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consciouslifestyle
hosieryassociation
analpornoizle
acbdp
polskie-dziwki
polskie-kurwy
agwi
dsl-service-dsl-providers
airss
stone-island
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never-fail
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Friday, October 31, 2008
Grotty Gatwick
Gatwick South Terminal
The UK's second-largest airport, Gatwick, has been put up for sale by its owner BAA. The move comes four weeks after the Competition Commission said BAA may have to sell three of its UK airports because of market dominance concerns. Several firms are said to be interested in buying Gatwick, which has been valued at £1.8bn by regulators. The Airport unit of Spanish builder Grupo Ferrovial provides a poor service and has failed to plan for extra capacity, the UK Competition Commission said, recommending it be stripped of London's Gatwick and Stansted airports and either Glasgow or Edinburgh in Scotland. On top of this BAA has been again fined for the poor service at Gatwick, a total of £3.26 million for consistently failing to meet standards for cleanliness, directions, seating and pier services.
"Despite this performance improvement, acceptable standards have not yet been achieved," the CAA said.
Potential bidders for Gatwick include Australian company Macquarie, Germany's Fraport, and the owners of Manchester airport. Virgin Atlantic said it would also be interested in bidding as part of a consortium. "We are delighted that BAA has ended the uncertainty over Gatwick's future," said Steve Ridgway, Virgin Atlantic chief executive. "Virgin Atlantic would relish the opportunity to bid for Gatwick as part of a consortium and inject our customer service expertise into any future running of the airport."
However there were misgivings at the Unite trade union, whose national officer, Steve Turner, said: "It simply beggars belief that a 'For Sale' sign can be hung across the country's second largest airport. "Gatwick is a core component of the national infrastructure and an essential part of the UK's aviation sector, yet it is to be flogged off with little care for the wider social impact." In a statement, BAA said it had decided to begin the process of selling Gatwick "immediately". The Civil Aviation Authority has just increased the amount Gatwick - where 35 million passengers passed through in 2007 - can charge in landing fees. But it is operating on one runway and approaching full capacity.
Budget airline Easyjet said Gatwick was a "local monopoly" and called on any reform of airport regulation to "put the needs of customers first". And sector rival Ryanair said: "This morning's announcement... is just the latest attempt by the BAA monopoly to get itself off the hook of the Competition Commission's recommendations."
London Gatwick airport is the UK's second largest airport and the world's tenth busiest international airport, carrying more than 35 million passengers each year. In 1931 what is now known as London Gatwick airport was a private airfield owned by Home Counties Aviation Services. Serious development was later carried out and the first terminal, together with taxiways and aprons, was opened in 1936. Passengers arriving by train could walk into the airport through subways and covered walkways.
Gatwick's 1930 Terminal - Art Deco and the "round" terminal design to maximise aircraft parking space which has been copied the world over
During the war Gatwick, which was used as a Royal Air Force base, expanded further by acquiring a local racecourse. However, when it was returned to civil use in 1946, it was still basically a grass airfield. In 1953 the Government decreed Gatwick as London's second airport. The old airport was closed for major redevelopment. When it officially reopened three years later, Gatwick had been transformed into a modern facility with a 2000 feet runway, a terminal incorporating a rail station and a covered pier linking terminal with aircraft, the first of its kind in the UK.
Charter traffic became big business in the 1980's with more than a million passengers then using Gatwick. The terminal was extended and two more piers built. Gatwick still ranked only fourth busiest among UK airports but British United Airways, then the main operator, was steadily introducing scheduled services. In 1978London Gatwick Airport became a transatlantic gateway. By the time Delta, Braniff and British Caledonian started up their routes to the USA; Gatwick had already extended its runway to handle the long haul jets and further improved the terminal. Passenger traffic hit the 10 million mark in the 1990's and continued to grow at a phenomenal rate, reaching over 35 million in 2007. The South and North Terminals opened as Gatwick established itself as Britain's second busiest airport and an international player. Gatwick is anxious to build a second runway to meet growing demand, but there is strong opposition from local residents and environmentalists.
BAA is to airports what Coca-Cola is to the soft drinks industry: it pretty much owns the lot. All the big airports such as Gatwick, Heathrow, Stansted, Manchester, Glasgow, Aberdeen and more, are owned by the giant firm. However, things might all be about to change and the disastrous year that the aviation industry has had in the UK might be about to knock the school bully off his perch. The muscle that BAA yields promoted an investigation from the Competition Commission, which concluded that such a monopoly on the industry was not healthy and that it might be forced to sell off some of its airports.
Financial pundits from investment houses and other rarefied places speculate as to whether the owner of 7 of the UK's airports has any chance of sorting out its debts. Ferrovial took on £10 billion worth of debt to buy BAA last year, and now those money turkeys are coming home to roost. Going cap in hand to its shareholders raised £500 million but even that can't save the ailing company. Now hacks are speculating that if BAA cannot sort its finances out in the next two months, bondholders will be able to take their £3 billion investment back, potentially bankrupting the company. These Bondholders are worried as Grupo Ferrovial’s debt has been downgraded to junk bond status by Standard and Poors, so not much comfort there!
The airport is split into two terminals, North and South. South Terminal is the larger one, and holds the train station and majority of the shops, including Gatwick Village shopping arcade with practical shops such as Boots (UK pharmacy chain like Guardian) and W H Smith (general store selling books, newspapers, sandwiches, drinks etc.). This is accessible before heading through to departures. The entrances are beyond the check-in desks. Also, there is a sky train linking the two terminals 24/7, and the terminals are quite close together, unlike Heathrow T4, so it's perfectly possible to catch a bus or train to South, even if you fly from North. Most, if not all National Express bus services that serve the airport call at both terminals anyway.
Once upon a time, Gatwick Airport was modern. Now it is looking very tired and dated. Most European capitals have modern airports, but at this airport there are only the shops and bland sandwich bars that are up-to-date. The arrivals/baggage collection area is antiquated and due for a makeover. The car parking is very expensive, and you should always factor this in to any air fare, as it may cost more than the flight! The toilets are poorly ventilated, and they are smelly, and are only basically cleaned. The owner (BAA) seems to give priority to shopping, and often basic infrastructure, i.e. walkways, lifts and the small shuttle are out of order!
Southern and Gatwick_Express Trains at Victoria
But first you have to get to Gatwick and this can seriously dent your perspective of your bargain flight. As already noted car parking can be seriously expensive with Short Stay Parking at the Terminal being £20.90 a day and Long Stay being £9.00 a day for the first 6 days. Gatwick does have a dedicated train service in the Gatwick Express which is well and separately run and uses dedicated modern rolling stock, a sharp contrast to the alleged Stansted Express which has 20 year old clapped out commuter stock and whose title alone should be grounds for prosecution under the Trade descriptions Act. The Gatwick Express leaves every 15 minutes (During weekdays) from Platforms 13/14 at London Victoria station and takes 30 minutes to Gatwick. It also runs (normally hourly) through the night so it can both get you home from a late flight and out to an early flight unlike the Stansted Express which can do neither. That is the good news; the bad news is that it is eye wateringly expensive for a 30 minute train journey. A single First Class Ticket will cost £25.60, almost £1 per minute. What do you get other than a generous seat in a somewhat utilitarian interior for this? Well last time the trolley came around while we were still in Victoria. “Coffee or Tea, Sir” said the smartly attired attendant. Well I thought al least you are getting something for the inflated ticket price. “Coffee, I replied.” “Thank you sir that will be £2.20.” So that is the value added perception for the expensive fare, you get absolutely nothing with it! And if I had wanted biscuits that would have been 80p extra! There are cheaper alternatives using Thameslink (which goes from Bedford to Brighton via Luton thru' Eurostar at Kings X / St Pancras and Luton) and Southern Trains stopping service from Victoria which takes 45 minutes.
