A Tale Of Two Cities

What a difference a month makes. Visiting London during the opening days of the Olympics, there was a palpable vibrancy in the air. All the grumbling and low expectations were giving way to a sense of moment, a gradual awareness that something quite special was unfolding in the capital. And this was before Team GB had won a single medal.

A month later, I'm back again to find that London has returned to normal: the Underground is packed, and packed with the visibly grumpy and the notably impolite.

Summer holidays have obviously expired, and even with the guarantee of a rain-sodden long Bank Holiday weekend, Londoners, at least, are re-engaging the rat race with a somewhat tepid embrace.

So what was different a month ago? Did Boris and his doom-laden 'nuclear attack' announcements on the Tube simply scare the perpetually irascible London commuter away for the summer?

Is that why central London, one month ago, seemed to be populated exclusively by flag-waving families out on day trips to the swimming heats, the show jumping and the cycle races?

Were Londoners and their guests on an Olympic high? Did the capital succumb to an urge to recreate that hippy-dippy advert from the 1970s for Coca-Cola (suspiciously, a 2012 Olympic sponsor...) in which the world was invited to hold hands and collectively drink its teeth into decay?

Questions, questions, questions. Whatever it was, though, it has now worn off. Much like the sun tans sported by many on the Tube this morning from St. Pancras.

London is back and already squashed into its Northern Line misery. Heads are, once more, buried in crumpled copies of Metro, with the paper being used like one of those flimsy canvas beach windbreaks to shut out impertinent stares and the curry breath.

London was, for 17 days, the happiest city on the planet. Today it's back being London again.

Roll on Christmas.

Virgin Rebirth

Sometimes publicity stunts go right. And sometimes they go, well, spectacularly awry.

On Wednesday the media was gifted the mother of all sniggerfests when the hapless Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, found himself dangling by his political credentials when a zip-wire caper went hilariously wrong.

It was the sort of PR disaster that would form the master gag of an episode of The Thick Of It or Spin City. But, no, this was a very real stunt featuring the very real-life chief executive of the very real British capital and current host of the Olympic Games.

In the hands of another publicity-hungry blond, Sir Richard Branson, it would have been seen as one more wacky caper featuring the billionaire regarded in the UK as the "acceptable" face of entrepreneurism, owing to his peroxide locks, gleaming white teeth, life-long aversion to wearing ties and propensity for doing daft things for the cameras.

Strangely, Virgin is one of the few prominent global brands absent from London 2012. Indeed beyond the possibility that some athletes might train in one of Branson’s gyms, the only trace of Virgin DNA so far was a week ago today, with the appearance of Mike Oldfield in the opening ceremony.

Oldfield’s now almost 40-year-old opus Tubular Bells – part of which he performed in Danny Boyle’s expansive history of the National Health Service – holds an indelible mark on Branson’s career.  It was one of the first four albums to be released on the fledgling Virgin Records label in 1973. It had been recorded by the then-19 year-old Oldfield at Branson’s rural Oxfordshire studio, The Manor, bought itself by the 21-year-old Branson on a hunch that providing musicians a place in the country to get their heads together might prove creatively fruitful.

It’s the sort of apparently impulsive (but very well thought through) business punt that has been Branson’s hallmark. Over four decades he has spread the Virgin brand across a bottomless stream of commercial puns (e.g. Virgin Brides, fnrrr, fnrrrr...) built upon the Virgin brand ethic of fun.

To support them, there has been conspicuous self-promotion, relentless japery and no shortage of photo opportunities involving air hostesses and buckets of water.

"Oddly, the British find this perfectly charming," wrote Fast Company magazine once, adding: "Americans would probably sue him".

For a billionaire - and Britain's fourth richest person – Branson’s public popularity (or, perhaps, public tolerance of his self-publicity) has rarely waned, and he is frequently named as one of the people Britons would happily vote for as prime minister.

Over 42 years he has built an empire that has had, at certain moments, anywhere between 200 and 400 businesses within its fold, ranging from ranging from airlines to bridal wear, Caribbean islands, manicure services, banking services, mobile phones, wines and soft drinks.

"If you can run one successful company," he has said, "you can pretty much run any company”. And if the distinctive red and white Virgin logo hasn’t been prominent enough, Branson has ensured the brand is one of the world’s most recognizable through dare-devil trans-Atlantic capers by balloon, speedboat and anything else that can bear the company colours.

Beneath the business, however, still lurks the hippyish public schoolboy who left Stowe at the age of 16, having struggled through academia with dyslexia, to launch The Student magazine, later using it as an advertising platform for selling discounted records by mail order.

"There was tremendous excitement about music," Branson himself wrote in his autobiography, Losing My Virginity. "It was political; it was anarchic; it summed up the young generation’s dream of changing the world. And I also noticed that people would never dream of spending as much as 40 shillings on a meal wouldn't hesitate to spend 40 shillings buying the latest Bob Dylan album."

