We were duped by the duty free – victims of the alienating power of airports

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/13/duty-free-tax-airport-shops

Version 0 of 1.

Hell is not other people. Hell is airports (and other people). There’s getting there and there is being there. For hours. Migraine-inducing strip lighting, queues, fumbling with passports, the stress of parsing gate announcements on screens at odd angles. Irritations everywhere. And now we know that the habitually enforced requirement to produce a boarding pass at airport shops is not actually a requirement, nothing to do with law or safety, but really a means of lining the pockets of corporations which keep the savings on VAT. We have all been duped. We all believed that by rummaging around in a bag for five minutes and presenting that bit of paper along with the plastic bottle of Teacher’s, we were making the world – and the duty-free lounge itself – a safer place. Not a bit of it. There was mass deception – or at the very least, mass dissembling. They did it and they’re responsible, but we helped.

We fell victim to the alienating power of airports. None of us is at our smartest at an airport. We slot into the system and question little. There is no expectation of life enhancement. The objective is to get in and get out – the pathetic hope to survive. These days, the Great British public questions everything. If you don’t believe me, play fast and loose with the facts on Twitter, or any other kind of social media, and see what happens. A bombardment happens, the wisdom of crowds cutting through cant and obfuscation like locusts in a wheat field. But with all that knowledge, for all that wisdom and with all that curiosity, we were suckers in those duty-free shops, scrambling to find those boarding cards, making rich conglomerates richer. In the airside world, who can think straight.

Old and rolled

Next week I turn 26. Nothing exciting ever happens at 26. I think of 26 as old because I am 25. As an August child, birthdays have never been hugely significant – parties tend to be washouts when friends are all holidaying abroad. The main thing I have learned is that none of us really grow up. I know this not just because of how little I have changed (I cannot cook, still), but by virtue of having many friends decades older. They’re all mixed-up too. I grow old, I grow old, I shall smoke my cigarettes rolled.

ABCs of user courtesy

I might be old but at least I’m still me. Google, by contrast, wishes to be known as Alphabet. It took me years to get over Opal Fruits becoming Starburst, so naturally I have not taken the news well. In 2000 the household cleaning product Jif was renamed Cif, due to problems with pronunciation in more than 60 countries. Google and its various offshoots will still exist, but as subsidiaries of Alphabet. But who do they think they are? Shares rocketed 5%, it is true, but no one asked us, the users, and we’re the cash cow. I do think we should have a vote on this sort of thing.

From Russia with reprisals

I lived in Russia for a year and a half, and after a while the bizarre ceased to be bizarre at all. Not much has changed. Always entertaining were the edicts from government, customarily presented as matters of life or death but invariably ridiculous. Yesterday there was a missive against Reddit, the social network site. At the weekend we learned of reprisal-seeking Russian officials – aggrieved by sanctions – destroying imported condoms, bacon and western cheese. But few will be aghast. The extraordinary comes as standard. In my first week I saw a shetland pony travelling in the front seat of a four-door saloon, being driven down a city street.

@ladyhaja