It’s still lovely and quiet out there with no jet aeroplane noise

Looks like  Eyjafjallajökull is still doing its stuff, though we are starting to hear military jets which presumably go at different heights?

It’s not just me that is enjoying the peace from the incessant low-frequency rumble at the threshold of hearing, though I do feel for all the poor sods who are stranded through no fault of ther own. Particularly as it looks like the travel insurance companies are going to welch on their responsibilities, surely unforeseen circumstances are exactly the reason why people buy travel insurance? D’oh…

The BBC have a graphic on why this is taking the UK out in particular.

This is bringing up other interesting stuff, such as that air freight is 25% of all imports to the UK by value. Some of the things that are air freighted are shocking. Fresh fruit, okay, but clothes? What the hell is up with that, importing clothes by air, are we nuts or what?

There is something deeply wrong about what is reported in this article

There are fears that British supermarket shelves could soon be empty of green beans, mangetout and sugar snap peas, among the main vegetables sent from Kenya each day.

We shouldn’t be airfreighting low value stuff like this. For all sorts of reasons, including

Supermarkets’ ‘just in time’ delivery schedules mean that while there is some stock kept in reserve, it is only enough to last for two or three days.

One day, we will come to bitterly regret the brittleness of our distribution systems…