Dear Reader

LIFE is full of dichotomies, some more obvious than others. Compare, for example, the precision and planning of Thursday’s Trooping the Colour, followed by yesterday’s dignified service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral, with the chaotic, shaming scenes at Gatwick and Manchester airports.

Images of those upright military men and women, and orderly, smiling crowds down The Mall and near the cathedral will have flashed across the world in a startling juxtaposition to footage of distraught and irate passengers going nowhere.

Her Majesty’s hope that this weekend will ‘create happy memories’ might have fallen on deaf ears for those waiting two years for a family holiday in the likes of Greece (Crete pictured), only to have it cancelled.

It’s all very well for Transport Secretary Grant Shapps to lay the blame on airlines. The stopstart traffic-light system and shambolic rules on expensive testing before re-entering the UK also played their part in contributing to where we are now.

Indeed, it has been an unedifying week of ‘not me, guv’, as the

Government squares up to the

airlines. No one comes out of this with much credit, although Jet2 and Ryanair have cancelled far fewer flights than the likes of British Airways, easyJet and Tui.

Perhaps that’s why I feel some sympathy for Ryanair’s boss Michael O’Leary, who suggests the Army should be sent in to UK airports struggling to cope.

But back to dichotomies. Bernadette Kelly, the country’s most senior transport civil servant — who has overseen a series of delays to HS2 — has been made a dame in the Queen’s Birthday Honours. Perhaps not the best timing, but, then, some of us are still scratching our heads and wondering how on earth Gavin Williamson, the hapless former Education Secretary, shuffled off to the back benches with a knighthood.

We can only hope that the coming weeks bring some respite for holidaymakers. Demand is still there. Delivery is what’s needed. Mark Palmer TRAVEL EDITOR