Pointing the finger

When in doubt blame the government, is the mantra by which many people live their lives. So naturally, the fact that there was a week of no flights to or from British airports has to be their fault? I commented the other day that I couldn't see why planes flying away from the affected area should be grounded, but in general I don't think the government had any choice but to impose the ban they did. After all, this isn't like a car which if it breaks down, you pull into the side of the road and call the AA - if a plane's engines fail, it falls out of the sky, simple as that, and almost certainly all on board die. The government had to act on the best advice they could get. Where I think they can be criticised is their apparent failure to realise the knock-on consequences of the ban, and to have any strategies in place to deal with them. It may be there were things going on behind the scenes that I wot not of, but the impression I got was that they were playing it day by day, crossing their fingers and hoping it would sort itself out. When they did finally get round to doing something, it was too little too late and they still didn't seem to have any cohesive plan - it had all the hallmarks of something worked out on the back of a fag packet after a few beers. So the ban wasn't their fault, but the chaos that followed most certainly in part, was.