That Bloke In The Big Smoke

Here's the latest advice from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office:

"British travellers to the US under the Visa Waiver Programme (VWP), which allows most British Citizen passport holders to visit for up to 90 days without a visa, must get an authorisation via the Electronic System for Travel Authorisation (ESTA) prior to their journey. Visitors should register through the ESTA website at esta.cbp.dhs.gov and are advised to do so at least 72 hours prior to travel. If you do not have an ESTA you will be refused travel to the USA. The US Customs and Border Protection department have announced that there will be a $14 charge to apply for an ESTA from 8 September 2010. All payments must be made by credit card."

Luckily I fly out on the 6th so I miss the new money-spinning ESTA regime. Just hope US immigration let me in this time. Hassle-free.

It is exactly 63 years since the Raj ended and exactly 23 years since my family set foot in Muscat for the first time. Fittingly perhaps I have chosen today to return to the land of my birth. And to mark the former occasion, something different, naturally from The Guardian:

"India's racist visa rule is an irrational response to the tragic attacks in Mumbai in November 2008 [...] Under UK, European and international human rights law, suspicion of potential to commit a crime must be based on an individual's own conduct, not on their racial or ethnic origin. India should apply the same security check to all British citizens applying for visas. If the check reveals no cause for concern, the visa should be issued. Being born in Pakistan, or the child of a person born in Pakistan, is not a crime, nor evidence of predisposition to commit terrorist acts in India."

Robert Wintemute is Professor of Human Rights Law at King's College. 171 comments and counting. No surprise there, really! Jai Hind?

My dad is on a flight to Heathrow. He was a bit worried listening to the Beeb this morning, but from most reports it shouldn't affect London. Several airlines have cancelled blocks of flights across the UK. I don't think we'll see a return to the six days last month when about 95,000 flights were cancelled at a cost to the the airlines of more than $1 billion. In light of this, it's worth thinking about whether there is a limit to the price of safety. Peter Singer, an Australian professor of bioethics at Princeton University has written about this in The Guardian:

"Indeed, in closing their skies, European governments seem to have given safety absolute priority over everything else. Yet none of them act on that principle in other areas. Some 3,000 people die on the world's roads every day. Cutting speed limits to, say, 10km per hour would prevent most accidents and save many lives. We don't do it, because we give safety a lower priority..."

It's a very interesting and thought-provoking article. It got me thinking, what price would you put on safety? $1.5 million? $5.8 million?

Here's an image you won't see everyday. Taken minutes ago, not a single passenger aircraft over British skies! [Link to live European aircraft movement]. Of the things that could've grounded every British airport, a volcano in Iceland was definitely creative. They've really got it in for us. First they go bankrupt, then they refuse to pay back our loans and now this! The ungrateful wretches. Some historians even believe that an Icelandic eruption in 1787 led to the French Revolution! They don't stop at anything. Not even for 9/11 did all of British airspace shut down. But the last word goes to the chap who wrote into Aunty B and quite correctly pointed out that the eruptions from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano have been going on for a few weeks now, with negligible UK media coverage. The images from Iceland are nothing short of spectacular, "but get in the way of a £50 'getaway flight' to Europe and suddenly it's bigger news than the election." 'Nuff said!

You don't normally associate Oman with firsts but there's always a first for everything! Next month Oman Air, the Sultanate's national carrier, is to become the first airline to offer full in-flight access to mobile phone and internet via WiFi. And it's not just for First or Business class, but also for us plebs in Economy. It's all thanks to the EU's approval to in-flight mobile phone calls in April 2008 and the new Airbus ALNA V2 system using Honeywell's SwiftBroadband (SBB) solution. But the system has only been installed onto Oman Air's A330 fleet which assumes special significance for me because later this summer, I will be flying non-stop between Heathrow and Muscat on those exact aircraft! And what's more, the connectivity follows the introduction of Oman Air's latest in-flight entertainment system that offers four channels of live TV, audio-video on-demand, an iPod connection and USB ports. So not only is it the only airline to fly non-stop between London and Muscat, but it has live TV, USB* and WiFi connectivity. Oman a global leader. The mind boggles.

LINKS:
-Oman Air launches onboard phone and Wi-Fi (Arabian Supply Chain)
-Airline offers in-flight mobile and Wi-Fi (WebUser.co.uk)
-Oman Air launches full mobile phone and wifi connectivity (Global Arab Network)
-Oman Air to roll out mobile phone and Wi-Fi connectivity on new Airbus A330 aircraft (TMCnet.com)

(* Though, I did first experience an USB port and electric socket in Economy on an Emirates A380 aircraft last month. That was sweet!)

Since August last year I have made three trips to India (via Bahrain, Dubai and Mumbai) and two trips to Oman (via Bahrain and Doha). I started each journey from four different airports (Heathrow Terminal's 3 & 4, Gatwick, Muscat and Chennai). In all those journeys the thing that stood out the most was the sharp contrast in security checks in each airport. It stood out for three main reasons.

Firstly, London's two biggest airports had been in a heightened state of alert since 9/11, 7/7 and particularly 10/8 (The August 2006 Transatlantic Aircraft Plot). Secondly, India had been victim to several terrorist attacks in recent years and were in the midst of an intelligence crisis involving a potential conspirator in the Mumbai Attacks of November 2008, who had allegedly made several trips to India, including one to Mumbai days before the attack. And thirdly, that the so-called police-state dictatorships of the Middle East had a more than passing interest in the current climate of the global terrorist threat and significantly, its implications on their security.