Getting to the airport disabled access from the platforms to the airport is good with lifts serving all platforms and step free access into the terminal. However from here on in the airport does not live up to the somewhat corny slogan used by BAA “Getting your journey off to a flying start.” Firstly what was the gateway to the Departure area is no longer used and a gaggle of annoyingly named PSA’s (Passenger Service Assistants) direct you into a somewhat awkward chicane nearby. Here you are kept in a slow moving queue for no other reason than they take a digital photo which is electronically matched to your boarding card. This is again checked when you board at the gate resulting in longer queues in both places. Is this a Government security requirement? Well no actually the only reason for doing this and delaying customers (not to mention intruding on their privacy) is to allow BAA to mix domestic and international passengers in the terminals giving them more shopping “opportunities”, just what passengers say they always want at airports?
Then instead of going on the flat you have to go upstairs on an escalator to a cramped security area. If you are mobility impaired (i.e. 10% of the population) you have to ask and you are directed to another area which is something of a walk but hey-ho, disabled people just love walking!
The security area is basic with no assistance offered to disabled people, no solid chairs with armrests for older people to sit in and, more importantly, get out of. Passengers are being asked to take off socks but no covers are being offered and of course there is no way to sanitise a carpeted surface. Lucky for BAA most of these infections will be apparent when the self loading cargo are abroad. Still, it makes you wonder why local councils employ Environmental Health Officers when such a blind eye is turned to lack of basic hygiene. How does the CAA continue to licence transport facilities which continue to laugh in the face of Phase 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act 1998? Does the CAA feel no moral obligation to ensure the law of the land is respected and disabled and older people are treated with respect? What is the paradigm here “let the wobbly people sue us?” The area is crowded, queues are long and there is the usual chaos associated with the scarcely trained minimum wage staff employed by ICTS whose disgraceful lack of standards at Birmingham Airport were exposed by the BBC’s Panorama programme.
Recently BAA have come under fire from a senior Labour MP who took a seven-inch knife on to a plane at Gatwick. Former health minister Gisela Stuart told a Commons debate on the airport that she mistakenly had the knife in her hand luggage when she went on holiday to Corsica on 3 August 2008. Ms Stuart discovered the knife with a three-inch blade on arrival and asked her office manager in Birmingham to get in touch with Gatwick to tell them of the security breach. The MP for Birmingham Edgbaston was told on 22 August that security staff were being retrained. Ms Stuart also highlighted the report that EU inspectors smuggled replica bomb components past security at Gatwick this year and doubts whether security at the Sussex airport has been adequately improved.
The Daily Mail Newspaper reported the week after I went through this “security” shambles;
“Replica bombs were smuggled into Britain's second busiest airport inside hand luggage during a safety inspection, it has been claimed. Gatwick Airport staff apparently failed to recognise the artificial explosives even though a bag containing one device was allegedly identified as suspicious by an X-ray scanner but returned to its owner after the guards did not realise what it was. The alleged breaches occurred during a European Commission inspection this month.” – Daily Mail, 19 October 2008.
So reassured we then enter airside and the reason for the awkward arrangements became obvious for you emerge into the enlarged Food Court built on top of Gatwick South’s shopping area. You have no less than 14 catering outlets but this is Clone Town Britain on steroids, there is no shape or form, or indeed any attempt at design or theme to the catering area. What you have is a large shed with a hole in the middle for escalators and around it wall to wall shop fronts and signage of chain catering, bar and fast food outlets. It is not relaxing as so little area is devoted to seating or general circulation and the constant din of bad music played through bad speakers. There is no possibility of escaping from this as each outlet has the same nonsensical piped music playing inside. An insight into how the shed engineer (I can’t believe there was an architect involved) has thought about having a sense of enclosure, quiet areas and an opportunity to relax before your flights can be gained from noting that the only (crowded) seating area is in front of the fruit machines and games area so you have continuous noise, pings and kerrangs from the machines.
Gatwick Airport Security Lines
Then the self loading cargo, who had to go upstairs to security, now have to go downstairs to the crowded and chaotic “shopping opportunity” area for the gates are on this level. You go through “holes in the wall” to the gates through drab corridors. Here you see broken lights, bad signage, stained carpets, grubby walls, closed loos and out of order travelators before you arrive at your gate. Instead of being roomy and open plan this is dingy and enclosed because, wait for it, they have to check your photo against your boarding card. This takes three people but hey ho you are paying for it and the retail wallahs who run the Grupo Ferrovial debt servicing operation known as BAA feel these awkward arrangements and lack of straight lines for customers who, let's face it, just want to catch a plane, are worth it to increase “footfall” and passenger “dwell time” to “maximise” the value of its “retail estate.” Indeed! There only approach to airport design and management is, if there is a spare space stuff something retail into it!
The Gatwick ambience!
So there you are 180 people waiting in an area with 40 seats and I feel like getting a cold drink at non-Ryanair prices to bring onto the plane. I needn’t have bothered for in an uncanny reflection of the Airport the only vending machine in our passenger holding pen is out of order. Then it is time for the self loading cargo to shuffle with defeated resignation down the stairs (yah, boo sucks to the wobbly people the lift was not working and no assistance was offered) where they are then held for 5 minutes before shuffling resignedly onto the plane. Take off never seemed so good for we were leaving Gatwick behind in the conviction that anywhere else must be an improvement.
Thankfully I didn’t need to re-enter Britain through the shabby Gatwick Gateway. Dublin Airport was a wonderful contrast, bright and modern with good, well trained and polite security and a real sense of place which said Ireland is proud of its capital city and its airport is proud to give a positive impression to visitors. The shopping and catering is excellent and showcases the country, as it should in any major airport. Even coming in through utilitarian Luton was excellent. The airport contrasts with Gatwick in beeing clean, bright and with logical circulation patterns and it took me all of 5 minutes to walk off the plane and into the public area of Luton.
As for BAA thinking that Richard Branson will give them £1.8 Bn before they go bankrupt for the damaged goods called Gatwick, they must be deeply delusional. Branson won’t offer anything like that and will bring in somebody with him to share the risk, He will discount the income for he’ll have to rip out half the forgettable retail clutter to make the airport work well and ease the passenger’s journey to and from the plane (the PURPOSE of an airport; make a note BAA). However the chaos which is Gatwick shows why BAA does not understand the Airport business and why this smug privatised monopoly is lacking in the core skills to run ANY UK airport. The sooner Grupo Ferrovial and the Gang of Cash Cow Gringos it has bought in the UK with its junk bond status debt goes down the better for UK PLC. Their comes a stage when it is kinder for Old Beasts to be quietly and humanely put down to end their suffering and the upset of those who have to witness their sad and jerky movements.
