8th November:

According to the song, ‘the best things in life are free’. This is clearly nonsense. The best things in life are generally very expensive indeed, and all the better for it. That wonderful sunset view from the balcony may be gratis, but the business class flights and the 10 nights in the hotel have probably seen off a couple of grand without any trouble at all. And quite rightly so.

As the world gets smaller and ‘low cost’ airline companies become increasingly profitable and more miserable, maybe we should stop for a moment and re-examine our perception of the value of things.

Let’s be candid, your £10 air ticket will more than likely get you from A to B. However, A is probably not a particularly convenient departure point for you and will necessitate a 4.30am start to the day, followed by a 2 hour drive. Your departure terminal at A will be a large, noisy, unheated corrugated shed. You will have to pay 3 times the price of your ticket to check in your hold baggage. You will have to sit at the departure gate surrounded by men drinking pints of beer at a time when the rest of the country are still contemplating their corn flakes. The pre-boarding call at the gate will immediately result in a mass stampede towards the door that Pavlov would have been proud of. Your airplane will be uncomfortable, garishly decorated and your flight will be punctuated with annoying PA announcements every 10 minutes made by bored teenagers wearing too much make-up instructing you to buy scratch cards, raffle tickets, train tickets, maps and crap overpriced snacks. Honestly, it’s like something from the pages of 1984. Upon arrival at B (another cold, corrugated shed in a provincial town that is a 50 minute coach journey from where you actually want to get to), you will queue for 40 minutes to have your passport inspected by the lone immigration official and then queue for another 45 minutes for your hold baggage to arrive. By this point, you are likely to be tired, hungry and somewhat irritable.

It’s been a long time since air travel has been anything like glamorous, but this...? It’s apallingly depressing. Veal are treated more humanely. And don't even think about what happens when anything goes wrong. All you're going to get is a shrug and that "what kind of service did you think you'd get for a tenner?" look, to which there really is no response. Yes, Sir, you get what you pay for and for £10 we're treating you like a dick. And it really is your fault. So why do we let them away with it? Cause it’s cheap, innit?

One of my colleagues used to work with a small engineering company and he sold a lot of products in Germany. The Germans were always prepared to pay a premium for his products because nobody else made them better. The design was better, the performance was better and they lasted longer before needing replaced. The small premium was therefore justifiable. In the UK, however, the only way to succeed seemed to be by undercutting the competition. Make it cheaper.

Although cheaper generally means ‘more accessible’, it certainly does not always mean better. We can now buy a 30 quid DVD player in almost any major supermarket. Yes, they are crap but they work. However, what exactly is the point of a 30 quid DVD player other than irreversibly eroding the public's perception of the value of DVD players? ASDA has again been voted “Cheapest Supermarket in Britain” for seemingly the 35^th year in a row, but so what? Is it any good? I see no mention of quality, service or fairness here.

Some people’s economic circumstances dictate that they are more price-conscious than others. That’s unfortunately a fact of life. The public's desire for the cheapest deal in every situation is not a healthy thing, though. Products and services don't have to be the cheapest, they need only be cheap enough to be competitive (i.e. viable for both consumer and supplier). How about raising the ceiling rather than continually lowering the floor?

The best things in life are expensive and there to be aspired to. Which makes them all the sweeter when you finally get to experience them.