Quoted from http://uk.news.yahoo.com/elections/steve-punt-post/post/steve_punt/7/the-great-ash-cloud/:
Steve Punt - UK Elections 2010 - Yahoo! News UK
The great ash cloud
BySteve PuntFriday April 16
I happened to be in a TV newsroom yesterday. And I found myself in a Hollywood movie. Not literally, of course, but it felt like it. I never thought I would ever actually be in a big, open-plan news office where journalists were looking up at screens reading "VOLCANIC ASH CLOUD HEADS FOR LONDON."
It was a scene from one of those disaster movies (not Jennifer Aniston rom-coms, I mean ones where CGI tidal waves smash up World Heritage Sites.) Planes were being grounded in case they started falling out of the skies, their engines seized up with molten rock. You could feel the tension in the air. Which wasn't surprising, given what was in it.
TVs in pubs, receptions and offices all across London were showing footage of bemused passengers stranded around the world, unable to fly. I briefly wondered if one of them was David Cameron, sitting there thinking, "Why didn't I use a bus like Nick Clegg?"
The three leaders were, of course, actually in Manchester, rehearsing for the TV debate. But the Volcanic Ash Cloud had completely knocked the election off the front pages for the first time in a week. I pondered, briefly, whether Mother Nature had shown up our human politics for the puny thing it is. It's all very well promising to cancel a rise in National Insurance or adjust tax allowances for married couples, but what policies do our leaders have for real emergencies? What measures would the Right Honourable Gentleman take to stop the Volcanic Ash Cloud from choking Britain?
Now that would be a debate. Never mind mimsying around with questions about deficit reduction. I want to know who would be the best Disaster Movie Prime Minister. What would they do if a huge UFO mothership emerged from Ash Cloud and hovered over Birmingham? Gordon Brown: "I would accompany Bill Pullman or Will Smith to Brize Norton, and personally fly one our new RAF fighters into the Ash Cloud, dispersing it with a home-made device lashed together by Dennis Quaid and his son." David Cameron? "Well, we're all in this together. What we need is for communities to join in, buy this UFO from the aliens and fly it away themselves." Nick Clegg? "According to Vince Cable we can't afford to do anything. Let's talk to the aliens and see if they can lend us any money." And then someone will claim that under a UKIP government, no foreign ash would be allowed in British airspace anyway.
Then the debate could move on to other questions that would really stretch their leadership capacities. Would they abandon the country in case of a killer zombie virus? If caught on a sinking ocean liner, would they lock the working class into the lower deck? And if a massive meteorite was heading for Earth, would they blow it up, or get Dr. Brian Cox to tell us what it was made of first?
This would be a debate that would really tell you something about our potential PMs. We can talk all we like, but all nature needs to do is belch up some lava, and frankly, it doesn't matter who you vote for. They're not Bill Pullman or Will Smith.
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