Grotty Gatwick
Gatwick South Terminal
The UK's second-largest airport, Gatwick, has been put up for sale by its owner BAA. The move comes four weeks after the Competition Commission said BAA may have to sell three of its UK airports because of market dominance concerns. Several firms are said to be interested in buying Gatwick, which has been valued at £1.8bn by regulators. The Airport unit of Spanish builder Grupo Ferrovial provides a poor service and has failed to plan for extra capacity, the UK Competition Commission said, recommending it be stripped of London's Gatwick and Stansted airports and either Glasgow or Edinburgh in Scotland. On top of this BAA has been again fined for the poor service at Gatwick, a total of £3.26 million for consistently failing to meet standards for cleanliness, directions, seating and pier services.
"Despite this performance improvement, acceptable standards have not yet been achieved," the CAA said.
Potential bidders for Gatwick include Australian company Macquarie, Germany's Fraport, and the owners of Manchester airport. Virgin Atlantic said it would also be interested in bidding as part of a consortium. "We are delighted that BAA has ended the uncertainty over Gatwick's future," said Steve Ridgway, Virgin Atlantic chief executive. "Virgin Atlantic would relish the opportunity to bid for Gatwick as part of a consortium and inject our customer service expertise into any future running of the airport."
However there were misgivings at the Unite trade union, whose national officer, Steve Turner, said: "It simply beggars belief that a 'For Sale' sign can be hung across the country's second largest airport. "Gatwick is a core component of the national infrastructure and an essential part of the UK's aviation sector, yet it is to be flogged off with little care for the wider social impact." In a statement, BAA said it had decided to begin the process of selling Gatwick "immediately". The Civil Aviation Authority has just increased the amount Gatwick - where 35 million passengers passed through in 2007 - can charge in landing fees. But it is operating on one runway and approaching full capacity.
Budget airline Easyjet said Gatwick was a "local monopoly" and called on any reform of airport regulation to "put the needs of customers first". And sector rival Ryanair said: "This morning's announcement... is just the latest attempt by the BAA monopoly to get itself off the hook of the Competition Commission's recommendations."
London Gatwick airport is the UK's second largest airport and the world's tenth busiest international airport, carrying more than 35 million passengers each year. In 1931 what is now known as London Gatwick airport was a private airfield owned by Home Counties Aviation Services. Serious development was later carried out and the first terminal, together with taxiways and aprons, was opened in 1936. Passengers arriving by train could walk into the airport through subways and covered walkways.
Gatwick's 1930 Terminal - Art Deco and the "round" terminal design to maximise aircraft parking space which has been copied the world over
During the war Gatwick, which was used as a Royal Air Force base, expanded further by acquiring a local racecourse. However, when it was returned to civil use in 1946, it was still basically a grass airfield. In 1953 the Government decreed Gatwick as London's second airport. The old airport was closed for major redevelopment. When it officially reopened three years later, Gatwick had been transformed into a modern facility with a 2000 feet runway, a terminal incorporating a rail station and a covered pier linking terminal with aircraft, the first of its kind in the UK.
Charter traffic became big business in the 1980's with more than a million passengers then using Gatwick. The terminal was extended and two more piers built. Gatwick still ranked only fourth busiest among UK airports but British United Airways, then the main operator, was steadily introducing scheduled services. In 1978London Gatwick Airport became a transatlantic gateway. By the time Delta, Braniff and British Caledonian started up their routes to the USA; Gatwick had already extended its runway to handle the long haul jets and further improved the terminal. Passenger traffic hit the 10 million mark in the 1990's and continued to grow at a phenomenal rate, reaching over 35 million in 2007. The South and North Terminals opened as Gatwick established itself as Britain's second busiest airport and an international player. Gatwick is anxious to build a second runway to meet growing demand, but there is strong opposition from local residents and environmentalists.
BAA is to airports what Coca-Cola is to the soft drinks industry: it pretty much owns the lot. All the big airports such as Gatwick, Heathrow, Stansted, Manchester, Glasgow, Aberdeen and more, are owned by the giant firm. However, things might all be about to change and the disastrous year that the aviation industry has had in the UK might be about to knock the school bully off his perch. The muscle that BAA yields promoted an investigation from the Competition Commission, which concluded that such a monopoly on the industry was not healthy and that it might be forced to sell off some of its airports.
Financial pundits from investment houses and other rarefied places speculate as to whether the owner of 7 of the UK's airports has any chance of sorting out its debts. Ferrovial took on £10 billion worth of debt to buy BAA last year, and now those money turkeys are coming home to roost. Going cap in hand to its shareholders raised £500 million but even that can't save the ailing company. Now hacks are speculating that if BAA cannot sort its finances out in the next two months, bondholders will be able to take their £3 billion investment back, potentially bankrupting the company. These Bondholders are worried as Grupo Ferrovial’s debt has been downgraded to junk bond status by Standard and Poors, so not much comfort there!
The airport is split into two terminals, North and South. South Terminal is the larger one, and holds the train station and majority of the shops, including Gatwick Village shopping arcade with practical shops such as Boots (UK pharmacy chain like Guardian) and W H Smith (general store selling books, newspapers, sandwiches, drinks etc.). This is accessible before heading through to departures. The entrances are beyond the check-in desks. Also, there is a sky train linking the two terminals 24/7, and the terminals are quite close together, unlike Heathrow T4, so it's perfectly possible to catch a bus or train to South, even if you fly from North. Most, if not all National Express bus services that serve the airport call at both terminals anyway.
Once upon a time, Gatwick Airport was modern. Now it is looking very tired and dated. Most European capitals have modern airports, but at this airport there are only the shops and bland sandwich bars that are up-to-date. The arrivals/baggage collection area is antiquated and due for a makeover. The car parking is very expensive, and you should always factor this in to any air fare, as it may cost more than the flight! The toilets are poorly ventilated, and they are smelly, and are only basically cleaned. The owner (BAA) seems to give priority to shopping, and often basic infrastructure, i.e. walkways, lifts and the small shuttle are out of order!
Southern and Gatwick_Express Trains at Victoria
But first you have to get to Gatwick and this can seriously dent your perspective of your bargain flight. As already noted car parking can be seriously expensive with Short Stay Parking at the Terminal being £20.90 a day and Long Stay being £9.00 a day for the first 6 days. Gatwick does have a dedicated train service in the Gatwick Express which is well and separately run and uses dedicated modern rolling stock, a sharp contrast to the alleged Stansted Express which has 20 year old clapped out commuter stock and whose title alone should be grounds for prosecution under the Trade descriptions Act. The Gatwick Express leaves every 15 minutes (During weekdays) from Platforms 13/14 at London Victoria station and takes 30 minutes to Gatwick. It also runs (normally hourly) through the night so it can both get you home from a late flight and out to an early flight unlike the Stansted Express which can do neither. That is the good news; the bad news is that it is eye wateringly expensive for a 30 minute train journey. A single First Class Ticket will cost £25.60, almost £1 per minute. What do you get other than a generous seat in a somewhat utilitarian interior for this? Well last time the trolley came around while we were still in Victoria. “Coffee or Tea, Sir” said the smartly attired attendant. Well I thought al least you are getting something for the inflated ticket price. “Coffee, I replied.” “Thank you sir that will be £2.20.” So that is the value added perception for the expensive fare, you get absolutely nothing with it! And if I had wanted biscuits that would have been 80p extra! There are cheaper alternatives using Thameslink (which goes from Bedford to Brighton via Luton thru' Eurostar at Kings X / St Pancras and Luton) and Southern Trains stopping service from Victoria which takes 45 minutes.
