Good morning, ladies & gentlemen! It's Paul here.

I appended some brief additional comments to Graham's report yesterday, on 4 more companies, to kill some time at Glasgow airport. The full article is here.

I had a wonderful weekend in Glasgow. Despite its reputation, I found it a smashing, and very friendly city. The occasion was an Aussie friend, who has lived & worked in London for about 10 years, applying for permanent leave to remain. I was happy to offer moral, and financial, support for a deserving friend. The only place with any Home Office appointment vacancies was Glasgow, so off we went.

Sorry if this is controversial, but the hoops that my Aussie friend was required to jump through seem ridiculous. This included numerous abortive attempts to pass a citizenship test that most of us would find difficult to pass (he's now something of an expert on Henry VIII and Mary Queen of Scots). Why are we putting such obstacles in the way of people who are a natural fit here? Whereas any old random can just wander in from Eastern Europe and seamlessly set up home here. How does that make sense? It clearly doesn't make sense.

Admittedly, my Aussie friend's ancestors must have done something untoward in the 17th or 18th century, to have ended up in a large and sunny penal colony. However, just as I don't feel any guilt for the Boer War, or any other human rights transgressions of the British Empire, his only crime now is singing to Kylie too loudly & out of tune, every weekend between the hours of 10pm and 3am. It used to alarm me, but now I find it amusing, and it gives me licence to sing to Chaka Khan in a similarly tuneless style. There are few things more effective at relieving stress, than howling to your favourite 1980/90s female vocalist, of a Friday night.

Anyway, I upgraded our group to business class, to celebrate the granting of UK permanent leave to remain to a very deserving antipodean case. A familiar refrain from the BA stewardess occurred, just as we passed over Birmingham, "I'm sorry, we've run out, you've drunk all of it!" Well, you've got to get your money's worth. Also, I was celebrating having accumulated enough tier points to move up from bronze to silver. So you have been alerted - a…

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