STONE COLD HAVEN

Air travel isn’t what it used to be. If I’m really honest, it’s probably the bane of my life (or at least it ranks somewhere out there with the things I hate most). The long stretch of flight time 39K ft up there I can probably handle by watching a movie, listening to music or working. The worst part is most definitely the insulting security and pre-boarding checks that take place in the name of guaranteeing our personal safety.

Abdulmutallab, the Arsenal hating virgin who couldn’t even do a competent job as a suicide bomber has just made things overly complicated for hundreds of thousands of air travellers around the world. It’s bad enough to go to any airport and watch passengers being prodded around like useless cattle while being told to remove shoes and go through the most humiliating security checks that are legally sanctioned. But this 23 year old punk had to go try redefine the meaning of a Christmas cracker.

The removing the shoes thing started after some freak tried to blow up a plane with a device implanted in his sneakers and failed. What are they going to do now? Ask everyone to strip and flap their underwear in front of the security guards to make sure that only remnants of pubic hair drop out?

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For most people, losing out on a job opportunity is quite a depressing affair. When you get that world famous “Unfortunately on this occasion, you were not successful…” letter, self doubt and low confidence invariably creeps in – even before insult is added to injury with the pretence of the letter’s author wishing you all the best in your job search.

Imagine then when the reason for you not getting a job is self inflicted. And it has nothing to do with your performance on the day of the interview. Well, it was only a matter of time before employers resorted to using Facebook for intelligence gathering about current or prospective employees. It’s like everything else in life, we don’t think it’ll ever happen to us and demons from our past come back to haunt us like a nonsense.

I bumped into a casual friend who was still job hunting and he was lamenting how times are tough out there. We occasionally have a drink at the local watering hole and have a good chin wag. His latest disappointment was that a prospective employer admitted to him that he had to make a tough decision on who to appoint and the young man lost out because this employer decided to look at the Facebook profiles of the last 3 candidates in question. Let’s just say, his own Facebook profile left a lot to be desired and he admitted that if he was the employer, he wouldn’t employ himself based on the shenanigans on his profile.

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Loss leading is as old as the concept of marketing itself. Whether it’s the freebies provided to promote a new lager at the local bar, or the free samples of cosmetics and fragrances dished out at beauty stores, or the good old fashioned buy one get one free – inducement to invite custom are part and parcel of our business world.

It’s unsurprising then, to find a storm brewing between groups of commercial sex workers in Copenhagen and the Mayor’s office who are determined that none of the working girls are going to have an early Christmas. What with the whole world descending on Copenhagen, it’s naive at best to assume that horizontal refreshments aren’t part and parcel of the ’entertainment package’ available to delegates at the climate and environment conference just beginning in the Danish capital. Just because it’s not on the official programme doesn’t mean that it’s not available.

So when the Copenhagen Mayor’s office issues a formal communiqué that blatantly says ”Be Sustainable, Don’t Buy Sex” and distributes it to hotels, the response from representative groups of the working girls is emphatic.

Conference delegates who show the official “Anti-prostitution postcards” being distributed at the conference and in hotels, in conjunction with their official conference delegates ID cards – are being offered free sexual services as a retaliatory measure against the move by the Mayor’s office.

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