Getting to the airport disabled access from the platforms to the airport is good with lifts serving all platforms and step free access into the terminal. However from here on in the airport does not live up to the somewhat corny slogan used by BAA “Getting your journey off to a flying start.” Firstly what was the gateway to the Departure area is no longer used and a gaggle of annoyingly named PSA’s (Passenger Service Assistants) direct you into a somewhat awkward chicane nearby. Here you are kept in a slow moving queue for no other reason than they take a digital photo which is electronically matched to your boarding card. This is again checked when you board at the gate resulting in longer queues in both places. Is this a Government security requirement? Well no actually the only reason for doing this and delaying customers (not to mention intruding on their privacy) is to allow BAA to mix domestic and international passengers in the terminals giving them more shopping “opportunities”, just what passengers say they always want at airports?
Then instead of going on the flat you have to go upstairs on an escalator to a cramped security area. If you are mobility impaired (i.e. 10% of the population) you have to ask and you are directed to another area which is something of a walk but hey-ho, disabled people just love walking!
The security area is basic with no assistance offered to disabled people, no solid chairs with armrests for older people to sit in and, more importantly, get out of. Passengers are being asked to take off socks but no covers are being offered and of course there is no way to sanitise a carpeted surface. Lucky for BAA most of these infections will be apparent when the self loading cargo are abroad. Still, it makes you wonder why local councils employ Environmental Health Officers when such a blind eye is turned to lack of basic hygiene. How does the CAA continue to licence transport facilities which continue to laugh in the face of Phase 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act 1998? Does the CAA feel no moral obligation to ensure the law of the land is respected and disabled and older people are treated with respect? What is the paradigm here “let the wobbly people sue us?” The area is crowded, queues are long and there is the usual chaos associated with the scarcely trained minimum wage staff employed by ICTS whose disgraceful lack of standards at Birmingham Airport were exposed by the BBC’s Panorama programme.
Recently BAA have come under fire from a senior Labour MP who took a seven-inch knife on to a plane at Gatwick. Former health minister Gisela Stuart told a Commons debate on the airport that she mistakenly had the knife in her hand luggage when she went on holiday to Corsica on 3 August 2008. Ms Stuart discovered the knife with a three-inch blade on arrival and asked her office manager in Birmingham to get in touch with Gatwick to tell them of the security breach. The MP for Birmingham Edgbaston was told on 22 August that security staff were being retrained. Ms Stuart also highlighted the report that EU inspectors smuggled replica bomb components past security at Gatwick this year and doubts whether security at the Sussex airport has been adequately improved.
The Daily Mail Newspaper reported the week after I went through this “security” shambles;
“Replica bombs were smuggled into Britain's second busiest airport inside hand luggage during a safety inspection, it has been claimed. Gatwick Airport staff apparently failed to recognise the artificial explosives even though a bag containing one device was allegedly identified as suspicious by an X-ray scanner but returned to its owner after the guards did not realise what it was. The alleged breaches occurred during a European Commission inspection this month.” – Daily Mail, 19 October 2008.
So reassured we then enter airside and the reason for the awkward arrangements became obvious for you emerge into the enlarged Food Court built on top of Gatwick South’s shopping area. You have no less than 14 catering outlets but this is Clone Town Britain on steroids, there is no shape or form, or indeed any attempt at design or theme to the catering area. What you have is a large shed with a hole in the middle for escalators and around it wall to wall shop fronts and signage of chain catering, bar and fast food outlets. It is not relaxing as so little area is devoted to seating or general circulation and the constant din of bad music played through bad speakers. There is no possibility of escaping from this as each outlet has the same nonsensical piped music playing inside. An insight into how the shed engineer (I can’t believe there was an architect involved) has thought about having a sense of enclosure, quiet areas and an opportunity to relax before your flights can be gained from noting that the only (crowded) seating area is in front of the fruit machines and games area so you have continuous noise, pings and kerrangs from the machines.
Gatwick Airport Security Lines
Then the self loading cargo, who had to go upstairs to security, now have to go downstairs to the crowded and chaotic “shopping opportunity” area for the gates are on this level. You go through “holes in the wall” to the gates through drab corridors. Here you see broken lights, bad signage, stained carpets, grubby walls, closed loos and out of order travelators before you arrive at your gate. Instead of being roomy and open plan this is dingy and enclosed because, wait for it, they have to check your photo against your boarding card. This takes three people but hey ho you are paying for it and the retail wallahs who run the Grupo Ferrovial debt servicing operation known as BAA feel these awkward arrangements and lack of straight lines for customers who, let's face it, just want to catch a plane, are worth it to increase “footfall” and passenger “dwell time” to “maximise” the value of its “retail estate.” Indeed! There only approach to airport design and management is, if there is a spare space stuff something retail into it!
The Gatwick ambience!
So there you are 180 people waiting in an area with 40 seats and I feel like getting a cold drink at non-Ryanair prices to bring onto the plane. I needn’t have bothered for in an uncanny reflection of the Airport the only vending machine in our passenger holding pen is out of order. Then it is time for the self loading cargo to shuffle with defeated resignation down the stairs (yah, boo sucks to the wobbly people the lift was not working and no assistance was offered) where they are then held for 5 minutes before shuffling resignedly onto the plane. Take off never seemed so good for we were leaving Gatwick behind in the conviction that anywhere else must be an improvement.
Thankfully I didn’t need to re-enter Britain through the shabby Gatwick Gateway. Dublin Airport was a wonderful contrast, bright and modern with good, well trained and polite security and a real sense of place which said Ireland is proud of its capital city and its airport is proud to give a positive impression to visitors. The shopping and catering is excellent and showcases the country, as it should in any major airport. Even coming in through utilitarian Luton was excellent. The airport contrasts with Gatwick in beeing clean, bright and with logical circulation patterns and it took me all of 5 minutes to walk off the plane and into the public area of Luton.
As for BAA thinking that Richard Branson will give them £1.8 Bn before they go bankrupt for the damaged goods called Gatwick, they must be deeply delusional. Branson won’t offer anything like that and will bring in somebody with him to share the risk, He will discount the income for he’ll have to rip out half the forgettable retail clutter to make the airport work well and ease the passenger’s journey to and from the plane (the PURPOSE of an airport; make a note BAA). However the chaos which is Gatwick shows why BAA does not understand the Airport business and why this smug privatised monopoly is lacking in the core skills to run ANY UK airport. The sooner Grupo Ferrovial and the Gang of Cash Cow Gringos it has bought in the UK with its junk bond status debt goes down the better for UK PLC. Their comes a stage when it is kinder for Old Beasts to be quietly and humanely put down to end their suffering and the upset of those who have to witness their sad and jerky movements.
Our White House:Looking In, Looking Out --Kennedy Center Broadcast!
