This is not something that I have made up. It is a statement of fact from Paul Kehoe, BIA chief executive, whose assessment of the runway plan as reported in this newspaper – “at best it’s marginal, at worst it could be loss-making” – caught the seven West Midlands district councils off guard.
The councils, owning pretty much a half share in the airport, have succeeded in talking up the runway proposal in such a way that most opinion formers in the region and business leaders tend to lapse into a messianic trance while repeating the mantra “we must have the runway, we must have the runway”.
They assume the project is in the bag. they have been convinced by the argument that the regional economy will benefit from inward investment worth hundreds of millions of pounds if BIA is able to offer non-stop flights to India, China and the west coast of America.
But is this really likely to be the case given the financial and environmental pressures facing the aviation industry as we move into the second decade of the 21st century?
Let me again quote mr Kehoe: “Even if we build the extension, we can’t be certain that the airlines will come.”
The point the airport is making is one that really does have to be answered convincingly by our political leaders. Put simply, mr Kehoe is asking why BIA’s private sector shareholders should be expected to carry most of the risk for a scheme where the business case is, at best, marginal.
The longer runway would, as he points out, do far more for the regional economy than it would for the airport company assuming of course that you sign up to the claim that airlines would actually use the longer runway in large numbers rather than continuing to fly from Manchester and the London airports.
There is, according to mr Kehoe, “no clear financial advantage” for BIA from plodding on with a huge infrastructure scheme which would swallow up most of the airport’s available cash reserves for years to come.
He puts it like this: “The airport could just as easily spend the money it does have on improving passenger terminals. the board has to look at this with a cold towel on its head and consider the company’s best interests.”
I have left it until now to comment on a letter to the Post from Birmingham City Council chief executive Stephen Hughes because his words are barely worth commenting on. a text book exercise in self-serving obfuscation, mr Hughes wishes our readers to know that the runway extension remains on track because it is a high priority for the region’s councils and is at the top of some spending plan strategy or other.
Mr Hughes, on top of his growing portfolio of duties which already includes masterminding regeneration in Birmingham, has taken personal responsibility for delivering the runway extension and he has the total backing of city council leader Mike Whitby.
Well, that’s okay then. Brum’s answer to X Factor’s John and Edward are on the case, charging around with unbridled enthusiasm in an attempt to convince the electorate that all is well, when the opposite is clearly the case.
Mr Hughes does not mention mr Kehoe in his letter. It is as if the BIA boss’s comments never existed, airbrushed away in order to re-write history.
It is not only the BIA board requiring a cold towel, Whitby and Hughes could do with one as well.

Published: 9:44AM GMT 20 Nov 2009

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Bang go the reputations of Metternich and Talleyrand. European diplomacy has a dynamic new exponent and it is none other than Baroness Ashton of Upholland (not, apparently, a derogatory remark made about the Netherlands No voters in their Lisbon Treaty referendum), the newly anointed High Representative for Foreign Affairs of the European Union.

And, wow, does this lady tick all the boxes. just because you have never heard of her, that does not mean she is negligible. hers is a CV to die for. her first political office was as vice-chairman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; now she is in charge of European security policy. as Director of Business in the Community she worked with business to abolish inequality (that is why she is a baroness, unlike less equal people). from there she rose to global realpolitik, chairing Hertfordshire Health Authority, not to mention the board of governors of her children’s school.

After that, her career went stratospheric as she became successively Vice President of the National Council for One Parent Families (an iconic post, that), Leader of the House of Lords (thus successfully abolishing at least her own inequality) and UK European Commissioner in succession to the Grand Duke Mandy. She was also voted Politician of the Year by Stonewall, thus reinforcing her PC credentials. Now comes the final apotheosis, as successor to Richelieu, Bonaparte and Bismarck in shaping the destinies of Europe.

What’s not to like? from a Eurofederalist, right-on, PC, anti-Little Englander point of view? But the more discerning observers will already have noted the Baroness’s supreme qualification for Europower and endorsement by the elite: she is totally untainted by any experience of democratic election at any stage in her career – unless you are small-minded enough to count her coronation by EU leaders as a momentary brush with a miniscule ballot box. Horses for courses: this serial appointee is custom-made for high EU office.

(M)
★★★★
(105 minutes)
Selected cinemas.
Jake Wilson Reviewer

IN THEIR latest black comedy, Joel and Ethan Coen come as closeto a confession of faith as this pair of pranksters ever will, andnot just because they’re drawing on their own 1960s memories ofgrowing up Jewish in the suburbs of Minnesota.

