Published at 19:31, Thursday, 29 April 2010

I AM writing this last Thursday, so who knows what might have happened in the ensuing week.

Who, for instance, won the political party leaders’ debate on Sky TV?

Did my daughter manage to get her flight to New Zealand last Friday?

Are the planes still flying?

Are all those stranded holidaymakers back home?

Or have we all succumbed to a new fall of volcanic ash?

The saga of the ash was hanging around, but by the end I was about to erupt like the very volcano that caused all the problems in the first place.

It was because my daughter was supposed to fly out to New Zealand on the first weekend of the closure of the skies over Europe. She hadn’t been home for 10 years, her brother and sister-in-law had organised time off work, and her friends were preparing reunions.

But she couldn’t go because of the ash cloud. It was disappointing, but I know that it would have been more than disappointing if she had been told that it was safe to fly and it turned out it wasn’t!

Before I say another word, I would like to congratulate every single person who erred on the side of caution to make sure that my daughter and millions of other passengers were safe.

I don’t think we can possibly judge the impact that this event had on the airlines or the travellers who were stuck in places where they didn’t want to be.

There were horrendous stories about people being stranded with hardly any money and nowhere to stay.

There have been worse stories about people being ripped off by those prepared to prey on and profit from human misery.

The travellers themselves seemed to have been, for the most part, remarkably stoic.

We listened to stories about people helping each other, sharing resources, making new friends in airport lounges and generally making the absolute best of a truly terrible situation.

But those in charge didn’t behave quite so well. First of all, the Government was blamed. I don’t care what your party politics are and I don’t care what you think of the present Labour government, but I do know that Gordon Brown cannot make volcanoes erupt.

I heard someone saying that the Government should have reacted quicker. When a reporter replied that perhaps it was the aviation industry that should have advised the Government more quickly, he was told that this was an unprecedented event.

Of course it was! In hindsight we all know lots of things, including how long the disaster would last.

I am sure that if we had known how things would develop in advance, more would have been done. But how could we possibly know?

I heard a wonderful story during the week about an Icelandic vulcanologist who had been studying this volcano for years. He went to a conference in Paris but couldn’t get home to study it more at the height of its activity. Poor man; but if he didn’t know what was going to happen, who would?

The airlines certainly bore the brunt of the cost. The law says that they have to give their passengers due care if they can’t fly for any reason; that means housing and feeding them.

I totally agree that someone needed to help those holidaymakers who had saved hard for a budget holiday and could not afford the excess that the close-down caused.

But I don’t think it was fair that the airlines alone should shoulder the cost. They were no more to blame than the Government.

Where were the insurance companies in all this? Hiding behind their ‘act of God’ excuse.

My husband reckons that in this often Godless world, the insurance companies should have to prove the existence of God before using him as an excuse not to pay up.

The thing is, when you pay to go on holiday you pay to go on holiday.

When you pay to fly, you pay to fly. When you buy insurance, you are supposed to be buying something that ensures that when the holiday or the flight go wrong, you are okay because you are insured.

But don’t be foolish. That isn’t how insurance companies work. Certainly they take your money. In fact they welcome your money with open arms (and a free ballpoint pen) but when it comes to giving some of it back, that’s a different story.

I recall that a Maryport family went to Egypt last year and ended up in a dirty hospital for five days because the Egyptian authorities said their five-year-old had swine flu. When they tried to claim on their insurance for the disruption, they were told that they need not have disrupted their holiday; that they could have left the child in hospital by herself.

They’re all heart, these insurance companies.

By the way, I made my first ever claim on my household insurance when I lost my spectacles in the Cockermouth floods in November.

When I claimed for new ones I was told that if I did that I would lose my no-claims bonus, and my insurance premium would rise.

Just let them dare. I’m off now to find a kind-hearted insurance company, but I fear that will be a quest with no end.

Published by http://www.timesandstar.co.uk