I’ve flown British Airways a few times recently and the flights were cheap and very pleasant, so I would have no intention of boycotting them over their ban on visible crucifixes even if I didn’t think their position was reasonable – but, as it happens, I mostly do.

They seem to have bent over backwards to allow the employee in question, Nadia Eweida, to wear her cross: they told her it was fine to wear it under her uniform and offered her alternative work where she wouldn’t need to wear the uniform at all, but she insists that she should be allowed to wear it – because religion apparently deserves special treatment.

“It is important to wear it to express my faith so that other people will know that Jesus loves them.”

Oddly enough, when I fly I’d like the cabin crew to keep me safe and provide me complimentary food that isn’t too cardboardy. I don’t fly for reassurance that a particular religious icon is rooting for me. It wouldn’t be acceptable for Ms Eweida to hand out copies of the Watchtower with the inflight magazine, so why should she tell get to me Jesus loves me in other ways?

Now, that said, I have no objection to people expressing their religious beliefs and it makes little difference to me whether BA’s uniform allows jewellery or not – interesting, and here’s where I do disagree with BA, they “accepted the cross was not jewellery”. But a uniform code is a uniform code and it’s the expectation the religion should be a special case that I object to. To take a facetious example given today’s date, I watch Doctor Who more often than many people who tick “Christian” on the census go to church, but would I have a leg to stand on if I worked for BA and wanted to wear a Davros badge on my uniform (to show people that Terry Nation loves them, perhaps)? Of course not.

Update: Joe Otten has written a typically thoughtful post on the same issue. I’m inclined to agree with him that British Airways’ best way of avoiding this sort of issue is to be less restrictive full stop, but I do think that, from a marketing point of view, their uniform does have a role to play in promoting them as a “quality” brand.

John Hutton has today been promoting the government’s new pensions package, a follow-up to Lord Turner’s report earlier this year, which will increase the state pension age from 65 to 68.

The retirment age was set at a time when life expectancies were much lower than they are now. The idea that once you hit 65 you’ve “done your bit”, “paid your stamp” and are entitled to thirty years of leisure at the state’s expense is a nonsense. The system simply wasn’t designed to cope with today’s longevity, and just as we expect young people to work if they can, it’s reasonable to expect 65-year-olds to stay at work for a few more years if they’re still spritely. The alternative is for a generation whch has spent decades keeping taxes relatively low to then force high taxes on their children in order to give themselves a comfortable retirement – although in practice, because of the long lead time for this change, the baby boomers will benefit from the current state pension age anyway.

So John Hutton is entitled to a quote:

“As unpopular as it may be to talk about working longer – the simple fact is that if we aren’t prepared to increase the state pension age, we will simply pass an ever greater and frankly unsustainable burden on to our children and grandchildren.”

The new Liberal Democrat party political broadcast will be on TV this evening. Here’s a sneak preview. In keeping with a regular theme of this blog, see if you can spot three Doctor Who guest stars in this clip. Two of them were also in Blake’s 7. It’s pretty easy if you’re a fanboy – answers in the comments please.


Hang on, that’s not right. My mistake. Easily done. Here’s the new LibDem film:


That’s more like it. All hail Ming!

theguardian, working with No2ID, have carried out an excellent investigation into the new “more secure” biometric passports, of which three million are already in circulation. These passports contain information on RFID chips – entirely unnecessary for a valid passport – from which a hacker can extract your biometric information, making it possible to clone the information into a forged passport. So much for security.

Compare the reactions. Nick Clegg:

“Three million people now have passports that expose them to a greater risk of identity fraud than before. We need an urgent redesign of the biometric passport and a recall of all insecure passports once a new protected design is available. In the interim the government should provide commercially available RFID-shields for passports to those with the insecure design.”

The Home Office:

“This doesn’t matter.”

And these people want us to trust them with our biometric data on a giant national database.

While we’re talking about civil liberties, here’s an excellent quote about 90-day internment from today’s Telegraph via Radio 4’s newspaper review:

Habeas corpus is a fundamental part of the British constitution. The liberty of subjects must not be subordinated to the preferences of a prime minister, however trustworthy, or to the convenience of police forces. Mr Blair sometimes acts as if being locked in a cell for 13 weeks was equivalent to waiting for holiday snaps to come back from the developer.