Who'd have guessed it?

Ray

The short answer, Stephen, is - NO!

Fabio P.Barbieri

Hey, from the country that gave you Monty Python....

Water

Shalom and welcome back we need people like you to stick around.

Strawsonian

Is that it? So much for "never knowingly understated".

Ian C

Unfortunately The Spectator website can be as slow as a Heathrow baggage reclaim.

Water

Ian C this is true, but more often then not the delayed reaction is for good reason. Unlike the baggage reclaim.

Bob

Well... yes. Most things, most of the time. Sorry to give a dull but true answer, but there you go.

Water

Hey Bob as Long as it's true, but then again what exactly is meant by the truth here leaves me somewhat aloof as to your construal. One would hope that truth by this measure would entail a fully working terminal; in which case I would concur with such thoughts, were they to be the case. As for whether it is dull…well that boils down to personal preference. Though it's a Airport terminal it's not meant to be fun it’s just meant to serve a purpose.

Verity

I said over on Melanie Phillips' blog that I was looking forward to the Olympics. I can't wait to watch the whole thing unravel, disintegrate and go belly up. I just can't wait. Blair's vanity project at the expense of taxpaying Londoners. Ah, the sweet smell of the nomenklatura and their little self-adoring fantasies.

Gricer

Wasn't BAA's apologist Tom Kelly in the same role for Bliar? Perhaps Willie Walsh can be persuaded to commit suicide.

Joshua

In actual fact, there are a number of things at which Brits excel: sneering, snobbery, drunkenness and anti-Semitism.

Verity

Joshua - That is most unjust. The anti-Semitism in Britain is at the door of Islam, not the indigenous Brits.

Water

Well we must be getting some right that's why people keep coming here. .. It's not perfect that's a fact. But that's why only Brits born of this country who love her should be sorting her out.

Water

Excuse me but I typed in 'something' not 'some' please show what I typed. As for the Brits being lost, I don't know about that, but we love the song London pride.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Pride_(song)

Pete Hoskin

Water: we don't change comments at all. And - as far as I know - we can't. So what's up is what you sent through.

Water

Something up somewhere down the lines because that's not what not what I wrote.

Max Kaye

I second Verity's hopes [sic] for the Olympics.

There's still time to give them to Paris!

Chris Underhill

OK, it’s a major cock-up and it makes Britain look stupid. But lets take a bit of comfort from the fact that we aren’t alone. Even in super-efficient Hong Kong their new airport got off to a shaky start, and Denver’s had to close down for months for its teething troubles to be sorted out.
There’s an awful lot wrong with Britain (see Pollard and Phillips for ample evidence) buts let not overdo the hysteria.

Nick

True not to overexaggerate, but the trouble is that Terminal 4 also has these problems, if you recall what happened in 2007 and even this year. BA kept saying 'wait until T5 opens and it'll be all right'. Why fly the 'world's favourite airline' from one of the world's worse airports?

I think we in Britain haven't helped our image but the somewhat sneering attitude to other countries so infrastructural failings will be maginified over here (remember the sneering just before the Athens Olympics?)

And Heathrow now ressembles the kind of chaos that was once associated with Mediteranean aiports like Athens or Barcelona (though at least at both those airports you get your baggage).

It's time Britain stopped thinking that big projects are somehow 'easy' and concentrated on the basics. If BAA are going to rebuild Terminal 1 and 2 in time for 2012, then want kind of spectacle awaits in four years' time? If we have to pay a fortune in council tax for these Games, it seems insult to injury if they turn out to be a farcial comedy (though taxpayers in London won't be laughing)

Fabio P.Barbieri

Joshua: "the British excel at snobbery and sneering".

Why, Joshua, I never knew you were British!