The typical Coen character is a hapless schmo whose methods ofgrasping reality prove to be starkly inadequate. Some are luckyfools who never notice the difference, while others are forced toconfront the enigmatic true face of the universe — possiblymalignant and certainly without sympathy for their cosy moralcertainties and petty schemes.

So it goes for the hero of A serious Man — the meekphysics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), who is stunnedwhen his wife (Sari Lennick) tells him she’s leaving him for thesmarmy Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed). his children are in no bettercondition: his daughter (Jessica McManus) demands a nose job, hisson (Aaron Wolff) is a foul-mouthed pothead in trouble atschool.

Larry is a good man, or so he tells himself. he doesn’t deserveany of this. As he seeks answers to the riddle of existence, thefamily television set keeps breaking down; on the roof to adjustthe aerial, he can’t help glancing into the yard of the sexpot nextdoor (Amy Landecker), who sunbathes nude as if tempting him tostray. everything is a symbol and nothing makes any sense. And itwouldn’t be a Coen film without at least one corpse.

Taking Larry’s mental crisis as a licence for narrativedelirium, the Coens have created one of their funniest and mostoriginal films since Barton Fink (1991). through it all, theirstorytelling technique remains as slick as ever, relying onhandsomely grotesque images, sharply incongruous music selections,and time-and-motion gags based on how long it takes someone toapproach a desk or cross a lawn.

Thanks to Stuhlbarg’s careful performance, Larry is never merelya caricature, but never so sympathetic we can take him at his ownvaluation. Likewise, the film is poised between existential angstand pure nonsense, two equally valid products of a crisis inmeaning.

On some level, the Coens’ flippancy is self-protective.Inevitably, any scene evoking the horror of a world without Godwill end with a cynical, throwaway punchline. But there’sfascination and pleasure in their trick of constructing a film likea theorem where nothing adds up.

A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.Photo: iStockphoto

It doesn’t even seem like it’s been that long since we all learned that eating popcorn just because you’re at a movie theater was a sick indulgence on the level of stuffing five fried Snickers bars in your face just because it’s a Wednesday, but it’s been a whole fifteen years! and basically, nothing has changed. Two of the most popular theater chains, Regal and AMC, still insist on making their popcorn with coconut oil, which is 90 percent saturated fat, leading to this sentence:

“A medium-sized popcorn and medium soda at the nation’s largest movie chain pack the nutritional equivalent of three Quarter Pounders topped with 12 pats of butter, according to a report released today by the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest.”

Well, that doesn’t sound good at all! the study found that Cinemark, the third largest (but much smaller) chain uses canola oil, which makes theirs slightly better, but still bad. When reached for comment, the theaters were all about how movie theater popcorn is a sometimes food and a special treat, and not meant to be part of a healthy diet, pointing out that the average American goes to the movies only six times per year, and that they tried changing the popcorn in the ninties, but theatergoers “demanded” their fatty popcorn back, which all sounds a lot like a mom guilt trip: “You hardly ever visit! I tried making you healthy food, but you didn’t want it! Visit your mother, eat her food, when am I going to get grandchildren?”

The thing that’s not mentioned in this article is the fact that movie theaters are SCARED SHITLESS of losing concession money, because even with ridiculously high ticket prices, it’s basically the only money they make. why else would they be so anal about outside food? (Full disclosure: the closest we’ve ever come to being arrested was on three separate outside-food incidents.) the reason they serve popcorn in movie theaters is because popcorn, and soda, are literally the cheapest things people can put in their mouths. We worked in a movie theater for three years in college, where it was drilled into our heads that a theatergoer who doesn’t buy soda or popcorn is basically a loss for the business. so no matter how many of these studies they do, unless they can make healthier popcorn taste exactly the same as regular, nothing is going to change. People be wanting their gross popcorn, and we all have the absurd idea that getting it “plain” without “buttery topping” is a healthy choice on the level of something Gwyneth Paltrow would endorse in her Goop newsletter. People go to movies to have fun and enter a fantasy world where all constraints and consequences magically disappear, and popcorn is part of that fantasy. For one theatergoer to mention to another that movie theater popcorn is absolutely disgusting and point out that the six movies per year average actually adds up to like four POUNDS per year, per person — why, that theatergoer may as well just lean over and whisper “Bruce Willis is one of the dead people.” this is the way the world is, theater-popcorn-wise, and it’s just never going to change.

While you’re here, though, can we just say something real quick? When a movie ends, please take your trash and throw it away in the trash can, like a human being. you would not believe what a total litterbug trash animal everyone becomes when they enter a movie theater. clean up after yourselves, animals!

Movie popcorn still a nutritional horror, study finds [LAT]