You'd think that most, if not all the airports I flew through would have had a fairly standardised (ie, stringent and thorough) system of security checks. Wrong. The gulf in security particularly that for hand-luggage, between the London airports and their Middle Eastern and Indian counterparts struck me as ironic. Here was a liberal democracy inconveniencing and invading the privacy of every passenger in the name of security, while in the authoritarian East there was a comparatively negligent and indifferent attitude to security.

In London, pat downs were performed on every single passenger, regardless of whether the metal checker detected anything or not. Rarely was one allowed to walk through the detector with their shoes and belt on. All liquids/sprays had to be in 100ml (or less) containers and scanned separately by the X-ray machine. Laptops and jacket-like clothings also had to be taken off/out and scanned separately by the X-ray machine. And following the alleged incident on Christmas Day, the authorities now want to rush in the body scanners. Civil liberty campaigners have challenged the government on whether the scans will contravene our child pornography laws.

In comparison, the security in the Middle East and India was almost non-existent. Few pat downs, hardly any of them as thorough as the ones in London. If the metal detector beeped and the security area was not teeming with passengers, the security guy would perform a token check with a handheld detector, but most of the time they seemed uninterested. None of the airports necessitated liquids/sprays to be held in transparent ziploc bags and not once did I see any container above 100ml disposed of. On every transit journey via Bahrain, Doha and Dubai, I was able to keep the 500ml+ bottle of water with me that I had picked up in either Mucat, Chennai or London Duty Free. And until Heathrow nabbed my 150ml deodorant on my latest trip last month, not even London's airports detected its illegitimate passage across the world and back in twelve separate journeys between August and November.

Unfortunately, I'm still not sure how strongly I feel about airport security. On the one hand I want air travel to be safe, especially as my family, friends and I frequently use it. On the other hand, I don't feel true to my liberal ideals by accepting these erosions into our personal spaces and civil liberties for the sake of protecting air travel. I'm not even sure the security in London's airports are as effective as they are made out to be necessary, especially when one considers that the more relaxed security regime in the Middle East and India has not resulted in any incident till date. Yet I get the distinct impression that the halcyon era of stress-free air travel has disappeared forever. Each new attack will erode the few existing liberties that remain and it could have a huge impact on global travel.

This is most excellent news. It's a few years late but welcome nevertheless. Lots of money and time to be saved.

In a landmark decision, the Lord Chief Justice (the aptly named Lord Judge) has created English legal history by agreeing to allow a trial to be heard by a judge alone. The ruling invokes Section 44 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and is dependent on evidence of a real and present danger of jury tampering taking place. The origins of jury trials in England & Wales date back to the 12th century.

A delightfully educational hour-long BBC4 documentary currently available on the iPlayer (only for UK residents):

Combining newly-shot high-definition sequences, archive film and photographs, this film follows the princes from the zenith of British imperial power in the early 1900s, through to their decline in the aftermath of independence in 1947. Contributors include: HH Shriji Arvind Singh, the Maharana of Udaipur; Manvendra Barwani, Rana of Barwani; Pranlal Bhogilal, India's foremost Rolls-Royce collector; and Sharada Dwivedi, writer and cultural commentator.

I learnt that the next time I watch pre-Independence videos of the British riding Rolls-Royces in India, I'll know that the real owners of the 'mechanical elephants' were the Maharajas, and not their colonial masters because they were simply too expensive to afford.

As expected, the government has decided to build a third runway and add a sixth terminal to the world's busiest international airport, but work won't commence on either project till at least 2015. Significantly, the Tories have promised to scrap the plans if they were to come to power, while I think the Lib Dems have always opposed the expansion plans. Both opposition parties seem to prefer investing into high-speed rail links. Such an idea is a wonderful one and the government should invest in a high-speed rail corridor connecting St Pancras International with the rest of the country, instead of limiting it to just Birmingham as I think they have proposed to do. St Pancras is just two hours away from Paris and Brussels and it would be tremendous if by 2020 or even 2025, it were possible to travel between Edinburgh and the French capital in less than five hours (it currently takes about seven hours).

That said, I have always felt naturally inclined towards runway expansion at Heathrow. Though if I may add a qualifier, my previously blind endorsement has given way to a tentative one pending a thorough understanding of all the core issues before developing a more informed opinion. I still need to convince myself that the economic benefits will outweigh the ecological costs and even though there seems to be more opposition than support for the plan, I'm going to stick to my gut instinct for now. Greenpeace has likened the decision to political suicide for Gordon Brown, and if that were to be the case at the next election, an informed opinion may not even be necessary. :) Either way, the level of controversy generated by the decision both in parliament and outside of it makes me wonder how the government is going to get away with it. There is substantial opposition to the plan within the Labour Party itself and we were all treated to one of their MPs getting suspended for five days from the House of Commons yesterday for rowdy behaviour showered upon the Transport Minister, in an act unseen since 1988! (See Video) One wonders how many Labour MPs oppose the plans, but I doubt it would ever be enough to bring down the government, even if it were to be voted upon by the House.

Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see how events pan out. The opposition activists have taken their protest to the next stage by getting celebrities to buy an acre of land in the middle of the proposed area for the new terminal and runway. The government has acknowledged the nuisance value that this will add to the expansion plans. And although the Tories have pledged to scrap the plans if they were in power, their man in London, our mayor, has a different take on things. He opposes expansion at Heathrow but would rather build a new Heathrow in the Thames Estuary to the East. I don't agree with him, but it's an interesting alternative.