Ash days

Cancelled: crucial talks in Greece on how to bail out its crashing economy. On a bus: FC Barcelona,struggling to northern Italy for the Champions League. Ignored: the state funeral for Polands president,left without big-name international attendees. Losing millions every day: airlines; Kenyan flower growers; Israeli tech companies. Bereft: the UKs Labour Party,whose intense election campaign continues without former PM Tony Blair,still stuck in the Middle East. And,of course,millions of travellers are stranded away from home. (Britannia may be uncomfortable with the skies,but it clearly still rules the waves: Gordon Brown announced plans to send an aircraft carrier for some stranded Britons.)

The cumulative effect of the disruption caused by the giant ash plume over western Europe that follows the eruption that made of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull a household name might well,even,set back European recovery efforts. A lot of the concern is,say travel experts,overblown,another symptom of European paranoia about any perturbations of their precisely-ordered world,another product of the nanny state.

Many airlines carried out test flights that faced no trouble whatsoever. The director-general,of the International Air Transport Association,called it a European embarrassment that Europeans are still using a system thats based on a theoretical model,instead of taking a decision based on facts and risk assessment. Perhaps the only happy person in Europe? German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Returning from North America,she flew as far as Lisbon,and then decided to make her way back to Germany through Spain,Italy and Switzerland,in gentle stages,surviving a flat tyre in the Alps on the way. Observers say she appears rested and relaxed.