The NCBLA's Book
Our White House
Looking In Looking Out Featured in
Kennedy Center for Performing Arts Series!
Telling Stories: Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out T
hursday, November 6, 2008
Grades 5-8
http://www.kennedy-center.org/education/pwtv/
Click here for a comprehensive study guide for Our White House program:
http://www.kennedy-center.org/education/pwtv/studyguides/OurWhiteHouse.pdf
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in cooperation with the Prince William Network, offers arts-based educational programming free to teachers and students across the country through the Performing Arts Series. Programs feature artists and companies who perform at the Kennedy Center and explore the areas of music, dance, theater, and literature.
This year's schedule also include programs with jazz musician Dr. Billy Taylor, the Martha Graham Dance Company, and a performance of Twelve Angry Men starring Richard Thomas and Randall Mell.
To read the Kennedy Center for Performing Art's complete educational outreach performing arts schedule and to find out how you can subscribe for FREE, to the series, go to: http://www.kennedy-center.org/education/pwtv/
Our White House
Looking In Looking Out Featured in
Kennedy Center for Performing Arts Series!
Telling Stories: Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out T
hursday, November 6, 2008
Grades 5-8
Nationally recognized creators of books for young people, Katherine Paterson, Steven Kellogg and Mary Brigid Barrett, share insights into a recently released book titled Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out. This book is a compilation of history, historical fiction, personal essays, poetry, drama, and original art by 108 renowned authors and illustrators that offers a view of American history as seen through the eyes of the White House. Our White House was created by the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance, NCBLA, in an effort to combat illiteracy and to get students excited about reading. This facinating discussion is moderated by Maria Salvadore, nationally recognized young people's literature consultant and expert.
http://www.kennedy-center.org/education/pwtv/
Click here for a comprehensive study guide for Our White House program:
http://www.kennedy-center.org/education/pwtv/studyguides/OurWhiteHouse.pdf
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in cooperation with the Prince William Network, offers arts-based educational programming free to teachers and students across the country through the Performing Arts Series. Programs feature artists and companies who perform at the Kennedy Center and explore the areas of music, dance, theater, and literature.
This year's schedule also include programs with jazz musician Dr. Billy Taylor, the Martha Graham Dance Company, and a performance of Twelve Angry Men starring Richard Thomas and Randall Mell.
To read the Kennedy Center for Performing Art's complete educational outreach performing arts schedule and to find out how you can subscribe for FREE, to the series, go to: http://www.kennedy-center.org/education/pwtv/
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Berlin Tempelhof Airport
Tempelhof Entrance
Tempelhof Main Building
Berlin Tempelhof, once the world's largest airport, closed its gates today 30th October, 2008 on an 81-year history that spanned the Red Army's invasion, the Cold War and Germany's reunification. A 1940s Douglas DC-3 "candy bomber" and a Deutsche Lufthansa AG Junkers Ju- 52 of a similar age were the last aircraft to take off from the city-center airport shortly before midnight. With them departed an era of Berlin's history. Tempelhof, expanded under Adolf Hitler, played a central role in the 1948 Allied airlift that circumvented a Soviet blockade after World War II. After the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the airport was for many the only safe passage to the outside world. Designated by the ministry of transport on October 8, 1923, Tempelhof became the world's first airport with an underground railway station in 1927, now called Platz der Luftbrücke after the Berlin Airlift.
Luftbrücke memorial
Nostalgic Berliners bade a fond farewell to Tempelhof, the fabled hub of the Berlin Airlift, as it closed to make way for a major new airport to serve the reunified capital. One of the airport's most distinguishing features is its large, canopy-style roof that was able to accommodate most contemporary airliners during its heyday in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, thereby saving passengers from the elements. Tempelhof Airport's main building used to be among the 20 largest buildings on earth. Tempelhof, just south of the city centre, is a potent symbol of the days when free West Berlin was a Cold War outpost embedded in the Soviet bloc and of the city's survival, thanks to the massive aid of the Western allies.
The site of the airport was originally Knights Templar land in medieval Berlin and from this beginning came the name Tempelhof. The airport halls and the neighbouring buildings, intended to become the gateway to Europe and a symbol of Hitler's "world capital" Germania, are still known as the largest built entities worldwide, and have been described by British architect Sir Norman Foster as "the mother of all airports". With its façades of shell limestone, the terminal building, built between 1936 and 1941, forms a massive 1.2-kilometre long quadrant yet had a charmingly intimate feel; planes could taxi right up to the building and unload, sheltered from the weather by its enormous overhanging canopy. Passengers walked through customs controls and find themselves in a dazzlingly simple and luminous reception hall. The building complex was designed to resemble an eagle in flight with semicircular hangars forming the bird's spread wings. A mile long hangar roof was to have been laid in tiers to form a stadium for spectators at air and ground demonstrations.
Inside the Terminal
Tempelhof's association with aviation stretches back to the earliest days of flight. In 1909, the flat expanse where there are now runways played host to Orville Wright, the pioneering American aviator. Opened as an airport in 1927, Tempelhof expanded over the next decade and was included in plans by Nazi architect Albert Speer to transform Berlin into Germania, the futuristic capital of Hitler's Third Reich. Architect Norman Foster described the influence of the neo-classical limestone edifice molded during the 1930s as ''the mother of all airports.''
Hitler wanted Tempelhof – the world’s first truly modern airport – to be a showpiece of Nazi power. The front of the terminal is a concave curve 900m (more than half a mile) long looking out on to the aerodrome. It is still the second largest freestanding building in the world after the Pentagon and was plainly designed with the intention of hanging giant swastikas from its towers. The aim was to hold rallies of up to 80,000 people on the long, flat roof: the Führer could fly in, make his speech to the faithful, then fly away again.
From an architectural point of view, Tempelhof Weltflughafen - "world airport", as it was optimistically known before the Luftwaffe flew to Warsaw, with no intention of landing, in September 1939 - is a magnificent and compelling enigma. Designed by Ernst Sagebiel (1892-1970) between 1934 and 1936 and built well into WWII, it was to be the international gateway to Germania: Berlin in its over-inflated postwar guise, as planned by Albert Speer, assuming victory over the Allies by 1948.
Although under construction for more than ten years, it was never finished because of World War II. Soviet forces took Tempelhof in the Battle of Berlin on 24 April 1945 in the closing days of the war in Europe following a fierce battle with Luftwaffe troops. Tempelhof's German commander, Colonel Rudolf Boettger, refused to carry out orders to blow up the base, choosing instead to kill himself. After he died the Russian troops attempted to clear the 5 lower levels of the airbase but the Germans had booby trapped everything and too many were killed, leading the Russian commander to order the lower levels to be flooded with water. The lower 3 levels are still flooded to this day, having never been opened up due to un-exploded ordinance.
Bahntunnel under the airport
''It's very sad,'' said Doris Oelschlegel, 69, who went on a tourist flight in a DC-3 with her husband last year from the airport. ''Tempelhof is a historic monument and a symbol.'' Berlin city authorities say they are legally obliged to close the unprofitable airport, the smallest and most central of three airfields in the capital, to concentrate air traffic at a planned site 20 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of the city. An April referendum to halt the closure was defeated after support from Chancellor Angela Merkel and Bild, Germany's biggest-selling newspaper, failed to swing the vote.
