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Any fleeting thought that, somehow, America could have changed in the ten days I was away, was laid to rest by the first news broadcast viewed after my return. Two items stood out as typical of this nation’s inanity; of it’s apparent desire to prove to the rest of the world just how utterly crazy and immature America can be, and how such crassness impacts its innocent citizens. For it is not, generally, ordinary Americans who lack responsibility (though their strangely somnolent disinterest in the workings of those they elect could be considered lax) but the officials one might expect to display a modicum of humanity and commonsense, namely the local state legislators and those holding official, governmental positions.

Take the case of Elisa Kelly from Charlottesville, Virginia, who is just beginning a two and a quarter year sentence in the county jail. She’s one of the lucky ones. After a lengthy appeals process her sentence was cut from the EIGHT YEARS originally imposed.

Elisa Kelly’s crime was to serve beer in her own home, to the sixteen year old guests at her son’s birthday party.

Was she foolish?

Probably.

Is she a criminal?

No.

Does she deserve to be incarcerated for one day, let alone twenty-seven months?

Not in a million years.

The goody-goody, prim and proper, moralistic, hypocritical, inhumane officials of Charlottesville, Virginia, are a bunch of pompous, dim-witted ass-holes more deserving of jail-time than Elisa Kelly.

Much could be written on this matter, but it already has been and by a far more accomplished writer than yours truly. The BBC’s Matt Frei has an article about Elisa Kelly on the BBC website, for all the world to read – and judge American justice. I recommend it as an eye-opener to the narrow-mindedness and duplicity of those responsible for Virginia’s state laws.

The Matt Frei article is available HERE.

Hot on the heels of this report about Virginian barbarity, came the incident of a furniture warehouse fire in Charleston, South Carolina. Nothing unusual, one might think, except that nine, yes NINE, firefighters lost their lives fighting this fire that was described as a “tornado of flame thirty-feet high”.

A sad story and one the media masticated and digested for all it was worth. “Hero” was the most over-used word of the day.

The most under-used phrase of the day was “sprinkler system”.

It takes little imagination to visualize the effects of fire on a furniture superstore stuffed to the gills with sofas, wooden tables, beds, mattresses and a plethora of flammable materials. Yet, according to a quick one-liner from NBC’s reporter on the story, stuffed between emotional “Hero” language and views of sobbing fire chiefs:

“No sprinkler installed, or required.”

Excuse me? Wind back the Tivo so we can hear that again! Yes, that WAS what he said before rapidly rebounding to wring the last emotional drips from the story.

“No sprinkler installed, or required.”

And it seems NO-ONE has questioned that. Nine firefighters died because legislators decided a potential firebomb was not required to have a sprinkler system. Nine firefighters died because – just as in Charlottesville, Virginia – Charleston, South Carolina’s legislators are a bunch of useless, corrupt, hypocrites. The mayor of Charleston called the incident:

“A tragedy of immense proportions”.

Presumably, as mayor, he takes no responsibility for this “tragedy of immense proportions”?

Surely, as mayor, he has a responsibility – along with the fire chiefs and other legislators – to ensure the town has adequate fire prevention laws, forcing every store carrying flammable stock to fit sprinkler systems?

Obviously, Mayor Joseph Riley of Charleston, South Carolina, doesn’t believe that to be the case.

If there was one scrap of justice in this god-forsaken apology for a nation, Elisa Kelly would be vacating her prison cell today, allowing Mayor Joseph Riley and his band of renegade legislators to move in, and for a lot longer than twenty-seven months.

More on this story HERE.

Filed under: Who are these people?

In keeping with their policy of always putting the customer last, United Airways and O’Hare Airport Chicago lived up to their reputations and canceled my flight, after keeping me waiting a further two hours in the vain hope it would eventually leave.

I finally managed to jump a late flight to another airport fifty miles from home and eventually made it through my front door in the early hours of Tuesday morning, some twenty hours after leaving Manchester.

It took just eight hours to cross 4,000 miles of Atlantic Ocean and reach O’Hare, but a further twelve hours to travel less than two hundred miles to my home. I can only offer a heartfelt “Thank-you” to both the airport and the airline for once again proving that my opinion of them is one hundred percent accurate.

Of course, I wasn’t the only one affected. Hundreds of commuters suffered a similar fate. Some had no choice but to wait till the next day for a flight out. United Airways offers no recompense for their ineptitude, blaming the cancellations – as they always do – on “the weather”. Few bothered to complain. Most just appeared rather embarrassed that it was American companies turning their lives upside down. After all, had they been in an uncivilized land, like India or even Mexico, such inefficiencies could be expected. Better not make a fuss. It would be so un-American.

Thankfully, I’m British, and much less tolerant when I find myself treated as a piece of dung, or a cow herded to the local abattoir, whether in my own country or elsewhere. Consequently, I complained, and complained, and kept on complaining until eventually it paid off and they found me a flight. I shouldered my carry-on and picked my way through the mass of sleep-deprived Americans, still with that faintly embarrassed smile on their lips while desperately trying to get comfortable for the long night ahead of them.

It may come as a surprise to those from other nations – well-used to US tourists complaining bitterly about the service in their hotel, the lack of air conditioning in their 68 degree rooms, or any number of petty inconveniences most of us would expect when hosted by another culture – but on their home turf the majority of Americans become shy and retiring when faced with the sort of inconvenience heaped on airline passengers as a regular occurrence whenever the names “United Airways” and “O’Hare Airport” are joined in matrimony.

The reason is, I believe, a simple one. It would be construed as unpatriotic to complain about anything American. To many US citizens, the hassles and inconveniences they suffer daily at the hands of shrewd corporates, determined to wring the last cent from them in return for the worst possible service, are minor burdens compared to what they are led to believe is the case in other countries. They have been bred and indoctrinated throughout their lives to accept their nation as the “Best in the World”. Any inconvenience incurred would surely be much, much worse were they in Europe, or Asia, or anywhere other than the “Great America”, wouldn’t it?

For those Americans still clinging to such beliefs, I have only one thing to say:

“Wake up! Open your eyes to what is going on around you and stop playing lame duck to the corporates that are fleecing you. You have a right to complain, complain, and go on complaining until you get satisfaction.”

Believe me, America, the problems you experience are definitely not due to “the WEATHER”.

NOTE: While this article generalizes, the author is well aware that a certain, small, proportion of the American people do not fit the general mold, as described here. It is the author’s contention, however, that his description is accurate for around 80% of the US population.

Filed under: Excuses

In the wake of a fairly normal and uneventful flight from Manchester, England, I now find myself marooned at that most favorite of RJ’s airports, Chicago O’Hare. After traveling 4,000 miles across the Atlantic smoothly and efficiently, I am now just twenty minutes from home – by air – and the flight I was due to take at 4.47 has, so I am informed by the disinterested United Airways’ staff, been put back two and half hours due to “weather”, and will now depart at 7.17pm.

It never ceases to amaze how this thin veneer of eternal chronological accuracy covers a multitude of inefficiencies, in what must surely be an airline that rates as the greatest dinosaur in the industry. Not content with “7.15” or even “7.20”, United Airways keeps up its pretense by claiming “7.17” as the moment UA7309 will finally lift into the skies.

Of course, we all know it won’t. If it takes off at all, which is by no means predetermined, it will be at anytime other than 7.17.

O’Hare and United Airways – a combination creating the ultimate in frustration.

Filed under: Hell on earth