These bastards redefine ‘cynical’
Last time I flew Ryanair, the cabin crew were so good that I promised I’d never say anything nasty about Michael O’Leary again. Then I saw the following on the Ryanair website.
What Ryanair don’t tell you is that the so-called ‘deal’ was all about the amount of public money the former Catalan Government, facing an imminent and probably unwinnable election, was prepared to offer Ryanair to maintain services out of Girona. All it’s doing now is cutting out its loss-makers and trimming costs on the marginals, but it’s convenient to blame it on someone else. Mr Michael Cawley’s weasel words in his press release suggest that the newly elected government had signed off on the deal. That is not my understanding. For years Ryanair has been bullying regional and national governments all over Europe into paying them questionable subsidies. Now someone has stood up to them and they don’t like it. Maybe Mr Cawley and his friends should realise that theirs is not the most popular nation in Europe right now, and should see the irony in an Irish company trying to screw vast amounts of taxpayer money out of a nation which is itself in economic difficulty. Over could it be that they are playing hardball because of those difficulties? Either way, let us hope that other carriers move in to fill the spare capacity that the unloved Paddyair has created in an airport recently expanded to cope with the increased traffic that they promised. (By the way while this is happening, Ryanair are expanding services at the seriously underused Barcelona El Prat Terminal 2, where, I suspect, they can still dictate terms.)
Note: I still haven’t said anything nasty about Michael O’Leary. He’s far too good at PR to get himself associated too closely with shit like this.
Quintin Jardine's blog 
You’re too moderate in your views, QJ. You should say what you really believe.