The disruption of air traffic triggered by the Eyjafjallajoekull volcanic ash cloud reveals not just how big Europe is but also its social and economic weaknesses, argues columnist Hamish McRae

How fragile our modern society has become. One natural event, albeit a most unusual one, has not just disrupted European life by shutting down most of its air transport. It has in effect shut off Europe from the world. As a result there is the inevitable churn of news, speculation and comment about the immediate events. What on earth is happening? Have we done as well as we should, and if not, why not? What are the practical ways in which we can plod back to some sort of normality?

But there should be something more. These events should make us ponder about the very nature of how we have organised the way we live now. Europe will eventually be back in business but it will not, I feel, be business as usual. Or at least it ought not to be, for once the airlines have struggled back to their usual service we should try and learn how to run the rest of our economy, and indeed our society, more wisely.

The central huge lesson of the past few days is clear. It is that if you want to move people around long distances it has to be by air. Sure, the sea lanes are still open and the giant container ships continue to bring in goods and raw materials, and take away our exports. It is possible, though laborious, to get around Europe by land and ferry, though the latter are under great pressure. But Europe is huge, as I have been discovering right now.

This column is being written at the home of some friends in Helsinki because the most promising way of getting back from a conference in Tallinn on Friday seemed to be to take a ferry over the Gulf of Finland and set off back to Britain from here. The plan is, if things don't clear today, to take an overnight ferry to Stockholm, drive a rented car down through Sweden, Denmark and Germany and get on to the Harwich ferry in Holland. So it should be perfectly possible get from near the Russian border to London by land and sea, even given the present pressures and even without the services of the Royal Navy. It is just going to take a while. Read full article in The Independent...