Thursday 17th May 2007. Finally in New York City...

Here I go with my diatribe...The Americans notion of service is a joke. From the country that claims to have invented good customer service they really don't know the first thing about what customer relations mean.

Let's begin at the beginning...When I get to Miami International Airport, Continental Airlines are insistent that check-in is via machine. Only when the machine refuses to read my passport or booking does a person finally agree to check me in. The ladies behind the counter are more concerned with their job descriptions and working to rule than they are with serving customers.

In the United States they now have this idiotic public show of re-screening bags that are locked. The idea, I presume is to make us all feel safer in the air, and not to intrude on the individuals personal liberty under the guise of security?

When I flew from Los Angeles a few weeks ago I took my bags for re-screening by the TSA (Transport Security Administration).

I asked about this in Miami and I am told that my bags are OK to travel. Well when I get to LA (where I have to collect my bags because Continental refuse to check them through to New York City because the last leg is an American Airlines flight) I discover that the TSA has burst open the locks on my new bag and wrapped the bag in cling film...What gives them the right?

If they had wanted to search my bags again then they could have paged me at the airport.

So I trundle off still with a painful shoulder, hand and neck over two terminals to check-in for my NYC flight. Again American Airlines are requiring check-in by machine and again it does not work and I am eventually served by a very arrogant woman who effectively tells me I am an idiot. She condescends to tell me that I will not understand the difference between a ticket and a reservation...and here is the saga.

When I arrived in the USA I contacted Qantas to confirm the next leg of my journey and I was told two things. One, that I must fly back from Miami to Los Angeles to validate the next portion of my round-the-world ticket and two, that I needed to contact American Airlines to book the cross USA section.

I did this and American Airlines gave me a flight reservation which I reconfirmed. Now the agent can see the reservation but she insists I must travel to yet another terminal to see the Qantas agents for them to release the ticket. So carrying all my luggage, in my neck brace I head over to Qantas to get them to release the ticket; even though the ticket is in the system.

Qantas tell me I have a ticket and send me back to the American Airlines terminal telling me that American must let me board. Back again at American Airlines and again they refuse to let me board my flight unless I want to buy a one-way first class seat for $5000. I refuse and point out that I have gone fully through the system and that the problem is with them.

At last it is all over and I am off to security to get to my gate...Lucky I had a five hour lay-over as it has taken three and a half hours just to argue my way into my own seat.

...but then. I am selected for the full pat-down (which is fine in this security conscious age) but my two carry on bags are also selected for full screening. What I object to is the way in which this is carried out. Everything is dumped out without thought or consideration and all my little notes fly across the floor. When the girl finishes she simply walks off leaving the mess for me to clear up saying "have a good one now".

These people are still public servants answerable I would hope to the taxpayer and yet they act in an arrogant and superior manner that reflects their social and cultural ignorance.

It was all I could do not to land one on the TSA pat-down guy who thought he was a comedian by mimicking my accent for the amusement of his friends. If we did not live in such an age of over sensitive security I would have complained, but there seemed no point creating a drama and I don't want to miss this flight as it is one step closer to blighty.

In all my years of coming to America the last few have really limited my view of the country. I was at one time the most pro-American educator you could meet, but as time has gone on I have become more and more aware of the arrogance and ignorance that causes the hatred for this great country exhibited by the rest of the world. For the first time ever I am of the view that it would not bother me if I never returned here.

The final sting in the saga comes when I get to the gate and they tell me they have no seat for me although I do get onboard and make the journey eventually.

You have to accept that these people are only implementing the rules when all is said and done, yet it annoys me that we cannot question 'why'. Questioning is not the accepted practice. The agents are here to implement the rules even if they do not understand them and please do not ask them to interpret what the rules actually mean, we all must simply follow like helpless sheep.

