These shoes were made for walking in

I’m having a tremendous day today, woke up nice and early. So far I’ve tidied the house, read a bit more from Tony Benn’s diaries and worked out my running route. The sun’s shining through the window and warming my legs, spread-eagled as they are across the duvet.

This probably won’t get posted until Monday morning due to the lack of internet at Chez Dom but it was drafted at 1pm on Saturday afternoon – just so you know.

It’s funny how the news can affect you. Working in PR, news has a kind of weird removal. It’s a breeze that either pushes at your back helping you along or hits you head on. I was at a meeting with colleagues on Friday at we began talking about 9/11 and what we were up to when it happened and similarly with the London bombings.

When the World Trade Center atrocity occurred, for most PRs it was an irritation – at least in the early stages before the full scale of the disaster was evident. The story was taking up print space, pushing out the stories that the clients wanted to be covered.

Similarly when XL Airways went into liquidation yesterday I tutted, I knew it was going to be a royal pain in the bottom for my clients and potentially for me too. Looking at the people stranded around the world without flights home, the reality began to sink in but it was only when I received a call from my sister that the scale of the story hit home.

My sister works at Manchester Airport and has done for at least four or five years. Most of her mates work for airlines and a few poor beggars worked for XL.

On Thursday night at midnight precisely a couple of guys knocked on the house where a few of my sister’s mates were staying. They were from XL or at least were acting on behalf of them. They told the inhabitants that since the house was provided by the company, they would be evicting all of the inhabitants first thing in the morning. What’s more however, all of the housemates would need to report to the airport at 9am to hand in all and any XL property in their possession and that if they were not forthcoming then would be charged for replacement.

So my sister’s mates were turfed out, not nice but that’s business I guess. It’s worse for her friends based overseas or who were staying over before making their way back home on an inbound flight. None of them are covered by ABTA and so won’t be able to claim their fares back from the company – or not easily at least.

The biggest kick to the gut however, is that none of them have yet been paid for this month. Their wages won’t be forthcoming and the employees are unlikely to ever see that money.

It’s all too easy to protect ourselves from the suffering of others but maybe we’d all be better people if we tried to walk a mile in the shoes of someone else.