An excellent example of righteous whining in the letters section of today’s Independent :

Smoke’s no joke

I write from the poolside of a Turkish hotel. Here are many nationalities, mostly French, Belgians and Turks. All of them smoke constantly. Sitting here means breathing their smoke and hearing their incessant coughing. I am grateful for NHS education that stopped me smoking years ago. But it feels like sitting in the midst of a grotesque mass suicide.

Susan Hamlyn

Kusadasi, Turkey

Give me strength!

What the fuck is the silly cow still there for if she doesn’t want to breath their smoke? And, more to the point, why spend your holiday laying at the poolside writing letters to the newspaper to complain about other people going about their own business?

Anyway, there is also a letter from the Head of Communications at Ryan Air pointing out that the violin story doing the rounds last week is bollocks. He also goes up in my estimation with a wonderful putdown of one of the groups complaining about nothing (emphasis mine) :

Musicians’ feud with Ryanair

Jessica Duchen’s “Is Ryanair taking musicians for a ride?” (1 September) cannot stand uncorrected.

Ryanair applies its carry-on baggage policy fairly and evenly. If a case fits within our carry-on bag dimensions, it goes on; if it doesn’t, the passenger is required to check it in. All passengers agree to those dimensions when they make a booking.

Ms Duchen’s claim that Ryanair “ordered” this musician to pay €190 for an extra seat is untrue. This young violinist, or her father, agreed to our baggage policies at the time of booking one of Ryanair’s very low fares and were subsequently advised, in Frankfurt Hahn, that their outsized musical instrument case must be checked in, which they refused to do. These passengers then chose to purchase an extra seat for the instrument, which again was entirely their choice, not ours, but as they left this decision too late they missed the flight, simply because they refused to comply with the rules they agreed to at the time of their booking.

If a musician booking a Ryanair flight and agreeing to our carry-on bag dimensions shows up at the airport with an outsized bag, then they will be required to check it in as hold baggage. If they don’t accept that, then their alternative is to travel on another airline, or book an extra seat for their musical instrument, in which case Ryanair will happily allow the instrument case to travel on the spare seat. Ryanair does not and cannot “force” passengers to put musical instruments into the hold or place instruments in the overhead compartment since in many cases (eg guitars) they don’t fit.

We will not allow Ms Duchen or the spurious claims by the “Incorporated Society of Musicians” (which is akin to Monty Python’s People’s Front of Judea) to alter our carry-on baggage policy which is clearly communicated to all passengers.

Stephen McNamara

Head of Communications, Ryanair Head Office,

Dublin Airport

I can just imagine the family at the airport working themselves into a middleclass frenzy of righteous indignation whilst the brat pouted in that precious spoiled little shit kind of way.