Duncan Bell Is Droning On

An attempt at a pre-Xmas short break goes disastrously wrong thanks to tech.

When you spend your life immersed up to the waist in tech, it’s easy to forget that most people don’t really know all that much about it, and that includes the people running the country.

I think we all witnessed that when a drone or drones that may or may not have actually existed, caused the UK’s second biggest airport to shut for two days, just before Xmas. I certainly got to witness it, because I was meant to be flying out of Gatwick at the time.

It’s probably unfair to expect transport secretary Chris Grayling to know much about drones, because he seems like the kind of fellow who struggles just to walk and breathe simultaneously without his central nervous system collapsing. You can see the concern etched into his face every time someone tells him a trivial new fact, concerned that it may not leave room in his brain for how to speak English, or use the toilet.