From The Kitchen Table

Talking of Leeds, where I was at the weekend, I noted the board in the student’s union where the names of the past presidents are noted and their year of service. Naturally, I looked for Jack Straw, the most famous of these. Somewhat depressingly his year, 1969 has a nasty scratched out blank next to it.

I can’t say I’ve been as keen on Jack of late as once I was. No longer the fiery rebel of yore, he seems to be determined that none of the senior women will get past him and that Harriet Harman won’t get much credit for beating him to the deputy leadership of the Labour Party. See Andrew Rawnsley in this week’s Observer.

‘There is a growing sense around Westminster and Whitehall that the great offices of state in the cabinet are not punching at their proper weight. Jacqui Smith has yet to deliver a big speech about the philosophy and values that guide her approach to her critical responsibilities. She allowed herself to be muscled out of the Home Secretary’s slot in the Queen’s Speech debates by Jack Straw. The wily Jack is manoeuvring himself into the position of deputy Prime Minister in all but title. We are still waiting for Alistair Darling to give the definitive statement of his approach to the economy. David Miliband, who does have the capacity to make speeches of a large scope, has been packed off round the world.’

But I don’t think it’s big or clever to remove the one big name that the country has heard of and deface a board in the process. Neither should a student body attempt to hide its history. So damned predictable. I expect I’d have done the same.

Among the many irritating mysteries of my life is why, apparently, the rest of the world can find cheap flights on which they can circumnavigate the world whereas I cannot. Even if I think I’m there it always turns out that if I’d saved the time and gone straight to the carrier’s web site I could get the flight for about the same money.

I thought I’d cracked it this week. BA flight from Heathrow to Edinburgh (yes, I’m off north of the border again) was £139, but Flybe from Birmingham offered a flight out for £9.90 and a return for something in the £24.00 region. And the times were better so I got booking with a song in my heart. So how come I ended up paying £106? Well, firstly they charge extra for booking on line, then they charge extra for the airport and fuel taxes which is a whopping amount. Then, every checked in bag is charged for and so is booking and reserving a seat on-line. By the time I found out that I was only saving something in the region of £35 I was so far into the system that frankly Id almost given up the will to live, let alone fly.

I keep trying to find the elusive ‘cheap’ flights. There’s not a travel web site I don’t know. I just don’t know how to use them.

I take press calls at the Institute where I work so I always listen to the early morning news and try to predict what the story of the day might be. I’m rather better at it than I am at chasing a cheap flight but not much. Yesterday I thought it might be about Yahoo giving information about Chinese bloggers to the government resulting in two journalists ending up in jail. In fact it was about Gordon Brown trying to bring the legendry clunking fist to bear on internet providers in order to limit terrorist communications. A few days previously it was the Finnish killer and then the terrible murder of Leeds Student, Meredith Kercher. As well as doing interviews for Sky TV our expert wrote about it in some depth. Horribly compelling.