Flying

Yesterday I took a flight from London to Stuttgart.  It was a business trip, but after the business part was done I had time to enjoy what is a beautiful city.  Busy and vibrant on a Friday afternoon, the weather good, and plenty of street cafes to sit and watch the human traffic go by with a beer in hand.  My question is this:

 Is it right that it cost me only 100GBP to fly there? 

The same journey by road or rail would have cost several times more.  Aviation fuel is tax subsidised leading to budget airlines springing up, creating over supply and artificially reduced prices.  But is this a good or bad thing? The argument that a single plane journey replaces the 100 single journeys that would be made by road or rail otherwise doesn’t stack up – most people on my flight wouldn’t have paid the extra money or time to do that.  And without that demand, the budget airlines wouldn’t exist etc etc.  To sum up:

The bad: Massive damage to the environment, consumption of scarce resources (oil) on in some case pointless journeys.  The good: The chance for the mass market to visit places they wouldn’t otherwise.  A boost to the economy where the people end up as they spend money at their destinations.  Translation of people intra Europe boosting the notion of Europe as a single nation.

Children

I have 4 children.  There was a view that an odd number 1 or 3 would result in lone or middle child syndrome.  4 seemed a nice round number.  Given the eldest 3 are all girls there was an assumption by many that we kept going until we had a boy.  Oh whatever.  At least this is not a new phenomenon.  Stone Agers would have kept plugging away until they had the requisite number of males, and not worried about the social esotericism of getting the mix right.  Mind you, I imagine they wouldn’t have worried about who they had those kids with.    Now that would be a mix.

All I know is that each, in their own way, fit perfectly such that you couldn’t imagine the mix being different or that we’d want it to be different.  Parental rosy specs I know but there you have it.