It’s been a good week for ... budget air travel
In the lower echelons of the airline world, cheap and cheerful is usually as good as it gets, and that’s only after you’ve made it past the hand-luggage police.
But a woman who paid £46 for a flight to Crete got her own private jet when it turned out she was the only passenger on board.
Karon Grieve, from Dunlop in Ayrshire, described her Jet2 flight from Glasgow to the Greek island – which normally carries 189 passengers – as "surreal", after two other passengers booked on the flight failed to show up and she received VIP treatment.
Jet2 said it was "not unusual" for the final flight of the season to have fewer bookings than normal. Plenty of leg room, then.
Grieve intends to spend the next month in Crete writing a crime novel. The Strange Case Of The Missing Air Passengers?
It’s been a bad week for ... continental breakfasts
Sacre bleu! Croissants are in crisis and the French are revolting. For months, bakers, farmers and food producers have been warning about shrinking butter stocks. But last week, with French newspapers reporting the worst shortage since the Second World War, the crisis has turned political as the government seeks to reassure consumers.
Falling milk production and growing global demand for butter have resulted in a drop in supply and rising wholesale prices. Now pastry-makers and bakers can't obtain enough butter to maintain normal production levels.
Some French supermarkets – even in butter-producing areas like Brittany or Normandy – have put apologetic notes on empty fridges.
Makers of butter-rich French pastries such as croissants have warned that costs for consumers could also rise.
France’s food minister, Stéphane Travert, insists the shortage won't last because milk production will soon rise. But industry insiders warn the situation could continue into winter.
Let them eat cake made with Stork, some might say.
But Scots shouldn't be complacent. The Scottish Government recently announced urgent action to help bakers and shortbread-makers cope with the shortage and a feasibility study is being carried out to see if collective buying and storing of butter is an option.
So I’ll be slipping a few pounds into the freezer just in case. Hogmanay without shortbread is not an option.
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