I do enjoy the fact that on this 5hr+ flight you can watch the "free" movie if you buy a headsset and you can have water if you buy a bottle and you can eat if you buy a snack...so this is service? It is embarassing that the countries flag-carrier offers such poor service in the world's leading nation.

Not even a peanut, just a very small coke as my comlimentary drink and I ponder just what this full service carrier is actually offering. It makes you wonder why they need all these inflight staff? For an airline that claims to pride itself on customer service, you cannot talk to a service representative but you can talk to the airline through the anonymity of their website.

The talk around me on this flight is of jobs and position and salaries. This is a hideously obsessed nation when it comes to money and the garbage I have just heard spoken in the name of commerce is astoundingly, though sadly not, unbelievable.

To crown this journey when I get my luggage at JFK Airport the indestructible coffin has also been burst open...only in America!

Travel may broaden the mind but it also can break the soul. It makes you aware that we do not live in one world but infact in a world horribly divided between the "have's" and the "have not's" and that within these groupings dangerous cracks appear.

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Well after all the saga, I am finally at Shannon and Charlie's with my now destroyed luggage and not being positively disposed towards the United States.

I am off this morning to a UNICEF briefing at the United Nations building. The speaker is a UN official who has managed UNICEF activities in a variety of arenas around the world and who I am to discover is politically a member of the Christian right.

She came to her present role through the World Council of Churches. This raises for me the question, should people in such high positions within UNICEF be religiously biased or does this indeed equip them better i.e. spiritually, to deal with the rights of children?

In the modern world, as throughout the ages, the people most likely to be disenfranchised are children. Indeed, today in many developing countries, such as those in the Aids ridden continent of Africa, we often find half the population under the age of fifteen years.

The United Nations was founded on the principal of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and whilst UN development agencies are apolitical, this does not necessarily mean that the wider world does not percieve western dominance in these agencies.

A question that I have often Headquarpondered is why is such an economic money spinner as the International ters of the United Nations located here in the First World; indeed in the world's wealthiest nation? Should such an economic giant not be located in a developing nation? Would this not help bring prosperity and stability to a countrty in sub-Saharan Africa? But then again, do they have the necessary social, cultural and diplomatic as well as practical infrastructure needed? If such infrastructure does not exist, should we not lead by example?

The needs of the populous differ with age i.e.health issues for children differ greatly from those of adults.

UNICEF works with social workers, educators and health professionals in offering support. However when I heard of their key role in teacher training and counselling the image was one of your standard politically correct group talking about issues but doing nothing practical.

That said UNICEF as an organisation works at governmental level through creating protocol's such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which only two countries have refused to sign. One of these is Somalia (which has not had an effective government for the last fifteen years) and the other is the United States of America.

UNICEF is constrained by working through the United Nations notion that we have to work through governments if we wish to bring massive change, and it is true that you do need the legislative to work in harmony with the grassroots. However we must note that governemnts making decisions in the United Nations on their own will not stop phenomena on the ground.

And this is not to say that UNICEF does not do a great deal of work in vaccines funding and training of health workers in particular as grassroots activities. UNICEF also tries to get to the grassroots by working with non-governmental organisations.

UNICEF has been a pioneer in collecting data for advocacy work , but how productive is this? It has a strategic planning role, but people want fed today.

It is the people at the margins who need intervention the most and many of the most marginalised people don't want to be brought in.

It was interesting that at one point the speaker got her UN and her US policy mixed up. A freudian slip maybe, but when she talked of ending the powers of tribal chiefs and educating them in the ways of democracy there appeared to be a 'Bush agenda' going on. Are we certain that creating democracy along US lines brings civilisation, or does it kill a civilisation in the name of progress?

We have to remember in politics as in any struggle, that people get stuck with a label and a lack of hope and they end up on a downward spiral. They see that there is so much involved in seeing someway out that they don't even bother...What international organisations must do is offer some hope!

After a heavy political morning we head over to Houstons on 54th and 3rd to have lunch before our meeting at the education department of the Central Park Conservancy.