Eventually a full-on mail order service was launched, named Virgin Mail Order Records (named after a female acquaintance suggested the name on the basis that "We’re complete virgins at business."), only to be soon thwarted by a postal strike. Branson, never one to shirk a challenge - or an angle - moved Virgin Records to a former shoe shop at 24 Oxford Street in London. And an empire was born.

Having opened the Oxford Street shop with Nik Powell (later to become one of the godfathers of modern British film-making), Branson saw the next opportunity was to open a recording studio, presumably to create a supply chain for the store. Looking through Country Life magazine, he came across the 17th century pile The Manor and took out a £20,000 mortgage on it. "I imagined that the best environment for making records would be a big comfortable house in the country where a band could come and stay for weeks at a time and record whenever they felt like it."

The logical next step was to launch a record label on which to publish The Manor’s output. Even if record companies were normally set up by people pure music at their heart - the Ertegun brothers at Atlantic, for example, public schoolboys barely out of their teens. Tubular Bells, with its nods towards both classical music, prog rock and the first footings of ambient music, cast Virgin as a label you couldn't pin down.

Branson's nose for a stunt - and an opportunity - reared again in 1977 when the Sex Pistols were fired from EMI. Cashing in on the Queen's Silver Jubilee, Virgin released the Pistols' single God Save The Queen, and subsequent album Never Mind The Bollocks.

From prog to punk? No more varied than airlines and soft drinks, and when you consider Virgin's later roster - Culture Club, Phil Collins, Heaven 17, XTC, Simple Minds, Janet Jackson, the Rolling Stones and, er, the Spice Girls - a Virgin label ethos started to emerge: if it made money, sign it.

Risk was still a factor - signing the Pistols was, another opportunistic publicity stunt - and Culture Club's Boy George guaranteed much the same level of mainstream media in the early 1980s. In some respects Phil Collins - posssibly Virgin's biggest money-spinner - was another risk, given that he was, in 1981, merely the drummer of a moderately successful prog rock band who'd turned some bedroom demos into a melancholy album about his divorce. But then Face Value changed things considerably, for both artist and record label.

Branson clearly loves challenges. Whether launching Virgin Galactic, the world's first passenger space service, or a shop to get around industrial action, there's not much he won't have a go at, perhaps to prove himself right, perhaps to prove others wrong.

Which explains why he is considering going back into the record industry, two decades after he sold off the Virgin music industry to save his airline business at a time of heated pressure from both British Airways and post-Gulf War fuel prices.

Having sold, in 1991, Virgin to Thorn-EMI for £510 million in cash, he now wants back in, regarding Virgin as a "sleeping beauty" of an asset and one that could be an "innovative and leading label once again with the right management and investment", claiming that it has been mismanaged.

With EMI in the process of being acquired by Universal Music - part of the controversial £1.2 billion bailout plan revealed last November – Universal’s owners Vivendi may be forced by competition regulators in Brussels to shed some of its assets, including one or more of the record labels it would inherit with the EMI takeover.

Branson has seen this as his opportunity to get back into the music game, and has discussed the reacquisition of Virgin with French independent record label owner Patrick Zelnik (with whom Branson launched Virgin Records France in 1980).

His approach to create an independent label by merging Zelnik's Naive Records with Virgin, suggests that the blond tycoon isn't frightened of taking on new challenges any time yet - even in the current economy, when traditional notions of the music industry Branson joined in 1970 have been eroded by technology and the demise of physical recorded media.

Speaking about the talks with both Universal CEO Lucian Grainge and Zelnik, Branson has said. "I have known Lucian and Patrick for both 30 years. They are great record men and Patrick has committed to revitalise Virgin Records – which has been mismanaged in the last 10 years."

That said, even today, Virgin's roster includes the likes of Katy Perry, Gorillaz, Laura Marling, Professor Green and French star David Guetta - not a bad commercial foundation to pick up. If successful, however, Branson and Zelnik will restore Virgin to a global independent label.

But with the recording industry in decline, the viability of the plan remains to be seen. Industry insiders do, at least, concede that a new Virgin would have two very significant things going for it: a strong brand and the stewardship of a blond who, even at the age of 62, isn't suffering from diminished ambition.

All it needs is Muttley and I'll be happy

Where would Britain be without something to moan about, eh? We Brits will complain in winter that the snow's too cold, too wet, too white or that it hasn't turned up at all, and then moan about it snowing in spring.

Which is when we start to complain that summer has arrived early because there's a hosepipe ban in force barely weeks after the blizzards have all melted away. And when summer - that notional period of sunshine from the end of June to early September - is supposed to be in play, we'll moan about it feeling more like autumn.

You really can't please some people. And you certainly can't please us islanders.

It's been little surprise that a nailed-on opportunity for national glee like the London 2012 games, which open tonight, if you hadn't noticed, has been met by a barrage of Olympic-strength kvetching.

I think it began in 2003 when the bid preparation began and only intensified when 'Jolly' Jacques Rogge announced "Lon-don" as host city of the 30th Olympiad on July 6, 2005, and immediately set about block-booking the best hotel rooms in town.

