readership: charging passengers for the wheelchairs at airports. The result was that for a handicapped passenger, the total wheelchair charges on a return trip could exceed the cost of the ticket. Not surprisingly, someone has now sued and won. And in a demonstration that spite can be a corporate strategy, the airline is now claiming that it will add a "wheelchair levy" to all its tickets for travel from Irish and UK airports.