Passenger numbers at Tempelhof fell to 350,000 last year compared with 6.3 million at Schoenefeld in the former East and 13.4 million at Tegel, former West Berlin's airport. Tempelhof lost between €10 million euros and €15 million a year since the mid-1990s, according to its Web site. ''Tempelhof for me is one of the icons of Berlin,'' said Elke Schumann, 63, who boarded her first airplane at Tempelhof on a British Airways flight to Hamburg in 1961. ''I don't understand the decision, it's a mistake.''
Tempelhof Airport Berlin 1948
Reichsadler - Nazi Eagle
While Schoenefeld in the former East is being developed into Berlin's main airport, there are no firm plans for Tempelhof once the aircraft leave. The airport is on a subway line four stops from the city center, and is a 10-minute cab ride from downtown. Proposals for the 1,000-acre site ranged from a park for solar-power generation to a casino complex to a medical clinic with fly-in service for patients. The clinic, spearheaded by U.S. billionaire Ronald Lauder, was rejected because of the flights.
The airfield's finest hour, commemorated in concrete at the entrance to the terminal building, came at the end of the war as Berlin was carved up into zones controlled by the victorious Allied powers: Britain, the U.S., France and the Soviet Union. In 1948, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, in an attempt to squeeze U.S., British and French forces out of the nearly 500 square-kilometer (193 square-mile) enclave of West Berlin, ordered his soldiers to cut off supplies. On 20 June 1948 Soviet authorities, claiming technical difficulties, halted all traffic by land and by water into or out of the western-controlled section of Berlin. The only remaining access routes into the city were three 25-mile-wide air corridors across the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany. Faced with the choice of abandoning the city or attempting to supply its inhabitants with the necessities of life by air, the Western Powers chose the latter course, and for the next eleven months sustained the city's two-and-a-half million residents in one of the greatest feats in aviation history.
During the Cold War, Tempelhof was the natural location to film Michael Caine as British secret agent Harry Palmer, arriving disguised as a salesman with a suitcase of women's underwear in the 1966 movie of Len Deighton's novel, ''Funeral in Berlin.'' Garbed in classical dress, stripped of ornamentation, Tempelhof Zentralflughafen, as it is called today, addresses the streets of Berlin set immediately across from its massive and lofty entrance. In the imagination, it is easy to add Nazi eagles, swastika flags and titanic statuary by Arno Breker to that facade. Today Tempelhof stands mute, the only part of Albert Speer's project for the New Reich Capital of Germania which remains.
There was little fanfare for the closure. A loudspeaker spluttered briefly with a routine announcement that echoed across the high-vaulted departure lounge. Then Tempelhof, Hitler’s favourite airport, fell silent. It was the last call for one of Germany’s cultural icons. Outside, there were no oompah bands and no grand parades, only a DC3 “candy bomber” revving its engines for the final take-off from the otherwise deserted runway.
''Tempelhof is a symbol that is strongly identified with the blockade and the role the airport played in allowing life to go on in the city,'' said Gerhard Braun, a professor of urban studies at Berlin's Free University. ''It's a mistake to close a central airport like Tempelhof.''
Berlin Tempelhof Airport
Tempelhof Entrance
Tempelhof Main Building
Berlin Tempelhof, once the world's largest airport, closed its gates today 30th October, 2008 on an 81-year history that spanned the Red Army's invasion, the Cold War and Germany's reunification. A 1940s Douglas DC-3 "candy bomber" and a Deutsche Lufthansa AG Junkers Ju- 52 of a similar age were the last aircraft to take off from the city-center airport shortly before midnight. With them departed an era of Berlin's history. Tempelhof, expanded under Adolf Hitler, played a central role in the 1948 Allied airlift that circumvented a Soviet blockade after World War II. After the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the airport was for many the only safe passage to the outside world. Designated by the ministry of transport on October 8, 1923, Tempelhof became the world's first airport with an underground railway station in 1927, now called Platz der Luftbrücke after the Berlin Airlift.
Luftbrücke memorial
Nostalgic Berliners bade a fond farewell to Tempelhof, the fabled hub of the Berlin Airlift, as it closed to make way for a major new airport to serve the reunified capital. One of the airport's most distinguishing features is its large, canopy-style roof that was able to accommodate most contemporary airliners during its heyday in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, thereby saving passengers from the elements. Tempelhof Airport's main building used to be among the 20 largest buildings on earth. Tempelhof, just south of the city centre, is a potent symbol of the days when free West Berlin was a Cold War outpost embedded in the Soviet bloc and of the city's survival, thanks to the massive aid of the Western allies.
The site of the airport was originally Knights Templar land in medieval Berlin and from this beginning came the name Tempelhof. The airport halls and the neighbouring buildings, intended to become the gateway to Europe and a symbol of Hitler's "world capital" Germania, are still known as the largest built entities worldwide, and have been described by British architect Sir Norman Foster as "the mother of all airports". With its façades of shell limestone, the terminal building, built between 1936 and 1941, forms a massive 1.2-kilometre long quadrant yet had a charmingly intimate feel; planes could taxi right up to the building and unload, sheltered from the weather by its enormous overhanging canopy. Passengers walked through customs controls and find themselves in a dazzlingly simple and luminous reception hall. The building complex was designed to resemble an eagle in flight with semicircular hangars forming the bird's spread wings. A mile long hangar roof was to have been laid in tiers to form a stadium for spectators at air and ground demonstrations.
Inside the Terminal
Tempelhof's association with aviation stretches back to the earliest days of flight. In 1909, the flat expanse where there are now runways played host to Orville Wright, the pioneering American aviator. Opened as an airport in 1927, Tempelhof expanded over the next decade and was included in plans by Nazi architect Albert Speer to transform Berlin into Germania, the futuristic capital of Hitler's Third Reich. Architect Norman Foster described the influence of the neo-classical limestone edifice molded during the 1930s as ''the mother of all airports.''
Hitler wanted Tempelhof – the world’s first truly modern airport – to be a showpiece of Nazi power. The front of the terminal is a concave curve 900m (more than half a mile) long looking out on to the aerodrome. It is still the second largest freestanding building in the world after the Pentagon and was plainly designed with the intention of hanging giant swastikas from its towers. The aim was to hold rallies of up to 80,000 people on the long, flat roof: the Führer could fly in, make his speech to the faithful, then fly away again.
From an architectural point of view, Tempelhof Weltflughafen - "world airport", as it was optimistically known before the Luftwaffe flew to Warsaw, with no intention of landing, in September 1939 - is a magnificent and compelling enigma. Designed by Ernst Sagebiel (1892-1970) between 1934 and 1936 and built well into WWII, it was to be the international gateway to Germania: Berlin in its over-inflated postwar guise, as planned by Albert Speer, assuming victory over the Allies by 1948.
Although under construction for more than ten years, it was never finished because of World War II. Soviet forces took Tempelhof in the Battle of Berlin on 24 April 1945 in the closing days of the war in Europe following a fierce battle with Luftwaffe troops. Tempelhof's German commander, Colonel Rudolf Boettger, refused to carry out orders to blow up the base, choosing instead to kill himself. After he died the Russian troops attempted to clear the 5 lower levels of the airbase but the Germans had booby trapped everything and too many were killed, leading the Russian commander to order the lower levels to be flooded with water. The lower 3 levels are still flooded to this day, having never been opened up due to un-exploded ordinance.
