I'D RATHER GO TO THE DENTIST THAN HEATHROW

I have spent a lot of time in airports, and wished I hadn’t. They are on a par with dentists’ waiting rooms, only with shopping.

A few years back I worked on a project for BAA and saw at first-hand how its managers operated. Some were good; some were very good at meetings but little else.

I can’t vouch for BA, but I suspect the British management disease is rife there, too. There are too many who simply go to meetings (to demonstrate the fine arts of bullshitting and passing the buck) and too few at the sharp end of management – getting the guys on the shop floor to do the work properly and on time.

And that’s why you get debacles like the first day of operations at Heathrow’s new Terminal 5 yesterday. What a cock-up. What an awful impression of Britain for arriving tourists.

Not so long ago I wrote my alternative Budget blog. It included a tax ‘going to the 2012 Olympics fund to cover up late cracks so we don’t look total tits when the day arrives’. I now propose a slight amendment – ‘going to Heathrow so we don’t look total tits when the day arrives, and to be repaid by BAA and BA by the end of 2013’.

It’s anybody’s guess whether they can get it sorted in four years, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.

Brazen airport/airline bosses put yesterday’s long delays down to ‘teething troubles’. So they are obviously now admitting Heathrow is on a par with a dentist’s waiting room, only with shopping.