We've had a go at the stadium, the Olympic Village, Stratford Tube station, security guards, David Beckham, the Team GB costumes, Zil lanes, ticket allocations - there's a long list more (just go to the Daily Mail website for the full catalogue).

I've got to admit, I've not been entirely innocent. I have cast aspersions on Heathrow Airport's ability to handle all the participants and tourists, and London's ability to transport them.

I have also thrown a cheeky shot at the seemingly excessive security measures which involves ground attack jet fighters, anti-aircraft missiles, helicopter-borne snipers and, I think, secretly trained javelin and discus throwers with instructions to down any rogue aircraft, or pigeons, seagulls and sparrows.

But for the most part I am immensely proud to see my home city and my home country, a nation that has given the world some of its greatest culture, putting on its best show in anyone's living memory.

It will be big, bold, brash and colourful - everything that London is.The music will be everything from The Beatles to The Chemical Brothers, which should be a laugh if played during dope testing sessions. And so what if it is being led by the preposterously comical Boris Johnson and Seb Coe, the former Olympic champion and now a politician so slick he makes David Cameron look positively sloppy.

If I may, however, I have two gripes that I must get off my chest. Actually, one I have to get off my stomach: I don't dismiss the need for events like the Olympics to attract sponsors.

In fact, without sponsors London 2012 would be staged at Haringey Dog Track, with the swimming events at the Wandsworth Common lido, and all other field events on the football pitches on Wanstead Flats.

What I do question is the role of companies like Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Cadbury's and Heineken in supporting at least the first two clauses in the Olympic Charter, which are:

1. Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.
2. The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.

Earlier this month, London-based cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra presented a piece on the BBC's Newsnight in which he called upon the International Olympic Committee to rethink its touting of companies like Coca-Cola and McDonalds - companies associated with obesity, whether they like it or not.

As someone who has succumbed to middle-aged spread, and then some, and who has battled with their weight for many years, I do find it absurd to see these corporations so prominently paraded on the world stage for sporting events.

Of course, you will otherwise not escape such brands from TV advertising or posters on bus shelters, but by cynically associating themselves with the Games to the extent they are seen as integral to both the Games' successful execution as well as the Olympic spirit, they are pushing the belief that their products are healthy.

I wouldn't surmise that Coke Zero - my soft drink beverage of choice, if anyone is throwing some sponsorship money around - or the occasional Big Mac is going to kill anyone. But, as an overweight person, I know how that cretinous adage "everything in moderation" just doesn't work.

Dr Malhotra's Newsnight piece noted that in the Borough of Newham, where the London 2012 Olympic Village is located, there has been a doubling of cases of diabetes over the last ten years. In parts of the developing world, where traditional diets are being replaced by the homogeneity of generic, commoditised global-brand junk food, similar growth rates of diabetes have been observed.

In Newham, but also Bangalore, Shenzen, Nairobi, wherever, the proliferation of fast food outlets has had a measurable impact on local health, as so-called 'lifestyle diseases' like diabetes, heart disease and cancer take a hold. 35 million of us will die each year as a result of these conditions.

You can read more about Dr. Malhotra's report here, but I couldn't agree with him more. "Of course the Olympic sponsors cannot be held accountable for Britain's poor health," he concludes, "but their connection with the Games sends a dreadful message. In the context of an obesity epidemic I find it obscene that the Olympics chooses to associate itself with fast food, sugary drinks, chocolate and alcohol."

As a fat person, then, am I just weak-willed? Am I just unable to control myself? Well, yes. Self-will is the only way to lose weight and maintain it, practising the very simple equation of 'calories in must be equal or less than calories out'.

I have my own reasons for being overweight, but the point of this argument is that placing a burger brand or a sugary drink in the context of healthy, sporting endeavour creates normality that is not matched by those who will be sucked in by these companies' advertising, which presents healthy-looking people consuming nutritious, satisfying meals and refreshing beverages, rather than the morbidly obese that over consume them, either because they can't help it, or regard such cheap and quick fare as normal to wolf down before ordering another.

Of course, the IOC and their sponsors strenuously deny any wrongdoing and have put up a typically sterling line of defence.The IOC said that it: "...only enters into partnerships with organisations that it believes work in accordance with the values of the Olympic Movement", holding "...a duty on behalf of all of the stakeholders in the Olympic Movement to consider this partnership very carefully, particularly where we enter partnerships on a long term basis."

Coca-Cola said that it had been an Olympic partner since 1928 and "...has an outstanding heritage in supporting the Olympic Movement, and promoting the Olympic Games and active, healthy lifestyles to billions of consumers, pointing out that it sponsors more than 250 physical activity and nutrition education programs in more than 100 countries, "...and is committed to sponsoring a program in every country where it operates by the end of 2015."

The company also pointed out the range of drinks that it offers - "the widest range of drinks... ever offered at an Olympic Games, including sparkling and still, low- and no-calorie choices, juices, smoothies and water."

