This is John Batcher, conversation with colleague Joseph Sternberg,

editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.

He's in London, he writes political economics.

About the anxiety in all of London now

with a new labor government with cutbacks and

higher taxes and doubts about the future and then the story of the British airways

cutting back on its food services in business and first

class. Joseph explains why this story is getting a lot of attention and what it means about. Well after Kirstarma gave

away peace of the Commonwealth Empire, Chagos Islands, called Little Britain. Here's Joseph Sternberg on the British Airways cutbacks in food.

More of this tonight.

Well, so the story here is that apparently as part of a cost cutting drive, they're scaling back on some of the meal service, especially for people in their business class and their first class.

So we're talking about a very small segment,

but a very profitable segment of their customer base,

relatively speaking here.

And somehow this has erupted in the media.

I mean, it was in the Times.

I think it's been in several other newspapers lately,

mainly because it is a national brand and something about it and combined I mean it's a travel company with the word British in the name of it and this is a country that loves to fly away on holidays all over the place

everywhere and then you they're constantly in the news for stories about bad customer service or cutbacks of this sort and I think it's because people think of it as somehow being representative of national decline.

They aren't going to give you a full lunch meal in the business class if your flight

departs before 1130 or whatever the cutoff time is. So I mean on the one hand it seems like a fruitful of story but this

thing I think people connect with it because they're already angsty about the country's prospects.

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