I've not seen it yet, but surely some lazy journalist can legitimately start using the phrase "The Summer of Discontent". It's only a seasonal variation on the 1978/9 winter variety.

I was only a small boy in 1979, not quite old enough to watch Star Wars (first time round), the latest film, so I didn't really get a flavour for the strike action, but I get the feeling that it was pretty disruptive. A quick glance on wikipedia tells me that around 1.5 million people went on strike.

If that's the case, we had it easy yesterday. Having said that, The Daily Mail reports that at least 750,000 people were reported to be on strike yesterday. The exact numbers aren't available, but other sites and reports suggest it was closer to 200,000.

But anyway, what has this got to do with travel? There were rumours that strikes by immigaration officers would ruin holidays and upset travel plans all over the place.

Apparently there was very little impact. I suspect that a lot of the intention was to threaten a significant impact by advising about the potential issues, but there was nothing much to report. A few queues, but lets be honest, if you want some proper travel disruption, you need to look upwards and rely on the weather. Snow is much more powerful than any union representative. Snow can close an airport in 30 minutes - and without a ballot.

So we got over that strike for the timebeing, we've (apparently) got past the British Airways strike problems, so we just need to sit back and wait for Virgin Atlantic now. It seems like their pilots have had enough. They're sick of having to break up fights between passengers, or clear up after detainees who are trying to harm themsleves; oh and they want more money too!

Jokes aside, it seems to me that there is a big risk to the travelling public at the moment. If you do want to go abroad, there are factors outside of your control that may affect your holiday. What remains to be seen is how the holiday companies and airlines will react. Will they offer holiday compensation? Will they offer to re-route people who are affected? Will they support you whilst you're in resort?

My recent experience is that people are expecting to get more for their money, because they have less of it. So if they invest in a holiday, they expect it to be good. Unfotunately, that expectation doesn't seem to have been met in many cases. Let's hope it's a temporary blip and holiday makers start getting the help and assistance they expect and deserve. Otherwise we will start to see more and more holiday claims being brought.

As an aside and back to the strike topic, I was amused to read that the Daily Mail described the strike with various headlines. One of which was the brilliantly vague: "Dozens of People have been Arrested for Various Offences". In contrast, a report on BBC radio suggested "the strikes were incredibly civil, I even saw people putting their rubbish in the bin". Perhaps we should change the national curriculum to include 'strike etiquette'?