Entertaining the masses

Week beginning 7 August 2005

Not that long ago I wrote a piece which began with the reflection that London seems a long way away. Well, usually it does; but these past few days have been anything but usual.

It all started with a flight to Glasgow last Thursday, which went without any difficulty. I was accompanying my son (number one) to Heathrow Aiport, then returning home while he ought to have continued to Entebbe in Uganda.

Now, I've done a bit of travelling in my time, and experienced the wonder of flight; but I am still amazed at the thought of being able to leave one's suitcase in the care of baggage handlers in Stornoway, and have it delivered directly to the equator. Mind-boggling, is it not?

Well, as I said, usually it would be. The second leg of our journey was the Glasgow-London part; and that is when the best laid plans began to unravel ever so slightly. We were comfortably seated in our airbus to Heathrow, when the captain began speaking about meetings in London, strikes in support of sacked catering staff and delays.

We didn't know it at the time, of course, but the world's biggest airport was being held to ransom by BA's own subsidiary catering corps. No bombs; no terrorists. Just a strife between management and staff which soon affected 17000 people.

Well, that's when we met up with the case again, and had to stand for longer than the duration of a Presbyterian communion service in order to sort out travel plans. The frustration at Glasgow Airport was palpable; and when Reporting Scotland appeared (you may have spotted us in profile), it was all that Maureen from the USA needed -- an audience to listen to her gripe against BA's appalling service. She was never going to fly 'British Air' again.

Well, that's good news for the rest of us who are. The staff at Glasgow did all they could, in the most trying of circumstances, to sort us out with alternative bookings and overnight accommodation. The problem was hundreds of miles away, and I think that they deserved a bit more credit than Maureen gave them.

And as it happened, was I glad that our skipper had the foresight to cancel the flight, instead of taking us all the way to London. When I saw the thousands of travellers stuck in Terminal 4, or outside it in some cases, I was thankful for the provision that had been made for us. If she had apoplexy at Glasgow, Maureen would not have been a pretty sight camped out in the BA marquee at Terminal 4.

Well, for globetrotter and dad, things worked out OK, and we even managed an unexpected couple of days at the Free Church's newest mission field in the leafy suburbs of Surrey. As far as I was concerned, the experience confirmed the church's decision to settle my brother-in-law in Cobham (thanks guys!).

But all the above is only the prelude to what I really wanted to say. I discovered in some newspaper somewhere that at Heathrow, BA's overworked ground crew were doing their best to keep the masses entertained, comfortable and warm. That included handing out food, and blankets, and setting up a screen so that the hundreds of stranded passengers could watch ... wait for it ... the Big Brother final live on Friday night.

Well, I have had my doubts about what BA is doing with its profits, but now I realise just how mis-spent at least some of them are. The Big Brother final! Who in the world was watching that?

Quite a few people, apparently, and not only at Heathrow. However, the thought of an enforced viewing of this particular season's Big Brother makes being stuck in a queue in front of Maureen from America rather appealing.

I mean, did you see any of it? Unfortunately, teenagers are into that sort of thing, so one or two episodes did get an airing in our house. But that's not the least of it -- what of the press coverage? Newspaper headlines given over to debates about who did what with whom in the Big Brother pool (and who was sober at the time), and who fancied who (gender notwithstanding).

These days, the idea of a television watershed is a joke. For public money to be spent on a programme where controls over behaviour are so obviously removed, and where blasphemy is rampant, is nothing short of scandalous. I've complained about it already, but obviously the bosses at Channel Four don't read the Gazette.

My theory is that if Big Brother does not make you a Calvinist, you're probably not a Christian. The recent Big Brother was a real lesson in total depravity, in what happens when all constraints are removed and controls are not in place. Give fallen man freedom to be himself, and he behaves like an animal.

Was Darwin right? Is this what we have evolved up to? Have we risen out of the primeval slime to these heights of debauchery? Is this mankind on the way up?

Or is it, as the Bible rather suggests, mankind on the way down? The reality is not that this is man at the pinnacle of his development, but in the gutter of his depravity. This is not man in glorious independence, but man in need of the gospel.

The sad thing is that we all become complicit in the shenanigans of the Big Brother House. That's why the big wigs at BA decide the best thing they can do for their stranded passengers is treat them to the worst television in the history of the genre. I dare say many were interested in the guy who won; but I just wonder what kind of commentary all of this is on where we are at as a society.

Well, God was good to us in the midst of the chaos that was last week's Heathrow. Number one son is now on site at Africa Bible College, helping to build an institution where God's word will be taught to African students, who will go all over the world and preach the Gospel.

Let's hope some of them will come to the United Kingdom and tell us about Jesus, before we drown in the cesspool of corruption we have concocted in our generation.

iaind@backfreechurch.co.uk