HAVE you ever heard of an “under- seat cabin bag”?
Because I hadn’t until I looked at the ticket for my upcoming family holiday and discovered easyJet has conjured up yet another wheeze to extract more of our cash.
Now, instead of taking your usual cabin bag on board for free and shoving it in the overhead compartment, it must fit UNDER your seat, and therefore be about the size of a pencil case.
Taking my normal-sized holdall, I learn, will set me back a not insignificant £70.
It’s at times like these that I wish I was David Lammy.
The foghorn-voiced Foreign Secretary has no such luggage limits as he’s usually flying about the world on a PRIVATE JET.
New figures from this now famously spendthrift government revealed we taxpayers have shelled out £1.2million in just THREE MONTHS to ferry Lammy around the globe.
This sky-high sum represents a 34 per cent increase on what Lammy spaffed in the previous quarter. To put that into context, that’s over thirteen grand A DAY on air travel.
Of that £1.2million, just over £1million was spent on one of the Government’s official private jets, which plane nerds know as the Airbus A321-251NX(LR).
On board, the Labour MP for Tottenham can relax in one of its flat bed seats, with his luggage securely stowed somewhere well out of contact with his ministerial tootsies.
“Chicken or pasta” is Dave’s only dilemma.
Of course, Lammy does need to travel.
[bc_video account_id=”5067014667001″ application_id=”” aspect_ratio=”16:9″ autoplay=”” caption=”How commons speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle blew £250k of your cash” embed=”in-page” experience_id=”” height=”100%” language_detection=”” max_height=”360px” max_width=”640px” min_width=”0px” mute=”” padding_top=”56%” picture_in_picture=”” player_id=”default” playlist_id=”” playsinline=”” sizing=”responsive” video_id=”6369915417112″ video_ids=”” width=”640px”]He is Foreign Secretary after all, and traditionally that is a job that cannot be done very effectively from any of the grand homes at his disposal, such as his grace and favour Grade 1-listed mansion, Chevening House.
But, as budget travellers like myself can attest, there are many more economical ways to get to where you’re going than by private jet.
A quick glance at Dave’s jaunts over that three-month period reveals he spent £17,747 in December taking a “non-scheduled flight” — aka private — to Brussels.
That’s Brussels in Belgium, which is closer to the Houses of Parliament than Newcastle and to where Eurostar puts on several direct trains a day from London, as Lammy well knows as he took one the month before for just £541.10.
So why, when he and seven colleagues went there again, did they not also go by train? Eight returns would have cost less than five grand.
And what about all the CO2 emissions saved too, eh Ed Miliband?
Even when he does have to fly, “Lear jet Lammy” could find much cheaper — and equally comfortable — transport.
Like when he flew with 11 others to a G7 meeting in Rome in November.
Instead of shafting us by spending £62,979.98 on a private jet there and back, he could have flown commercial.
Business-class flights on British Airways — which let’s face it, could use the cash — for the exact same dates this year cost around £500 return, a whopping saving of over £57,000. Government types like to insist that a private jet is more time efficient and offers better security.
Entitled behaviour
But even if someone did recognise Lammy — and I’ll wager most people would not — surely a commercial airline cabin, where everyone inside has been through a metal detector and had their bags X-rayed, is pretty secure?
Indeed, some of Lammy’s flights in the last three months were on scheduled airlines. As in October, when he popped over to Dublin for the day to “strengthen ties with the European Union”!
No, politicians like David Lammy love these fancy modes of transport because they make them feel as grand as they believe themselves to be.
It is entitled behaviour. Look at his pompous Labour colleague “Long Haul Lindsay” Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, who we learned last month never flies economy.
This profligacy is off the scale. And it must stop. Time and time again we learn that we cannot afford anything in this country because we’re so skint.
And time and time again we are being asked to cough up more for the same. This week it’s rocketing council tax, car tax, water bills. The list goes on.
