Two news stories caught my attention within hours of each other yesterday. One was about a woman who had been ordered to pay the costs of an airline that was forced to divert due to her onboard behaviour.
The other was what, certainly at first glance, appeared to be celebration of a British man who got so drunk on holiday in Ibiza that he became part of a “hen do” (the female equivalent of a bachelor’s / stag / buck’s party).
The story breathlessly reported that “the 22-year-old, who claims he has no recollection of the night’s events, only became aware of his antics after being tagged in a series of photos on Facebook.”
There’s the clue to the newspaper’s interest in the story — there were some “funny” pictures on Facebook of a shirtless, much-tattooed fellow wearing a tiara and engaged in various antics with a group of young women.
Another picture shows a man slumped in a space between seats on the flight home.
Let’s get serious now. It seems to me that the media can’t have it both ways — you can’t have outrage over the increasing number of people who cause trouble on aircraft (and on ships, in hotels, venues and the streets), and then do a jolly yarn like this one.
I’m sure the aircrew weren’t amused by him breaking safety regulations, and I’d wager that neither were a lot of the people who encountered him in the lead up to the flight.
I’m not a killjoy*, but I think it’s time we stopped celebrating very bad behaviour and started teaching people — especially those who go to foreign countries — that you can let your hair down, be festive and a bit loud, without becoming a total disgrace.
And if you do behave in such a way that you can’t even remember what you did, then you perhaps should count yourself lucky if you don’t find yourself appearing in court, ordered to pay out a huge sum of money to cover an airline’s losses for diverting a plane.
I can think of quite a few places where the behaviour described in the story would land someone an extended period behind bars.
*Yes, I know that that’s what all the killjoys say.