Across the other sponsors, corporate reputation managers spun a similar story, one of contributing to a healthy, balanced diet and the promotion of active lifestyles, all of which I know can coexist with the occasional Mickey-Ds visit, or the odd night out drinking pints of the beer that reaches parts that other beers can't reach.

But should such brands be foisted on the impressionable, the young or merely the weak-willed? Like, obviously, me? I just don't think so.

So what was my other issue? I would like to see, just once and nothing more, Muttley - Dick Dastardly's sidekick in Wacky Races and Dastardly And Muttley In Their Flying Machines, pitch up at the winner's podium over the next three weeks and say: "Gimme, gimme, gimme! Medal!" Just the once.

Moment of madness

In their forensic examination of last week's trial of John Terry, this weekend's British newspapers have all come to more or less the same conclusion: that the legal proceedings were "unedifying" owing to the - Shock! Horror! - remarkable revelation that professional footballers use "industrial" language towards each other.

For those of you still curious to know what sort of language we're talking about - and I must assume you are rubbish at word puzzles like Hangman if you have been unable to complete the asterisked tracts of copy in your daily newspaper - you can go online and download the full 15-page judgement from Howard Riddle, Senior District Judge (Chief Magistrate) of the Westminster Magistrates' Court in the case of Regina -v- John Terry.

Fitting for the absurdity of the case, the deliberation contains such inadvertently funny comments as: "It is obvious, and again not in dispute, that at the time that John Terry said “black c**t” and “f*****g knobhead” he was angry." I've never met Riddle and have no idea what he sounds like, but I can't help hearing in my head these phrases being delivered by Rowan Atkinson doing his famous schoolteacher monologue.

Anyway, not wishing to go over the Terry trial again, it is the word "knobhead" that draws my interest today. It may be a splendidly adolescent playground charge but - man alive! - does it fit whoever on Saturday night was responsible for turning off the PA system in London's Hyde Park at Hard Rock Calling, just as Bruce Springsteen was saying goodnight to the crowd.

Unlike most acts of terrorism, no-one has yet claimed personal responsibility for this act of mealy-mouthed officiousness. Therefore we'll just have to stick with calling him, her or them, "Knobhead". Hard Rock Calling's promoters, Live Nation, has said: "It was unfortunate that the three hour-plus performance by Bruce Springsteen was stopped right at the very end but the curfew is laid down by the authorities in the interest of the public's health and safety."

What on God's green could have made Springsteen being allowed to thank 76,000 fans, his band and Sir Paul McCartney, who joined The Boss on stage for a memorable finale, a few minutes over the uptight 10.30pm curfew a danger to the public's health and safety? The music had ended, and there was probably going to be more disturbance to local residents around Hyde Park from people just leaving the site for the next hour. Actually, living around there, you are probably disturbed by the noise of traffic every day than by five minutes of Bruce Springsteen calling everybody "awesome".

The reaction has been understandably furious, especially as all who attended have attested to have witnessed one of the great moments in rock music in recent years. Steve van Zandt, one of Springsteen's guitarists and the man who memorably played consiglieri Silvio Dante in The Sopranos (which, ironically, also ended abruptly), led the invective: "One of the great gigs ever in my opinion. But seriously, when did England become a police state?" he ranted on Twitter.

And he went on: "We break curfews in every country but only English cops needs to 'punish us' by not letting us leave until the entire crowd goes. Is there just too much fun in the world? We would have been off by 11 if we'd done one more. On a Saturday night! Who were we disturbing? The cops got nothing more important to do? How about they go catch some criminals instead of fucking with 80,000 people having a good time?"

Stephen Merchant, Ricky Gervais' goggly-eyed writing partner also took to Twitter to express his frustration: "Ashamed to be British right now. Springsteen and McCartney playing Twist & Shout in Hyde Park and council pulled the plug cos of curfew. WTF."

Applying customary diplomacy, as well as a cheeky plug for London 2012, Mayor Boris Johnson branded the muting as "...an excessively efficacious decision. You won't get that during the Olympics. If they'd have called me, my answer would have been for them to jam in the name of the Lord."

The identity of "Knobhead" is likely to be a combination of a Live Nation paranoid about never being granted a licence again by Westminster City Council, and the council itself, who conveniently tried to distance themselves from the killjoy moment.

"Concert organisers, not the council, ended last night's concert in Hyde Park," explained Westminster council's Leith Penny, adding that to comply with their licence, Live Nation were allowed to continue the concert until 10.30pm. "Licences are granted until certain times to protect residents in the area from noise late at night."

It is ironic that 50 years ago last Thursday, in a venue less than 25 minutes' walk away from the Hard Rock Calling stage, the Rolling Stones made their stage debut in a time when music was just finding its feet in breaking down the sort of cultural fascism that regarded pop music as subversive. Even if, today, bands like the Stones, as well as Springsteen and McCartney dance with the devil at 'corporate' gigs like Hard Rock Calling, has the country that spawned some of the greatest rock bands in history forgotten what it's like just let things go on a little longer? "Knobhead" really does cover it.

