Given these times of heightened security at the nation's airports, you'd expect BAA to be employing as many security as possible to get passengers through check-in and into their shopping centres - sorry, departure terminals.

Not so! Instead, the company has been giving security staff time off to stand around outside the Stansted inquiry, waving pro-expansion banners. To make matters worse, the airport company has been lying to its staff to persuade them to join in.

A recent report for the UN World Travel and Tourism Organisation - entitled Climate change and tourism - responding to global challenges, has been exploring how tourism (and aviation) is affecting CO2 levels and climate change.

Unsurprisingly, it reached a conclusion which would not look out of place on our agitprop: "While there are many options to reduce emissions [in the tourism sector], by far the greatest potential is related to air travel; reducing flight numbers and flight distances will achieve more to make tourism more sustainable than most other measures taken together."

Put's Branson's "I'll fly my jets on chip-fat" claims into perspective somewhat, doesn't it...