Back in the olden days, the Salvation Army – and other temperance campaigners – used to frequent public houses and music halls, trying to tempt imbibers away from over-indulging in the demon drink. Temperance advocates even wrote alternative popular songs as part of these campaigns, such as Sell No More Drink to My Father and Lips That Touch Liquor Will Never Touch Mine. With their jolly marching bands, the Sally Army’s idea was to advertise a better alternative to getting sozzled.
Perhaps the latter-day temperance crusaders should now bring their endeavours not to pubs – which are closing down at a rate of knots – but to airports, where arrests for drunkenness have increased by 50 per cent over the past year.
Airline passengers are getting legless, getting into fights, being chucked off planes, assaulting the airline staff and generally behaving in a lewd and abusive manner. Last year 18 separate police forces had to make arrests of various sloshed members of the public at airports throughout Britain.
And although I don’t drink alcohol myself these days, I have some sympathy for the flying public resorting to strong liquor. Airports today are among the most unfriendly and uncomfortable environments in which to dally.
There is seldom anywhere comfortable to sit down. Actually, they don’t want you to sit down – they want you to move around, spending money. There is nowhere quiet and comfortable in which to repose – unless you pay 20 or 30 quid for a first-class lounge. You have to queue for everything.
I suggest that air passengers are sometimes driven to drink by the inhospitable conditions of a modern airport.
Two senior peers are pressing the government to place the aviation industry under stricter licensing laws. But why not learn from the Sally Army and try to provide a more positive ambience and a better alternative? Install decent seating, easily accessible locations of rest and reflection or a soothing room where music can be enjoyed. Provide the public with a better way to pass their time while awaiting flights.
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Most film critics – including the Herald’s Mike McCahill – seem to have concluded that A Ghost Story is an outstanding movie, reflecting on transcendence, life, death, grief and time. The Financial Times called it “a masterpiece”, and other critics concurred.
Include me out, as Sam Goldwyn used to say. I found David Lavery’s film maddeningly boring. After the showing, at Canterbury’s Curzon, I heard a group of women exclaiming its awfulness.
The narrative is about a man who dies in a car accident and then returns as a ghost dressed in a bad Halloween costume, watching a disjointed series of vignettes from the past and present. In one sequence, his widow takes five minutes in real time to eat a chocolate tart. Then throws up.
Far from finding the picture transcendent, I found it depressing and banal. Time passes, horrible events happen, and eventually everyone dies, it says. Of this we were aware. Methinks it’s one of those films that cineastes love, but the public finds tediously pretentious.
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Mike Pence, the American vice-president, was right to unequivocally condemn the ugly white supremacist demonstrations which have been taking place in Charlottesville, Virginia, and which have occasioned the death of a woman.
Why are these ultra-right Southern white folk (mostly young men) in America so angry? Many insights into their social circumstances and history are provided in J D Vance’s readable autobiography, Hillbilly Elegy, just published in paperback.
Vance describes the lives of the people he calls “the Scots-Irish” – fierce, rough, pioneering hillbillies who were cowboys and outlaws when America was being forged into its present identity. They marched forth with gun and Bible, tribal loyalty and unstinting patriotism.
But in recent times their lives have often been chaotic – drink, drugs, self-destructiveness, multi-marriages (Vance’s own mother was married five times) and poor job prospects were their defining circumstances. Vance himself was only saved from a hopeless life by a strong grandmother – but even she was a gun-toting momma with a rich seam of cussin’.
As with young people who join ISIS, condemnation does not preclude seeking to understand, and Vance’s elegy seeks to understand.
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