Andrew Woodrow on why westbound daylight flights from the Far East are good for business (or any other) travellers.

Scene: The long-haul daylight Singapore Airlines Boeing 777, Economy class 13:55 flight out of Singapore, bound for Copenhagen via Frankfurt. 12 glorious hours in a window seat watching the world go by. 

Admittedly 40K is not quite 1K but it will do .Singapore Airlines has 3-3-3 seating on the 777 and there’s a reasonable amount of room.

North over Malaysia, reading ‘The Glass Palace,’ having finished ‘The Sheltering Desert’ on the previous flight from Labuan, via Kota Kinabalu and KL to Singapore. A glimpse of the drilling rig ‘Transocean Richardson,’ anchored off Port Dickson, to where we had towed it 2 years ago from Angola. It hasn’t moved since. Further north, another gap in the cloud reveals a handful of the Andaman islands – a view lost on most of my fellow passengers; mine is one of the few window blinds still open.

A good Thai curry is served for lunch and afterwards, crossing the Bay of Bengal, I switch from reading about Burma to watching about India; given the location, ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ is an obvious choice. I keep the blind open to see the bar-straight Indian coast. Central India is green, plenty of rice paddies, sporadic towns, and with the smooth curves of railway lines crossing the more jagged paths of roads. We are well south of the Himalayas today and as the film ends we are over the drier north west. It’s irrigated valleys with towns on rough hills. Over the desert to the Pakistan border and the irrigated valley of the Indus, listening to Vivaldi and Beethoven as we make a turn north to overfly Afghanistan instead of Iran, while all along a steady stream of drinks, ice cream, fruit, sandwiches and rolls is brought past by Singapore girls.

The crumpled mountains of the North-West Frontier – rifted and folded. Straight lines of stratified rock tumble over valleys, getting more and more wrinkled as we cross into Afghanistan. Deep valleys, with barren, rocky steep mountains. It makes me want to get out and walk it – wild and inaccessible; quite how anyone thinks it is governable is beyond me. Occasionally a broad, water-carved valley breaks the narrow, straight rifted ones. Small villages surrounded by strange-looking holes – what are they? Wells? Who knows…the ruggedness does not stop until we cross into Turkmenistan near a desert confluence of two rivers. More desert and the cotton-irrigation schemes that date back to Soviet times and that have emptied the Aral Sea. A huge, dry area criss-crossed by canals; it looks as though partly at least it is still in operation. Approaching Ashkabad, the sky turns to wispy cloud and I go back to the book until we get close to the Caspian, with hazy views down to the last of the desert and mountains, crossing the coast near the Turkmen / Kazak border heading straight for Baku. Baku looks quite nice if you don’t mind a view of oil platforms from the beach, though I missed spotting the crumbling remains of the Soviet-era offshore city further out to sea.

We keep south of the Caucasus ridge and the Russian border; the green mountains here are essentially a continuation of the dusty ones east of the sea, and it doesn’t take too much imagination to link them onto the Carpathians further west, and the Alps. Past Tblisi and the sun was still up on the higher peaks – which one was Mount Elbrus? Each one looked higher and more Elbrus-like than the last, though I think it was one of those closer to the Black Sea end of the ridge. Every now and then vast alluvial fans spread out from steep valleys cutting into the ridge, with a proliferation of farming around the edges. High above them winding roads lead up the mountains, and high dams keep black lakes in check. We cross the eastern edge of the Black Sea at 5pm Copenhagen time, appropriately time for another round of tea and cakes, with the north coast visible on the horizon, arcing back towards us as we just clip the southern tip of the Crimea. The charge of the Light Brigade and all that; Sevastopol is just visible through the haze, which has re-appeared.

The sun is going down, but as we’re heading west it’s a slow sunset. The little bits that stick up along the wing are bright white, catching the sun, then turn grey near the coast. Romania, and a bit further away Moldova and the peculiar republic of Trans-Dnestra: the lights are coming on down below. Glimpses of the Danube in the fading light, Bucharest, the Carpathian Arc. Now it’s dark over Europe and cities show up as hubs of light in a spider’s web of roads; Budapest, Vienna. Bits of the route I backpacked in 2000.  A final round of drinks and a bite to eat before descending over Germany to Frankfurt. 

