Now I like Rankin and I like Rebus, but I've always considered 'crime writing' as essentially 'Airport' stuff. It's bought to fill in the time you spend sat on balconies, swanning round pools and beaches or stuck in forlorn B & Bs as the rain sweeps in - once again - from the Atlantic.
This one, though, was definitely different. All the rest have been written well enough. The characters have been well fleshed out and everything, but, once it's been read, it's forgotten.
'The Hanging Gardens' is different. Looking at the dates of publication it's the latest book of his I have read (1997), so that might explain a few things. If that's the case though, all I can say is roll on all the rest.
Here we have a cracking example of 'Big Business' and the be-suited, business-degree automatons that they employ really excelling.
Apparently 'Mr Eddington said there was always criticism of BA over whether it was "doing enough to take costs out of our business".'
"It's a very difficult balance to get right - clearly we have to get it right." '
His admission comes a day after BA's director of operations Mike Street apologised to passengers.
So Mr Eddington, I have a question: who is critising BA over whether it is doing enough to take costs out of your business? 'Cos from I'm sat I don't hear it.
What I do hear is passengers pointing out that you are too friggin' expensive. But, as I know only too well, that does not equate to staff being paid good money - nor indeed the hiring of enough staff to 'man the gates' when needed.
Nah. To me, costs = overpaid 'management' making the wrong decisions time and time and time and time again.
Have the customers finished paying for your woeful tailplane designs yet? Your disgraceful attempts to put Branson out of business? Your complete and utter ineptitude?
It sickened me yesterday to see the same management lackey attempting to reassure the shareholders and media (NOT THE CUSTOMERS SAT IN THE TERMINAL) that 'everything was under control', 'management was volunteering to man check in desks' and ' everything would be back to normal in a few hours'. Anybody would think it was anybody but his fault in the first place. Who caused the problem? Adolf Hitler? Shakin' Stevens? D C Thompson? A typical management bollox-speak twat simply trying to impress the MD - nobody else. "I might get a rise out of this".
When, when, when are we going to realise that the shit these 80s throwbacks come out with have nothing to do with reality? It's about time the Government legislated so we could shoot the bastards as they held their press conferences. I can feel a mission statement coming on.
So, speaking of 80s throwbacks, Mark Thatcher eh? What an odious bastard he ALWAYS was. Thick as pigshit but 'blessed' with a Daddy who owned a business brain and a Mummy who had power and contacts.
In my book he's on a par with Jeffrey Archer, Hannibal Lector and Pol Pot. Just a shifty, evil bastard who - like Hannibal could be fictional he's that much of a comic-book liability.
There's always been doubts about young Thatcher. 3 O levels after attending a private school. Failing his accountancy exams three times on the trot and, of course, getting lost during a famous rally - at a time when Mummy could've simply ordered out the Nimrods and Daddy could have paid the World to find him. Questions asked in the house about how he was able to earn a reputed £12m deal to sell planes to the Saudis while his Mam was still the PM?
Strange that not too long after Daddy shuffles off his coil, the protection seems to have stopped and Thatcher junior suddenly gets pulled in over allegations that have been flying around for quite a while now. Allegedly financing a coup, organised by one of his mates. A coup that - due to the shitload of oil reserves that the country involved controlled - could've landed him a fortune. Well, actually most of the reports don't mention that fact but, for me at least, it seem the most plausible explanation for the spawn of Satan's daughter.
Nice to see him being tried in post-apartheid South Africa though isn't' it ? Y'know, after all the support his Mam and Dad gave to the Anti-Apartheid movement. I guess they'll be falling over themselves to give him the benefit of the doubt.
I still can't believe he'll do time. Can you? Here's hoping though.
Too many of the 'great and good' from the eighties still believe they can get away with whatever they want. It's good to know that there are people out there still willing to track them down. Like latter-day Simon Wiesenthals they are tenacious. From Pinochet to Shirley Porter we shall hunt them and exact revenge.
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