Capital punishment

Before British politicians descend upon Cornwall later this month for their annual holiday-come-PR stunt ("We always take our holidays in Britain. It is super here!"), there are still several vexing issues still to deal with.

One, in particular, is congestion. No, not Ed Milliband's adenoids, but that bunged-up patch of West London that is Heathrow Airport.

Having lived outside Britain for the past 13 years I've come to regard Heathrow with a combination of necessity and progressive loathing. I have watched it become steadily broken, less of a convenient portal and more of a dystopian hell that can't cope with itself.

Heathrow, today, is somewhere between an exclusive members-only club you wait years to be accepted into, and an ultra-strict penal colony that only grants one parole each year as the gift of the benevolent local dictator. Moreover, it has clearly stopped being able to meet its basic purpose.

Heathrow is a miserable experience. And yet the airport proudly boasts that it is the world's busiest airport while maintaining that it is only working at "near-full capacity", a PR device to suggest things aren't quite that bad. Well, they are.

As, technically, a 'foreigner', arriving at Heathrow is a fraught affair. Almost always before your plane's wheels have touched tarmac, you are held in a seemingly endless 'holding pattern', spiralling at 10,000ft over Kent.

Once you've landed - and assuming there isn't a departing aircraft blocking your flight's designated arrival gate - you must then be subjected to the purgatorial nightmare of Border Control, itself rapidly becoming the greatest oxymoron since 'military intelligence'.

Leaving Heathrow is little better: in each terminal there are vast arrays of security inspection lines but, like supermarket checkouts on Christmas Eve, usually only a handful are staffed (and by belligerent characters barking orders about removing laptops and iPads from their cases, and to take off shoes in order for you to walk socked or barefoot through everyone else's podiatric detritus). When your flight eventually 'pushes back' from its gate, it then gets stuck in a queue of several aircraft, their engines burning a small hole in the ozone layer above Hounslow, to tear up the departure runway.

Heathrow is no longer a gateway to freedom. Or a gateway to anything, for that matter. Instead, it has become a byword for inconvenience: "I got totally Heathrowed the other day trying to get out of the supermarket car park. Everyone trying to leave by the one exit" or "Absolute chaos at Stamford Bridge on Saturday - only one turnstile open. 41,000 people trying to pass through it at once - a right Heathrow it was." You get the picture.

My most recent experience underpins this: my flight was due to leave Heathrow at 12.45pm; I, my fellow passengers and even the crew had made the effort to be sat down, buckled in and facing the right direction at the appointed time. Unfortunately, the plane remained on the ground with its chocks in place for a further twenty minutes. Once given permission to go, we then spent a further twenty minutes in an Airbus tailback on the taxiway. This is an airport operating somewhat beyond full capacity.

My eventual arrival in Paris, however, was somewhat different. The plane landed straight from its planned descent, with another plane touching down simultaneously on a parallel arrivals runway. Passport inspection was effortless and organised, even if the two surly gendarmes looked like we were interupting their otherwise soulless day, and with only a brief wait for baggage, I was on my way home.

This is replicated in other hubs around Europe - Frankfurt, Amsterdam-Schiphol (which has use of seven runways) - and in the United States, where airports like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta and Miami operate at high capacity but with multiple runways to support them.

Heathrow, on the other hand, clearly can't. Short of bulldozing half the borough of Hounslow, and half the borough of Hillingdon, it can't expand.
Talk of a third runway - which the Government agreed to drop going into the last general election, but is now creeping back into conversation - is still a Band-Aid for a wound requiring amputation.

Because a third runway isn't about alleviating the congestion, it's about being able to increase the traffic, that it would enable the addition of at least two more terminals. I'm sorry, but I thought the additional runway was to address existing congestion, not bring in even more planes and even more passengers.

The debate surrounding Heathrow is a lively one, even if British transport minister Justine Greening recently referred to it as a "pub discussion" amongst the airline operators. It's not, and it goes beyond the airlines, the airport operator, even the government, but to those who live under Heathrow's flight paths and, dare I say it, those who actually want to travel to and from London.

Heathrow opened 83 years ago as a small airfield near a Middlesex village. As World War 2 drew to a close, it developed into something bigger. 25 years ago, Heathrow was handling 31 million passengers each year. In 2011, 70 million people passed through it - more than the UK's population. Actually, "passed" through it sounds too gentle: "squeezed" sounds better. Each of those passengers represents a plane taking off and landing, on average, just over every minute of every day between 6am and 11pm.

Statistically, flying is one of the safest forms of transport, but surely no amount of technology, safeguards and good fortune can prevent the law of averages from causing a major accident? 

Not that long ago, a British Airways Boeing 777 crash landed just short of the Heathrow runway. The explanation given was that a build-up of ice in the flight from China had caused a blockage of fuel into the engines. By a minor miracle and, no doubt the heroism of the pilots, the plane's 'hard landing' could have been worse. 

