Luggage & Labels

Heathrow Airport - Terminal Four

I had never before really considered the way that major airports portray travel until I stopped, and looked around me, in Heathrow’s Terminal Four. Travel was once depicted as an adventure that was available to all, from the pilgrim with sandals and scrip, to the oligarch on his yacht. 

Now, like everything in our society, it is becoming increasingly gentrified.

 Over the past generation, the basic essentials of life have ceased to be available by right, and virtually every experience has acquired a price tag. The full meaning of “privatisation” has become apparent: it is not about ownership of amenities; it is about limiting accessibility. I believe that good government should include the provision of the basic infrastructure of society, and that governments should not be allowed to renounce this by hiving off any service that could be chargeable, and hence profitably delivered by private investment. The reality of Britain today is that the family silver has been sold and future generations will have to pay to use it. 

The Victorians had a different approach, and saw the benefit in creating and delivering opportunities for all. They sought to create an up-skilled and mobile population. Travel wasn’t unaffordable: most people could afford 3^rd class rail travel, and those with a better income could afford 1^st or 2^nd class and enjoy more comfort. It was the decision to offer a basic alternative, in addition to the luxurious option, that made travel widely available. That is still the case here in India; anyone can travel anywhere for pennies, or for pounds. You can rattle along in the heat and the dust, or you can pay more and sit back in air-conditioned comfort; the important thing is that anyone can travel – anywhere.

Free drinking water on London streets

The drive to raise perceived standards in Britain has meant the abolition of the basics that should be available at no cost – or at a minimal charge. Public toilets are an obvious example. Across the country, spending a penny (1d - one old penny = 0.4167p,) now generally costs 30p, which is the equivalent of six shillings, representing a 72-fold increase in my lifetime. 

As for free drinking water; it simply doesn’t exist. It isn’t available on street corners as it often was all over my childhood London; it’s rarely available in modest cafés, and it’s generally only available in smart restaurants if you start your meal with a confrontational demand for “tap-water.” Wherever you seek to quench your thirst, you need first to pre-qualify as a “customer.”

I don’t object to the fact that eating at a transport terminal has improved, but I am angry that inexpensive basics are no longer on offer. The simple reason is that the landlord charges rents that prevent operators from offering less expensive choices. This came home to me as I sat in a restaurant at Heathrow, rejecting the idea of a £5 bottle of beer or a £7.50 sandwich and nursing my £2 mug of Yorkshire tea – the cheapest item on the menu. I didn’t want anything exotic; I just wanted somewhere to while away an hour in reasonable comfort. 

The luxuries of Harrods (- and others!)

As I gently mused and philosophised, I gazed across the terminal to the Harrods outlet and all the other shops displaying luxury goods. Everything was expensive, and this was not because the products on offer were of exceptional quality. The prices reflected the supposedly glamorous environment of the departures lounge and – in the products themselves – the dubious worth of the artificially created, added-value of the label. This is a global phenomenon. Labels are just as much a part of the new Asia, or the new Africa, or anywhere else. Shopping malls in Hong Kong or Johannesburg sparkle with the hyped bling of Swarovski.

So I travel today in the spirit that I have always loved to travel, since I cycled youth-hostelling across England aged 13, or hitch-hiked to Vienna a couple of years later. I confess that I went through a label phase in my student years, and again in my executive years, but the gift of poverty in my retirement has refocused my life on more lasting values.

And so I boarded, I flew, and I landed in a rather different world.