Bahntunnel under the airport
''It's very sad,'' said Doris Oelschlegel, 69, who went on a tourist flight in a DC-3 with her husband last year from the airport. ''Tempelhof is a historic monument and a symbol.'' Berlin city authorities say they are legally obliged to close the unprofitable airport, the smallest and most central of three airfields in the capital, to concentrate air traffic at a planned site 20 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of the city. An April referendum to halt the closure was defeated after support from Chancellor Angela Merkel and Bild, Germany's biggest-selling newspaper, failed to swing the vote.
Passenger numbers at Tempelhof fell to 350,000 last year compared with 6.3 million at Schoenefeld in the former East and 13.4 million at Tegel, former West Berlin's airport. Tempelhof lost between €10 million euros and €15 million a year since the mid-1990s, according to its Web site. ''Tempelhof for me is one of the icons of Berlin,'' said Elke Schumann, 63, who boarded her first airplane at Tempelhof on a British Airways flight to Hamburg in 1961. ''I don't understand the decision, it's a mistake.''
Tempelhof Airport Berlin 1948
Reichsadler - Nazi Eagle
While Schoenefeld in the former East is being developed into Berlin's main airport, there are no firm plans for Tempelhof once the aircraft leave. The airport is on a subway line four stops from the city center, and is a 10-minute cab ride from downtown. Proposals for the 1,000-acre site ranged from a park for solar-power generation to a casino complex to a medical clinic with fly-in service for patients. The clinic, spearheaded by U.S. billionaire Ronald Lauder, was rejected because of the flights.
The airfield's finest hour, commemorated in concrete at the entrance to the terminal building, came at the end of the war as Berlin was carved up into zones controlled by the victorious Allied powers: Britain, the U.S., France and the Soviet Union. In 1948, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, in an attempt to squeeze U.S., British and French forces out of the nearly 500 square-kilometer (193 square-mile) enclave of West Berlin, ordered his soldiers to cut off supplies. On 20 June 1948 Soviet authorities, claiming technical difficulties, halted all traffic by land and by water into or out of the western-controlled section of Berlin. The only remaining access routes into the city were three 25-mile-wide air corridors across the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany. Faced with the choice of abandoning the city or attempting to supply its inhabitants with the necessities of life by air, the Western Powers chose the latter course, and for the next eleven months sustained the city's two-and-a-half million residents in one of the greatest feats in aviation history.
During the Cold War, Tempelhof was the natural location to film Michael Caine as British secret agent Harry Palmer, arriving disguised as a salesman with a suitcase of women's underwear in the 1966 movie of Len Deighton's novel, ''Funeral in Berlin.'' Garbed in classical dress, stripped of ornamentation, Tempelhof Zentralflughafen, as it is called today, addresses the streets of Berlin set immediately across from its massive and lofty entrance. In the imagination, it is easy to add Nazi eagles, swastika flags and titanic statuary by Arno Breker to that facade. Today Tempelhof stands mute, the only part of Albert Speer's project for the New Reich Capital of Germania which remains.
There was little fanfare for the closure. A loudspeaker spluttered briefly with a routine announcement that echoed across the high-vaulted departure lounge. Then Tempelhof, Hitler’s favourite airport, fell silent. It was the last call for one of Germany’s cultural icons. Outside, there were no oompah bands and no grand parades, only a DC3 “candy bomber” revving its engines for the final take-off from the otherwise deserted runway.
''Tempelhof is a symbol that is strongly identified with the blockade and the role the airport played in allowing life to go on in the city,'' said Gerhard Braun, a professor of urban studies at Berlin's Free University. ''It's a mistake to close a central airport like Tempelhof.''
Monday, October 27, 2008
You Finish Our White House!!
Involve Kids and Teens in This Year's Historic Election!
Finish the Presidential Timeline in Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out!
Bob Kolar's double page spread illustration at the end of Our White House Looking In, Looking Out is both a trivia game and a presidential timeline. The last space was left blank to give readers the chance to finish the book themselves---a great opportunity to involve young people in this remarkable race to the presidency. Adults and kids can discuss the election results together and complete the presidential timeline in Our White House!
Go to http://www.ourwhitehouse.org/ enter the site and click on the red Presidential Candidate sticker at the top of the page. Follow the directions on the sticker page and finish Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out! And while you are on the site: explore!
Remember read about the election in newspapers and news magazines in both traditional and electronic formats and discuss the election results with the young people in your life!
Remember:
Literacy + Historic Literacy = Civic Engagement!
Go to:
http://www.ourwhitehouse.org
http://www.ourwhitehouse.org/OWHStickerSheet.pdf
Finish the Presidential Timeline in Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out!
Bob Kolar's double page spread illustration at the end of Our White House Looking In, Looking Out is both a trivia game and a presidential timeline. The last space was left blank to give readers the chance to finish the book themselves---a great opportunity to involve young people in this remarkable race to the presidency. Adults and kids can discuss the election results together and complete the presidential timeline in Our White House!
Go to http://www.ourwhitehouse.org/ enter the site and click on the red Presidential Candidate sticker at the top of the page. Follow the directions on the sticker page and finish Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out! And while you are on the site: explore!
Remember read about the election in newspapers and news magazines in both traditional and electronic formats and discuss the election results with the young people in your life!
Remember:
Literacy + Historic Literacy = Civic Engagement!
Go to:
http://www.ourwhitehouse.org
http://www.ourwhitehouse.org/OWHStickerSheet.pdf
Our White House Raves Continue!
PW's Bethanne Patrick Recommends Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out on NY1!
Bethanne Patrick has been reporting about books and authors long enough that her galley shelf is stacked three deep -- yet she still worries about being short on reading material. A PW Contributing Editor and a member of the National Book Critics Circle, Patrick reads, writes, and rants (occasionally all at once) from the Washington DC area.
To hear Bethanne Patrick's recommendation of Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out and other great kids' books for fall watch this great NY1 newsclip and read Bethanne Patrick Publisher's Weekly blog go to:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/blog/670000267/post/740035474.html
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Days of Glory / Indigènes
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. This film examines the three pillars on which the French Republic stands through the eyes of soldiers summoned from its colonies to fight a war for liberalising a people, while enjoying few of those rights themselves. Put into the worst of battles towards the end of World War II, with the least compensation in terms of money, promotion, leave or even rationed tomatoes, soldiers from France’s colonies in North Africa - particularly Algeria - fight a cold, brutal war and die an unknown death. The Government they are fighting for feels no need to understand their religion, needs or culture.
Days of Glory (French: Indigènes) is a French drama film directed by French-Algerian Rachid Bouchareb. The cast includes Sami Bouajila, Jamel Debbouze, Samy Naceri, Roschdy Zem and Bernard Blancan. The film won the Prix d'interprétation masculine at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.
The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but lost to The Lives of Others (http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/09/lives-of-others.html ). As well as being successful as a war movie described as a kind of a North African Saving Private Ryan, the film deals with discriminatory treatment of French Africans (the French title translates as Natives) which is still an issue today, and led to a change in government policy.