As someone once pithily observed: “It is obscene that government ministers are jet-setting yet are hiking taxes.”
Who said that? Oh, you know the answer, it was Labour Deputy Leader Angela Rayner, of course, back when the Tories were in power.
She didn’t like it when they did it. She’s noticeably quiet now. Funny that.
If Labour want us to take all this pain for the greater good, then they must feel some of it too. They can start by making David Lammy “slum it” on a commercial aeroplane.
And if he needs any help getting all his gear into an under-seat cabin bag, then he’s welcome at my house where I am currently conducting a masterclass.
[boxout headline=”CHURCH WON’T CHANGE”]THE disgraced former Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s pathetic interview with the BBC said a lot about the man. . . and the church he used to “lead” .
Packed with the kind of phoney contrition you typically hear from bad actors whose luck has finally run out, it featured an extraordinary comment about the sadistic C of E paedophile who ultimately got him the boot.
Ne’er-do-Welby decided the now- deceased John Smyth, evidence of whose sexual abuse of as many as 130 boys and young men he’d been shown, was somehow deserving of his FORGIVENESS – and so presumably also that of God’s.
The tone-deaf Anglican went on to concede that “it’s not me he’s abused . . . so whether I forgive or not is to a large extent irrelevant”.
But it’s not irrelevant, is it? Because by publicly forgiving him it reminds us that, even when confronted with the despicable truth, senior Church leaders are quicker to downplay paedophilia in their ranks and back their fellow clergymen than deal with their abhorrent actions.
So while it is certainly good riddance to Justin Welby, let’s not kid ourselves that his departure will actually change anything.
Hooters well past its breast-before date
THE most surprising thing about the demise of cringey diner Hooters is that it was still going after all these years.
The global norks ’n’ forks eaterie has gone, ahem, bust, after customers tired of its dated pitch of greasy stodge served by top-heavy waitresses.
I can see why. I went to the one in Atlanta many years back out of curiosity. Just how tacky could it be, I wondered?
Well, the answer was very. The ageing and almost exclusively male clientele made me wonder if there was some sort of special OAP deal on that night (there wasn’t).
But the most depressing thing about it was the food.
Deep-fried globules of unrecognisable “meat” soaked in sticky sauce was pretty much the order of the day.
A beige banquet no amount of jiggling jugs could improve.
[boxout headline=”GLOVES OFF ON RADIO 4″]RADIO 4’s Today programme is hardly Towie but the bitchiness levels are on a par, we’re now told.
Former Woman’s Hour presenter Emma Barnett is said to find her co-presenter Nick Robinson “overbearing” and allegedly complained about him not long after joining the show last year.
I’m sure she is right but it takes one to know one.
I listen to the show every day and often find Barnett’s interviewing style overbearing, especially when chatting to Tories or anyone else she doesn’t like.
She frequently comes across as haughty and patronising.
What is it about Today that seems to attract so many conceited sods?
They should give more work to Jonny Dymond, a genial occasional host and the only one I wouldn’t mind having a pint with.
Good luck, pet
OH God, put the vet on standby, Katie Price has got another dog.
Must be some space left in her “pet cemetery”, where eight of her former animal friends now lie.
PETA’s Enemy Number One has plumped for a greyhound this time, poor mutt.
And looking at the picture of careless Katie and her racer confirmed the old saying that dogs really do look like their owners.
Although if the worryingly emaciated Price gets any skinnier, she’ll look more like the pup’s lead.
[boxout headline=”Deja chew”]l FOUND myself on the end of a bar of “viral sensation” Dubai chocolate this week.
These £10-a-pop treats are the latest fad for those weak souls susceptible to food fads (of which I am one!).
A few bites in, I felt a sense of, er, deja chew.
Then it hit me – Dubai chocolate tastes exactly like a Tunnock’s caramel wafer.
Which may seem a lot less glamorous but at around 30p a bar is certainly the more pocket-friendly option.