In the news

It's cooled down a bit from Tuesday,
we're all under 40(C) now.

This morning in Boston a public transit train caught fire on a bridge.
Someone jumped into the river below to escape and refused to board the
firefighter boat. They threw her a life preserver and she swam to
shore and walked away. I want a film about this woman.

https://twitter.com/nancybaym/status/1550172860030787584

Kids. Brutally straight up since forever.

https://twitter.com/CountBinface/status/1550389940747440128

Willing to wager it’s because she didn’t want to be billed for the rescue…

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-law-in-place-to-allow-businesses-to-hire-agency-workers-to-plug-staffing-gaps-caused-by-strike-action

They really are a bunch of absolute cunts.

Employment agencies?

Couldn't agree more.

The government but sure

Were the government just pissed off with P&O because they had gazumped their policy?

Huge queues at Dover, being blamed on the French police. Is that fair? Is it not just checks take longer post Brexit?

Brexit makes things much worse but it's largely covid. UK / France and all other countries sacked or lost a load of boarder people during covid as fewer people were travelling / borders were closed.

Now, those former employees have either got new jobs or just plain don't want to work in that shit job.

Voila; queues.

The accusation is, I believe, that the French haven't scaled up their side to cope with the massive start of the holiday rush. Obviously Brexit's fault, but entirely possible that the French aren't bending over backwards to do all they can to alleviate things.

They wouldn't be the only ones guilty of it
https://www.emirates.com/media-centre/emirates-statement-on-operations-at-london-heathrow/

"The bottomline is, the LHR management team are cavalier about travellers and their airline customers. All the signals of a strong travel rebound were there, and for months, Emirates has been publicly vocal about the matter. We planned ahead to get to a state of readiness to serve customers and travel demand, including rehiring and training 1,000 A380 pilots in the past year.

LHR chose not to act, not to plan, not to invest. Now faced with an “airmageddon” situation due to their incompetence and non-action, they are pushing the entire burden – of costs and the scramble to sort the mess - to airlines and travellers"

Stone?

Indeed. Not massively looking forward to trying to fly out tomorrow (though Gatwick not LHR). Bound to be fucked up somewhere.

Dublin airport has had very much the same issue which was due to covid layoffs and I guess staff have found other work so getting qualified replacements in isn't a quick fix

I've not heard anything particularly bad about Gatwick recently so you may be fine, I'd still be there like 4 hours early though just in case. The fact some airports are alright highlights how much it's just Heathrow's staffing issues.

Huge queues at Dover

If we think its bad now, wait until the autumn when the biometric checks come in.

France, having taken back control of its border, is doing what it wants to do - which (entirely coincidentally) is showing the UK that it is powerless in this scenario to force France to do anything that it doesn't want to do.

Sadly I don't think we've really internalised the reality of having a bare bones agreement with the EU, and actively reneging on what we have agreed.

Do report your findings, I am going Gatwick-Toronto in a few weeks

Don’t train drivers have to be accredited for both the train they are driving and the lines they can use? Surely there’s not a bank of agency staff waiting to be called up to drive strike busting trains.

I’m reporting live from Gatwick airport. Got here 3.5 hours early, and took less than an hour to get through to in departures. Most of which because some shit indie band were checking in a dozen Marshall stacks and drum kits in front of us.

Airport seems normally busy for the time of year, no dramas or cancellations on the board. YMMV, good luck.

*The Amazons, apparently.

My wife's cousin's cousin is in The Amazons.

Anecdata #2 is that arriving in LHR T5 this morning c. 10 am was fine, no queue for the eGates at all. Unlike LAX on Sunday evening (2hr wait in the ESTA queue).

Tell them they’re shit at the next family BBQ please.