Anthony McIntyre reflects on the collapse of the holiday company Thomas Cook.
Incalculable chaos, with thousands apparently being turned out of hotels, now that proprietors have been left holding the bag, or prevented from leaving unless they pony up funds for bookings that had already been paid to Cook, basically holding guests to ransom. Weddings and honeymoons cancelled, school trips aborted, business meetings called off … It’s estimated at least 1 million future travellers — those who’d already booked and paid — will find their upcoming vacations cancelled - Rosie DiManno:
Somewhere in the region of 150, 000 people will have had the holiday of a lifetime but for the wrong reasons. Their mental holiday snap will resemble those preyed upon by pickpockets in Barcelona or scammed in Mumbai.
Wanderlusters have always understood the travails of travel. There is a creative tension to a holiday, the anxiety caused by responsibility mixed with the pleasure of relaxation. While there is no place like home, returning there from a foreign sojourn is never a stress free endeavour. Getting sorted at airports, trying to fit on the conveyor belt as smoothly as possible, making sure everything is in order, as the management and security leviathan pushes you relentlessly forward - all of it fritters with the jitters. The weary traveller wants the homeward journey to be as uncomplicated as possible. Imagine the hassle of your holiday company collapsing and you are cut adrift. The victims of Thomas Crook were not even afforded the stay of execution until Brexit when the real cull begins.
Wanderlusters have always understood the travails of travel. There is a creative tension to a holiday, the anxiety caused by responsibility mixed with the pleasure of relaxation. While there is no place like home, returning there from a foreign sojourn is never a stress free endeavour. Getting sorted at airports, trying to fit on the conveyor belt as smoothly as possible, making sure everything is in order, as the management and security leviathan pushes you relentlessly forward - all of it fritters with the jitters. The weary traveller wants the homeward journey to be as uncomplicated as possible. Imagine the hassle of your holiday company collapsing and you are cut adrift. The victims of Thomas Crook were not even afforded the stay of execution until Brexit when the real cull begins.
22,000 jobs at risk worldwide with 9000 of them in the UK, has prompted staff to suggest that it’s an inconvenience for customers, but they’ll get their money back — it feels like no one cares what we’re going through. Our lives have been turned upside down.” A bit self centred, and even uncharitable to the travellers, but understandable given the very human myopic focus on our own immediate problems.
A repatriation of this scale and nature is unprecedented and unfortunately there will be some inconvenience and disruption for customers. We will do everything we can to minimise this as the operation continues.
A measure of the scale of the problem was captured in a comment by academics at Bournemouth University that "this is the largest peacetime repatriation the UK has ever undertaken."
To make matters worse a few entrepreneurial spirits - the type never to miss a crash site where victims can be looted - were quick to circle the debris and cash in on the misery. Criminals posing as refund agents were offering to take up the slack and get worried holidaymakers home … just pass on your credit card details. Like religious rogues on a Sunday with a collection plate.
Whatever the causes of the collapse, the Tory government in "a decision applauded by all the usual capitalism-worshipping suspects", had earlier failed to bail out the company. A sign of things to come. But even the Brexiteers were quick to claim that "it seems extraordinary that, yet again, a long-standing, British company, founded 178 years ago, has crashed and burned because of the ineptitude and greed of the management." Well, forgive my cheekiness in asking who promotes the culture of greed to begin with, if not the Tories?
Indifferent to the effects of their private greed on the public wellbeing, the greed driven CEOs:
… just ruin things. And enrich themselves in the process … while Thomas Cook has gone toes up, its top level CEOs — three of them since 2007 — collectively raked in almost $78-million atop the crumbling company pile. The last of them, Peter Fankhauser, has pocketed $7.6 million in bonuses alone, as per media reports.
This would be the same Fankhauser who, after a family had been dragged through court for nine years — two of their children had died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty boiler while vacationing in Corfu — at first refused to apologize for the tragedy. A court found Thomas Cook had breached its duty of care and recorded a verdict of unlawful killing.
Which prompted besieged British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, to join the fray by asking "whether it's right that the directors, or whoever, the board, should pay themselves large sums when businesses can go down the tubes like that."
As you state AM, this is just the start of what is to come after Brexit. The current discussion over some agrictural policy agreement on the Island is all about appeasing the DUP farmers who have suddenly woken up to realise that all their EU subsidies that keeps them afloat has disappeared and any promise of replacing these with funds supplied by London is just not reliable enough at all.....would you trust Boris or even the DUP with your livlihood going by their past experience?
ReplyDeleteFounded 178 years ago. Proof not all progress in an automatic improvement.
ReplyDeleteBut at least UK GDP will improve, now all the wine aunts can’t go on holiday abroad to get plowed by Turkish toy boys! It’s all about the GDP!
Capitalism has failed the people. I wish we'd stop judging the economy on how well the fucking billionaires are doing.
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