It’s 9pm. The short connection to Copenhagen will have me home by midnight and in the morning the little one will jump onto my bed with a little squeal and a laugh, ready for the weekend. On the alternative overnight redeye flight I would still be several hours away. It just isn't an option.

Where to go for your news?

Many serious news followers have for a long time watched the BBC's news services with some concern.

BBC World Service is listened to and trusted by millions around the globe.It has been accepted as the yardstick for objectivity and truth and generally good coverage. On television BBC 24 inherited much of this image and many around the world, particularly in less developed areas with poor news services of their own trust it implicitly.

One of those places is Kenya. However during the run up to the recent elections there were many comments that the BBC's people spent much of their energy looking for the dark side and the when they couldn't find much of that moving instead to dwelling , speculating and projecting from the previous election four years earlier when the aftermath did go go spectacularly wrong. Good news seems of little interest to the BBC teams. The same has been observed on numerous other occasions around the world over a number of years, both at home and abroad. Calm objectivity has often been cast aside in the interest of a more racy story, especially if established orders are under pressure. Right of centre politics also seem to give many of its commentators a kind of indigestion which makes it difficult to achieve a truly level playing field for all shades and angles of opinion. It is an arrogant institutional thing and seemingly all pervasive.

Today Twiga has read two online reports of unrest in Bahrein in protest at the F1 race there tomorrow. BBC has been reporting "tens of thousands" on the streets. Al Jazeera has been saying "around ten thousand". There are huge differences between the implicatations of these numbers. Getting them right is vital to objectivity and objectivity is essential for trust, the rock upon which the world believed BBC news was firmly and irrevocably anchored. If trust diminishes the corporation has little to offer and it should reasonably expect the wrath and rejection by those faith in it had been total.

Whichever figures are right on this occasion, those who rely on accurate and informative worldwide news are increasingly concerned at the diminishing quality, breadth and reliability of BBC reporting. It looks as if, apart from being financially "thrifted" it is simply being dumbed and slimmed down while hiding behind the facade of its old hard earned image to keep its audiences. In the end this won't work. People are not stupid. Once the trust has gone it will be very difficult and take years to rebuild. For broader global coverage ,greater breadth, depth, better analysis, many are turning to Al Jazeera, something they never expected to do when it was launched only  seventeen years ago in 1996. Nobody would then have believed that the Qatar based organisation would elbow the BBC services aside. All the indications are that it is now doing just that.

UK Business Secretary Vince Cable says it right,- and then retracts.

In one of those mixups of understandings and misunderstandings, dear old Vince Cable , being questioned at the Institute of Directors, unintentionally got it right and then intentionally got it wrong.

Reasonably asked by the Institute's Director-General, Simon Walker, whether he thought that it was mad that the members of One Direction ,-  who unknown to Cable are a boy band,- received ( we find it difficult to use the word "earned" here) five million a year a piece, Cable  thinking that One Direction must be some kind of company of which the extravagantly paid persons Directors, piled right in , agreeing wholeheartedly and labeling the amounts as immoral.

At last a man who is prepared to stand up and say that while the nation is going on about bankers, super rich businessmen including the creators of wealth and jobs being immorally overpaid etc etc, it should add to the list pop stars, footballers, "reality" show winners, professional celebs, lottery winners and allied industries. A cheer must have gone up around the room,- and anywhere else that he was heard.

And then came the fall. Someone tipped dear Vince off that One Direction isn't in fact job and wealth creating monster but something altogether different and far more worthy. It's a band. Instead of sticking to his guns and saying,- "and yes , popstars , footballers and all the rest too", he back peddled. Fast. "Oh, sorry, a band , that's quite OK then" was the gist of how he finished.

For a weak kneed missed opportunity this takes some beating. Sadly he may not even understand that.