With Heathrow on London's west side, in a country with a prevailing south-westerly wind, there is one plane every minute crossing a city of eight million residents and anything up 12 million coming in and out of it. It is, London's Mayor Boris Johnson has said, "an historical accident". "London is unlike any other capital in the world," he told the BBC earlier this year. "We ask our planes to fly in over the city and land in the western suburbs. Nobody else does it that way."

Occasionally Heathrow will resort to easterly operations, with planes flying in over Windsor Castle and taking off over London. Either way, with a desire to increase the number of flights coming into London - bringing more Chinese and Middle Eastern businessmen with them - any expansion of Heathrow must come with a commensurate increase in risks (or, as Johnson put it: "We should not aggravate that mistake"). It is claimed that the lack of direct flights coming from emerging markets is costing the British economy an estimated £1.2 billion every year.

So, that's been a long list of the complaints. What about the solutions and alternatives? This month, Heathrow has introduced a 'silver bullet' in the form of "mixed-mode" flying. In this way, both of the airport's runways are used for parallel take-offs and landings - as one takes off another is landing behind it, which is claimed will create 25% more capacity. It won't, however, address the fundamental problem that London needs at least another runway to cope with the expected growth of global aviation, especially coming out of the Far East. And as this week's Farnborough Air Show has demonstrated, there is no shortage of money in the aviation industry to buy more planes.

Of course I don't actually need to fly into London at all. The Eurostar is a fantastically quick service and relatively convenient to get to and from. Unfortunately, the airlines know this and have made their ticket prices very competitive to the extent that, on balance, flying is often cheaper. 

Heathrow isn't the only airport in London, either. London City is ideal if you're attending meetings in Central London, but lousy if you're destination is on the diametrically opposite quarter of the capital. Gatwick serves southern London, it's true, but that only has ONE runway, and can be as congested as Heathrow. Then there is Luton, Stanstead and even Oxford, all ridiculously prefixed "London-", in keeping with the Ryanair sense of geography (e.g. Beauvais, which it has labeled Paris-Vatry-Disney Airport, despite being 120km from Disneyland Paris and 90km to the Arc de Triomphe). Yes, I'm sure it is more convenient flying into Birmingham and then taking a train to London, but then why would I want to fly over London only to come back?

Justine Greening's pub debate essentially revolves around those who believe London - arguably still the world's financial capital and without doubt a city attracting new residents from all over the world, bringing business with them - needs a third runway at Heathrow to compete, against those who don't want any additional runways at all, lest they upset birds, newts and rare snails, and those who simply don't want more concrete and kerosene fumes blighting their back yard.

Adding runways to Stanstead and Gatwick may add some more capacity, but there will inevitably be powerful lobbies of residents of rural Essex, Sussex and Surrey respectively who'll oppose such expansion with the sort of vigour applied by the Home Guard in 1939.

The one credible alternative is 'Boris Island' - the idea sponsored by Mayor Johnson and architect Lord Norman Foster for the Thames Hub, the £20 billion, four-runway airport on reclaimed Thames Estuary land capable of handling 150 million passengers each year and integrated into a transportation infrastructure that would connect it by fast rail link rail and road to central London (in 30 minutes) and other parts of the UK.

Mapped on Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok Airport - another Foster + Partners project - the estuary airport would handle 24-hour flying operations without waking anyone up, moving 300,000 passengers each day. 

It is impressive. It is logical. But if the political - and environmental - objections now are anything to go by, it will take so long to get built, we'll all be travelling by Star Trek-style transporter beams instead. Environmentalists claim the Isle of Grain site on the Thames is home to various species of waterfowl, which the pilots' union, BALPA, has expressed concern about the risk from birdstrikes, not to mention the management of air traffic to other 'nearby' airports - including Brussels and Amsterdam.

Which brings us back to today's needs. Any new building in the south-east of England - whether an extra runway at Heathrow, Gatwick or Stanstead, or an expansion of small airports like the former Battle of Britain airfields at Biggin Hill and Manston, will take time and money. 

Global recession may have slowed down economic growth, but it is not slowing down the aviation industry and the movement of business from Asia, which means that when the economy picks up again, London could very easily be left behind...

London Calling

When Britpop was in its prime, midway through the final decade of the last millennium, a thrusting young buck called Tony Blair came bounding down from the north-east of England to become Prime Minister of This Sceptred Isle™. Britain was, at the time, undergoing a purple patch of creative endeavour not seen since the 60s.

Indeed, such was the success of the 60s that Britain decided to recreate them in the 90s. For the Swinging Sixites, read the Loaded generation. There were artists pickling marine life (for David Bailey, read Damien Hirst) and London's Primrose Hill was fit to bursting with the cream of young British celebrity (for Caine, Stamp and Christie, read Law, Frost and Moss). Elsewhere, the country was draped, somewhat ironically, in red, white and blue. Britannia was Cool.


