Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Happy 2011

This year I am more determined to make regular posts, even if there is no one actually reading them at the moment. Since my last post a lot has happened and Gordon Brown has finally departed, quite unlamented. We now have a coalition government, which on the face of it seems to be somewhat more stable publicly than the last New Labour government.

I do not have many airport stories at the moment, my knees making it very difficult actually to fly without major problems. I am quite glad of this given the mess Heathrow airport was in during the snow at the end of last year. It just shows that allowing acquisitions of capital hungry companies by highly geared entities which will require all of the cash generated by the target to pay off the debt is not a good idea.

BP has also had a very poor year, the Macondo well disaster being the culmination of a fairly predictable series of corporate behaviours. Although the deaths were clearly quite tragic, I have to say I am interested in the outputs of the various enquiries - these should make a major contribution to the learnings on process safety, in particular the management of very low probability, high impact disasters.

More soon.

1 comment:

nick's blog said...

Another thoughtful post.

I wonder , from this distance, whether the Lib-Dems in the government may have alienated themselves from many of their rank and file members with their ignoring of many of the policies with which they went to the election.

As far as the Heathrow chaos is concerned, this seems normal when state assets are privatised and the new owners don't have a long term view. They seem to demand a fast buck at all costs. The privatised Sydney Airport is now the most expensive place to park a car in Australia. So why should the owners of Heathrow invest in snow clearing equipment? It only snows once a year and then only in the winter. If it gets really bad the state will come to the rescue!