A large number of indigènes (Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccan Goumiers) were enrolled in the French First Army of the Free French Forces, formed to liberate France after the Nazi occupation in World War II. The film portrays the recruitment of these soldiers and their participation in the campaigns in Italy and southern France. The army had been recruited in Africa in French colonies outside the control of the Vichy regime which collaborated with German commissioners.
Four Indigènes in a mobile corps with a reputation for endurance and courage in close combat are sent to the front line, each with a different personal purpose as they fight their way through the Italian Campaign and on to Operation Dragoon to liberate France. One seeks booty, one has joined the army to escape poverty in hopes that it will be his family, one wants to marry and settle in France while the other is fighting in the hope of equality and recognition of the rights of the colonised Algerians. They encounter only discrimination in the army.
Nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 2007 Oscars and the Golden Palm at Cannes, Days of Glory has some exceptional performances by its lead actors, who have all enlisted in the war for their own reasons. There is the scholarly and brave Corporal Abdelkadar (Bouajila), who clings to the belief till the very end that the fight against Hitler is his fight; Said (Debbouze), who aims to find reason and hope in his life, led till then in utter poverty, in a place he realises has none of it; Messaoud (Zem), who discovers love in the unlikeliest of places; and Sergeant Martinez (Blancan), a Frenchman in Algeria who is part African, a secret he takes to his grave, constantly torn between the men he knows are being mistreated and his bosses who couldn’t care less.
While each has his own motives, these native Africans have enlisted to fight for a France they have never seen. In the words of a wartime recruiting song the four actors sing within the film as well as at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, "we come from the colonies to save the motherland, we come from afar to die, we are the men of Africa." The film shows a complex depiction of their shabby treatment in an army organisation prejudiced in favour of the European French, a wartime injustice which relates directly to continuing modern tensions.
In a great scene, after one hard-fought battle, the tired African soldiers are offered a “treat”: ballet in a torn tent. Uncomprehending and disgusted, they walk out. After defeating the Axis powers in Italy, when the Algerian infantry marches into France, it is the first time they set foot on what they have been told is their “motherland”. The message is reinforced through martial songs, in speeches, and exhortations to march to yet another battle.
From a small dusty village in Algeria, illiterate and swept up in all that’s happening around him, Said has figured it out for himself more clearly. Describing a battle scene, he says: “I threw a bomb at Germany, I beat Germany, all of Germany - I free a country, it is my country. Even if I haven’t seen it before.”
The discrimination by the French authorities against these soldiers continued as successive French governments froze the war pensions of these indigenous veterans, and it was only after the film's release that the government policy was changed to bring foreign combatant pensions into line with what French veterans are paid. Though the film has been produced for a mainstream audience with many notable battle sequences, the cast is made up of recognisable Arab actors who have been successful in French cinema. This was a commercial gamble that has paid off and the film has become culturally influential in French politics, affecting a change in policy towards the treatment of war veterans after President Chirac personally intervened when he saw this film. This is a film which has been able to affect change within society, and it is exceptional for the revisionist approach it takes to a genre that has always been strongly associated with American cinema.
Days of Glory fully deserves the praise it has received for whilst superficial comparisons may be made to Steven Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan” this is no apolitical movie descending into melodrama, rather it is a hard edged view of war and of racism. Like most Great War movies it shows not only the cruelty and savagery of battle but also the unfeeling indifference of the Army created to fight these wars. Here this indifference is magnified by the racism in the treatment of the native fighters from North Africa, a treatment echoed in America’s treatment of Black Soldiers who endured strict segregation and Britain’s of non-white colonial soldiers. The racism is shocking in its casualness, not just the overt racism in the different treatment, rations, promotion, denial of leave but even covertly censoring letters from North African soldiers to French girls to stop inter racial relationships. This shows the lie that Algerians were part of “Metropolitan France” and this fiction was cast asunder with some bitterness in 1959. Since then the treatment of the “pieds noirs” in France has been desultory and this film serves as a reminder of the root causes of these issues. But part of the French attitude may stem from an embarrassment that these North Africans who had never seen France were fighting to free it when many of its own citizens had chosen to collaborate.
Indeed the recent court case involving Gurkha Soldiers in Britain looking for equal pension and settlement rights echoes what has happened in France. They were championed by the actress Joanna Lumley who was born in Kashmir and spent her early life in Hong Kong and Malaysia. Her father served for 30 years with the 6th Gurkha Rifles, and was a Chindit in Burma; his admiration and affection for these soldiers of Nepal was shared by all who served with them. Gurkha Tul Bahadur Pun VC, 87, fought alongside her father, Major James Rutherford Lumley, in Burma during the Second World War, and a picture of him was displayed in the family home. It is hard to understand the bravery he has displayed or read the official citation without emotion;
“War Office, 9th November, 1944
The KING has been graciously pleased to approve the award of the VICTORIA CROSS to:-
No. 10119 Rifleman Tulbahadur (sic) Pun, 6th Gurkha Rifles, Indian Army.
In Burma on June 23, 1944, a Battalion of the 6th Gurkha Rifles was ordered to attack the Railway Bridge at Mogaung. Immediately the attack developed the enemy opened concentrated and sustained cross fire at close range from a position known as the Red House and from a strong bunker position two hundred yards to the left of it.
So intense was this cross fire that both the leading platoons of 'B' Company, one of which was Rifleman Tulbahadur (sic) Pun's, were pinned to the ground and the whole of his Section was wiped out with the exception of himself, the Section commander and one other man. The Section commander immediately led the remaining two men in a charge on the Red House but was at once badly wounded. Rifleman Tulbahadur (sic) Pun and his remaining companion continued the charge, but the latter too was immediately wounded.
Rifleman Tulbahadur (sic) Pun then seized the Bren Gun, and firing from the hip as he went, continued the charge on this heavily bunkered position alone, in the face of the most shattering concentration of automatic fire, directed straight at him. With the dawn coming up behind him, he presented a perfect target to the Japanese. He had to move for thirty yards over open ground, ankle deep in mud, through shell holes and over fallen trees.
Despite these overwhelming odds, he reached the Red House and closed with the Japanese occupants. He killed three and put five more to flight and captured two light machine guns and much ammunition. He then gave accurate supporting fire from the bunker to the remainder of his platoon which enabled them to reach their objective. His outstanding courage and superb gallantry in the face of odds which meant almost certain death were most inspiring to all ranks and beyond praise.”
Tul Bahadur Pun VC in 2007
The Home Office barrister said that merely (sic) winning a Victoria Cross in battle was not sufficient connection with the UK to allow them to settle there. This attitude was condemned by Mr. Justice Blake as "Irrational, inconsistent, unlawful and lacking in clarity" – when he ruled against the UK Government on a law that barred Gurkha soldiers, who served the UK in the Falklands and the Gulf War, from settling in Britain. The campaign (http://www.gurkhajustice.org.uk ) had indeed referred to Days of Glory and the Gurkha's used the French example to back their campaign asking for the same pension rights as other British soldiers.
Days of Glory is a complex and affecting movie that handles a thorny subject with sensitivity rather than militaristic bombast. The ending of the film is poignant and sums up what a impact "War" has on people and how the waste of life, affects them.
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