The game was certainly entertaining (everything the Telegraph says about attention deficit disorder is true), even though I know little about basketball. It gave me a chance to try out my (new to me) telephoto lens. I was a little disappointed with the results once I pulled them off the camera – I had trouble sucking in enough light whilst getting stable shots – but I still ended up with one or two reasonable ones, although mostly not of the game itself.

Nevertheless, as my job now takes me onto an aeroplane more than I before, I’m curious and so I read the summary from the Competition Commission’s provisional report. I’m not sure I’m any the wiser, but there were some interesting facts and statistics embedded within:

• Gatwick’s proportion of business travellers is a mere 18%, far lower than I would imagine (I know it’s not strong on the transfer front, but normally appears to have many terminating flights to useful places, from what I’ve seen). By comparison, Heathrow’s is 40%.
• From the set of BAA-owned airports, only Heathrow and Aberdeen have above 20% of transferring passengers, with 34% and 21% respectively. Heathrow’s reputation as a hub is clearly deserved.
• BAA’s airports account for 60% of UK air passengers, but 90% in south-east England, and 84% in Scotland. Maybe there could be a local monopoly at work here, at least?

It’s interesting that the Competition Commission makes lots of slights about poor service, lack of responsiveness to the market, high prices, and so on. This seems a bit unfair. I’ve often wondered how one can gauge the degree of monopoly exploitation fairly, partly there’s rarely an accurate enough free-market alternative implementation to compare it to. The theory does dictate that a monopoly might happen, given some of the stats above, but saying that there is one is a much bigger stretch. This does make me think that perhaps a bit more laissez-faire might go a long way in keeping things market fair – although, as I think they hint at, a bit less regulation would help even things out too.

But what’s going on here? And why are TfL incapable of communicating with me when it does?

They should clearly be banned.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I ventured a bit further up to Notting Hill this evening and found the Black and Blue. A basic but incredibly juicy steak definitely made my evening. Much better than yet another so-so Indian meal (the Bombay Bicycle Club is definitely over-rated). It’s re-affirmed my faith in moderately-budgeted expense accounts.