LAA La Land

The UK's Light Aircraft Association has just enjoyed its annual gathering in the rain in Leicestershire, and I know because I've watched the video in my underwear: in itself a reflection of where it may be headed. But the man on the telly would divulge a remarkable fact: it has more members over eighty than it has under forty.

How is it that an association introduced as a 'Popular Flying Association' after WW2 in order to make flying affordable to the 'man on the Clapham omnibus' ~ after he gets off it ~ is now a showcase for aircraft that sell for a quarter million pounds?

Well for one thing, because of how governments run economies to most favour the haves, older people are asset rich... or in other words, rich. Ha ha ha ha ha, young people. (Ed. relax, he isn't, unless you count hauling semi-trailers at 03:00 a.m.).

Although the fleet remains constant at around 2,000 aircraft as some die and others appear, the tendency is for new-builds to replace kit-builds made of alloy and wood. The reasons being (a) excepting doomsday drone-peppers like myself, people have forgotten how to work with wood and metal and (b) we want everything NOW.

This is a shame because I was brought up in a world where instead of flying, models would sit part-built on a bench smelling of dope (not that kind), when we realised we were wasting our time. We'd go on bicycles to airports to watch Dan-Air fly Dakota DC-3s in. We'd watch airshows in shorts instead of on shorts. We'd sit in old DH Mosquitoes parked in the hangar, without wearing hi-visibility tabards. (Ed. shut the fuck up and drink your cocoa.)

But there is a whole new world out there where people can ~ and do ~ fly models in first-person-view goggles without ever having to leave the comfort of their camping chair. 

And it sucks.

Demockery

I'm flying blind here because I can't be entirely sure that the people coming to this humble town square are bent on building boats, up for the cut and thrust of modern debate or aiming to contemplate the vagaries of life and death. But as life draws on to its weary conclusion, it is hard not to reexamine all of what we might have taken for granted heretofore.

And one is whether or not democracy really is an asset for the West, or whether it is just a form of pantomime that nobody believes in any more, like that beanstalk?

Without picking on any party in particular, this is arguably the UK's historically most successful ~ at least in terms of political popularity ~ and what it had to say in 2020 as against what it had to say last week.

I have suggested before that offering to lead the world in green initiatives ~ which is one of the few options remaining ~ is much like the British offering to jump from the Titanic long before its final moments, rather than enjoy what's left of the music.

Had the same party really been bent upon avoiding this course of action, however, it could have started with Margaret Thatcher not closing the coal mines; though she was motivated in doing so as much as anything by a pathological hatred of the working class of the sort that the Labour Party has gone on to inherit.

When I worked in China, people didn't seem less happy than they do here; if anything they appeared more satisfied with their lot, a peculiar blend of communism and capitalism outdoing the West on every metric you could consider with the possible exception of free speech.

Which is declining here anyhow. So turn over your papers, please, and compare and contrast. 

And no shouting.

(Ed. you're not Joe Rogan, you're a very naughty boy.)