For a nation of natural cynics, which cherishes its heritage and loves the royals but regards all that America The Beautiful nonsense of our cousins over there a little bit, well, OTT, Britain was enjoying itself. To be seen wearing the Union Flag across your bosom (Geri Spice) or beneath the strings of your electric guitar (Gallagher, Noel) was not a misplaced and ever-so slightly gauche act of nationalism, but semi-ironic recognition that this little island of ours isn't that bad and, when you think about it, has contributed more good things to the world than the bad of its imperial past.

Today you can't go anywhere without seeing Union Flag-emblazoned sofas in furniture shops and the wartime legend KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON plastered on any printable surface. And I'm not just talking about London or anywhere else in the British Isles: Brit-chic is everywhere - even in Paris - where soft furnishings featuring the Jack are in vogue in the trendiest of home decoration boutiques.

Britannia is cool - again - or so it would appear. It has a charming new royal couple, a cheeky scamp of a prince who dates blondes, flies attack helicopters and hangs out in nightclubs, while the collective "Firm" of the House of Windsor has reanimated the world's love affair with it by celebrating Her Majesty's 60-years of majesty. And, as a neat coda to all that pomp, ceremony and ice cream, even the England football team is obliging us with a run in Euro 2012. For now.

If the world hasn't had enough of London flypasts and flagwaving for one year, 36 days from now the Olympic torch will arrive in the capital for what has been promised - by Boris Johnson, largely, so blame him if it doesn't work out -  to be the greatest celebration of Britain in living memory: the 2012 Summer Olympic Games - the Games of the XXX Olympiad. 


Such is the excitement about London 2012 that the BBC has moved to Salford, which is near Manchester and therefore not in London, and London cab drivers will universally - and gladly - tell you that they'll be spending the entire games on a beach - Canvey Island, Magaluf, Margate, doesn't matter, just anywhere that doesn't involve driving through a choked city. If you're coming to London, bring walking shoes or curb your claustrophobia by using the Underground. 


Snarkiness aside, the world has been promised a party, and a party they will get. Again, blame Boris - the cunning politician masquerading as a blond buffoon - if that doesn't work out, but it was he who, amid Jimmy Page, David Beckham and a Routemaster bus in Beijing, vowed a celebration.

As with any decent party, someone has made a mix tape. And like any playlist it will delight, divide, baffle and broach conflict in equal measure. Earlier this week, someone "leaked" this planned soundtrack for the opening ceremony of the Games, which is being compiled by the ceremony's co-musical directors, Underworld's Karl Hyde and Rick Smith.

On first inspection the playlist looks like a combination of the obvious and the in-joke, but that would be a harsh assessment of a program designed to last three hours and offer something for everyone - visitor and incumbent.

So what will we get, as we watch fireworks and garishly-clad athletes parading around the half-a-billion-pound stadium?


If the leaked playlist is correct, Hyde and Smith's sense of irony is certainly intact, kicking off the shindig with Drummond's Eton Boating Song, followed by the always rousing Land Of Hope And Glory, before letting The Jam loose with Going Underground, as bold a tribute to kitchen sink Britain as anything to come out of the post-punk era.


Later on, the Sex Pistols' God Save The Queen and Pretty Vacant (yes, we get it - and Lydon's now advertising butter...) and, perhaps, the most obvious inclusion of all - London Calling.

From the themes to EastEnders and Coronation Street to the chimes of Big Ben, the opening of London 2012 will leave no musical reference to the dear old lady of London untouched.

Prog rock - Floyd's Eclipse ("All that you...touch/see/taste/feel/love/hate/distrust/save/give/deal/buy/steal/create/destroy/do/say/eat") and two tracks from Muse (Map Of The Problematique and Uprising) - lies alongside with Elgar, Handel, Jerusalem and the always-spine tingling Cup Final anthem, Abide With Me.


There will be cinematic pomp - The Dambusters March (which I'm sure will go down well with Germany), 80s synth pop - OMD's Enola Gay (which I'm sure will go down well with the Japanese squad, especially as it will apparently precede the Sugababes' Push The Button...), West End musicals (Food, Glorious Food from Oliver!) and saucy English seaside postcard smut (The Stripper).


The more you look at the list, the more you come to think that Hyde and Smith have been handed the gig of the year in compiling it. Forget Danny Boyle with his Bond-themed opening film, the real fun,  I suspect, was in drawing up the usual suspects, and then augmenting them with a ribald twist. 


The obvious - a liberal sprinkling of The Beatles (She Loves You, The End and Hey Jude), the Rolling Stones (Satisfaction, inevitably), The Kinks (All Day And All Of The Night), The 'Oo (My Generation) and Bowie's Heroes - mix with the less obvious: Trampled Under Foot by Led Zeppelin (Stairway To Heaven would probably have been just a little too, you-know..., but why not Whole Lotta Love as Jimmy Page played in Beijing?).


