I’ve been watching this whole Iceland volcano story with interest, indeed as a resident of the UK, I could be said to have very little choice in the matter!
I’ve noticed in the coverage that, aside from the airlines, there have been other people and companies hit by this. People are low on medicines they need to control medical conditions, among many other stories. This could have been avoided.
I am coming to think that our reliance on just in time methods has been shown to be an achilles heel, as has our reliance on imports and air freight. I’ve talked about balance before, and I believe that what we are seeing here is that our situation is unbalanced, a wheel out of kilter. I’m an advocate of local goods, and when the business is being poached by artificially lowering currencies, I also consider that the appropriate level of protectionism is a reasonable response.
If I take a lesson from this it is the importance of diversifying, making better use of local sources and building in redundancy. We need to stimulate local jobs and protect local economies and communities, we also need to develop high speed rail as a matter of some urgency.
I also wonder at the unbalanced media coverage. The BBC, and a lot of the UK media, seemed to miss the stories of the Finnish F18s and the NATO f16s that suffered damage in this cloud, most of the interest in the news websites seem to come from the commenters, not the journalists!
Just imagine how bad things could (will?) be when the economic system collapses in the US, UK or the whole world. Each of us relies on so many goods and services from beyond our locales. We’ll be like lost children whining for mum and dad.