A recent newspaper advertisement for Ryanair has a big picture of Robert Mugabe shaking his fist, under the headline: “Here’s EasyJet’s New Head of Punctuality”. This sends out a confused message. I’m no Zimbabwe expert but I’m fairly confident that the main charge levelled against Mugabe isn’t one of unpunctuality. It’s no more meaningful an insinuation than saying that Kim Jong-il is Virgin Atlantic’s new head of catering or that Mel Gibson has been taken on by Thomas Cook to handle its IT.
And while Mugabe’s an evil man, there’s no reason to think that, had history panned out differently, he mightn’t have made quite an effective “head of punctuality” for an airline. If what people say about Mussolini and trains is to be believed, a bit of murderous megalomania doesn’t go amiss when it comes to getting transport services to pull their socks up.