As proud as we Brits should be for our classic rock heritage, the playlist denotes generous time to more contemporary London fare, such as Tinie Tempah's Pass Out and Random Antics by Kano & Mikey J. British dance culture is also properly represented by The Chemical Brothers (Galvanise), Prodigy's Firestarter (just to please Health & Safety...) and, of course, Underworld with their own Born Slippy, which will hopefully not turn up during the aquatic events.


Thematically, there will be Chariots Of Fire by Vangelis, who is Greek and will probably welcome the royalties, while Queen and the Dame's Under Pressure reflects the reputation of London's organisational skills as much as the demands about to be placed on the atheletes. 


The decades that British music has given to the global soundtrack are equally reflected, though strange to see nothing before 1962. Surely Peter Sellers' Any Old Iron or Lonnie Donegan's Rock Island Line - the skiffle song that launched the careers of most British rock stars born in the '50s, could have been found a place amongst the TV theme tunes and other ecoterica?


But that's the fun of a playlist: it's a provocation to good-natured argument, as Nick Hornby captured so well in High Fidelity (the book...). It is why athletes who have spent the last four - even eight - gruelling years preparing for these games, will be swooned by a lovey-dovey tune about a bloke who's had a few too many and is asking his better half to drive him home. Yep, I'm not entirely sure what you're supposed to do to Eric Clapton's Wonderful Tonight while walking around a running track either. Eric is a national hero, one of the greatest guitarists of all time, and I'm proud to be from (sort of) his neck of the woods, but is WT the best representation of his canon and the British blues boom he helped fuel? Surely Cream's Crossroads would have been better - a distinctly British interpretation of a song foundered in the heat of Mississippi.


And then there is Billie Jean by Michael Jackson. Why? On one hand, a good party song, but unless it is some obscure reference to the famously saphic, six-times Wimbledon Ladies Champion, I can't understand its inclusion, thematically or otherwise. I do have a theory, however: Jacko was, once, bizarrely paraded at Fulham FC's Craven Cottage ground during half time of a fixture with West Ham, whose fans sing I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles (also on the list). It is said that the entire crowd welcomed Jacko by singing this song...only with a markedly different purpose altogether...


So, progressing through the 1970s, Mud's Tiger Feet (an absolutely fantastic inclusion) and more Bowie (Starman) remind us of how much music injected colour to the otherwise drab British landscape of the decade, which was spent mostly on strike. For the 1980s - the decade that began with Thatcher, recession and war in the Falklands before erupting in a many-hued puffball skirt of  party exuberence - we'll have Duran Duran, The Eurythmics, New Order, Frankie Goes To Hollywood (Relax - my, how we've moved on as a nation...) and Soul II Soul.

And then we reach the 1990s. The circle of the 60s is turned fully with Wonderwall, an acknowledgement of Noel Gallagher's songwriting simplicity, a feature shared with Paul McCartney. Strange, though not to see one or two of the Oasis crowdpleasers - say Cigarettes And Alcohol, for a laugh, or Roll With It. Instead, The Hindu Times is on the list - a hit, but hardly a signature hit. 


Blur, on the other hand, are represented by Song 2 - a no brainer, some might say, even if it's overuse by American "sports" broadcasters has started to render it a tad annoying. Radiohead feature with Creep, presumably a reference to the speed with which London's traffic will progress for the Games' duration. Strangely, though, there's no room for Pulp, despite Lord Jarvis of Cocker hawking the Eurostar service on television adverts encouraging France to come and see what London took away from Paris. Ouch.


Looking back over the last 50 years of music represented by this list, it does warm the cockles to see just how good British music has been, and continues to be. The Arctic Monkeys' I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor is a fitting tribute to Alex Turner's gnarled pop senisibility, not to mention his prolific endeavour, while the good times will roll with the Kaisers' I Predict A Riot (ha-ha, ho-ho, he-he...) and Franz Ferdinand's Take Me Out.


For a contrast in fortunes, Amy Winehouse's zoot-suited version of Valerie will be heard in quick succession with Coldplay's Viva La Vida (not Clocks?) and then Adele's Rolling In The Deep. The Tottenham Tenor couldn't or shouldn't be ignored for an event like this, especially as she is single-handedly maintaining the UK's GDP with sales of 19 and 21, which between them now represent Britain's biggest export industry, ahead of Japanese cars made in Sunderland and Swindon, and the port wing of Airbus airliners made in Wales (don't you just love European collaboration?). 


Can we derive any Britishness from all this? Will this three-hour mix tape have us reaching for the Union Jack boxer shorts? Hard to say: Olympic ceremonies are hardly my cup of tea, but if this leaked list is the real deal, it would be fair to say that Karl Hyde and Rick Smith will pull off one of the more remarkable feats of London 2012 - drawing up a playlist that represents the good, the bad and the ugly of Britain and British music, from the serious to the silly, and - such as Ron Grainer's Doctor Who theme and Monty Python's The Liberty Bell - the humour that defines us Brits, and which probably only we will get.