Richard's blog

In the dying days of Labour, everyone is out for what they can get. After all, once May 2010 comes around, there will be loads of MPs, researchers and other political low-lifes on the hunt for new jobs, as a new breed of political low-life replaces them. So let the firesale of the last vestiges of Government credibility begin. Witness: Number 10 using Twitter to advertise British Airways.

Those of you who haven't been scouring the web 2.0 multiverse may have missed this little advert-dressed-up-as-a-social-enterprise. BA is giving away 4,000 flights to encourage businesses to fly unnecessarily and sell more crap to each other while charging liquid lunches to their expense accounts. Flights that would otherwise have been replaced by, oh I don't know, a phone call maybe? BA claim this is all about kickstarting the economy, but the facts don't bare that out.

BA has low passenger occupancy rates - 73% last month, against Ryanair's 12 month average of 81% - so over a quarter of seats are empty. That means less people buying duty-free and also gives them a fair few seats they can give away, hence this opportunity for naked self-promotion. BA give away seats that would otherwise have been empty - and thus increase their potential revenue from ancillary duty-free sales - and generate loads of nice media in the process. Hell, I bet they even get to write the seats off against their taxes.

Now corporations will always try this sort of bullshit, but for Government officials to be in on the scam is... well, to be expected frankly. The door between government and hte industry has always been a revolving one, and these spineless cretins are always trying to feather their nests. Doubtless whoever dreamt up this tweet has his (or her, let's pretend that the inner workings of Government isn't entirely a sweaty cockpit) eyes on a job in the industry somewhere?

After a week in which we learnt that all the Gatwick bidders wanted a second runway we learn that none of them can even afford to buy the airport. Gatwick has turned into a 2-bed flat in Streatham, with buyers lying to get a mortgage and the owner hinting at conservatories and loft extensions.

Which presumably makes the credit rating agency, Standards and Poor's, a bit like the credit crunch in this over-stretched metaphor, shaking the property ladder and laughing as your chain collapses under the weight of its own bluster. They've refused to give any of the bidders an appropriate credit rating if they borrow more than £800 million - half of the airport's already reduced cost. Just last summer Gatwick was meant to cost £2 billion, but it's now down to £1.6 billion; today's news means it's likely to sell for even less.

BAA is clearly unhappy and trying to talk up the value; hence last week's scare stories about more runway potential. Returning to our metaphor, BAA wants buyers to think that Gatwick is a real fixer-upper, despite being poorly served by transport links and probably suffering from subsidence. An airport which can expand is worth more than one which can't, but it's worth nothing if your buyers can't afford it. S&P doesn't think much of these bids: one was described as "an aggressive financial risk profile characterised by relatively high debt leverage as demonstrated by an opening debt/RAB ratio of 54pc". I have no idea what that means, but it doesn't sound very good.

Perhaps now is a good time to remind BAA that Plane Stupid is happy to buy the airport, and that we'll close it and turn it into a newt sanctuary. Stopping all those flights is worth a fortune in carbon credits, and we'll give all the airport's staff jobs looking after our amphibian friends. BAA, if you're listening, just give us a call. Newts are cute and deserve a new home.

For the past few months Plane Stupid has been aware of efforts by the police to recruit paid informers on our movement. One of our activists, Tilly Gifford, has been recording secret meetings between herself and the police, in which they made a number of outrageous claims about the group and offered to pay her make her student debts go away.

Tilly recorded the meetings to expose how police seek to disrupt the legitimate activities of climate change activists. She met the officers twice; they said they were a detective constable and his assistant. During the taped discussions, which you can listen to on the Guardian's website [1] [2] [3] the officers:

• Indicate that she could receive tens of thousands of pounds to pay off her student loans in return for information about individuals within Plane Stupid.
• Say they will not pay money direct into her bank account because that would leave an audit trail that would leave her compromised. They said the money would be tax-free, and added: "UK plc can afford more than 20 quid."
• Accept that she is a legitimate protester, but warn her that her activity could mean she will struggle to find employment in the future and result in a criminal record.
• Claim they have hundreds of informants feeding them information from protest organisations and "big groupings" from across the political spectrum.
• Explain that spying could assist her if she was arrested. "People would sell their soul to the devil," an officer said.
• Warn her that she could be jailed alongside "hard, evil" people if she received a custodial sentence.

Read the transcripts and listen to the recordings here:  [1] [2][3].

Could this be the week when sensible comments from people with some tangental relation to power started taking over the political landscape? Nicholas Stern, writer of that infamous page-turner, the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change, has launched a savage attack on Heathrow's expansion, which, he claimed does not "make sense in the context of a coherent carbon and transport policy for the UK, and... for Europe as a whole". Take that, expansionists!

It's as though the entire world is reacting to the launch of Pet Air, coming together in a mass outpouring of sensible to counter that enterprise's stunning levels of pointlessness. Heathrow's decision, Stern said, should only have been taken once the Committee on Climate Change had had a chance to look into the detail. He also dismissed the fiscal-stimulus (a.k.a. pouring money into high-carbon industries just so the UK can be proud of it's Chinese-owned car industry) as "undermin[ing] confidence in the UK's ability to meet its climate change target." Well, duh!

This sort of sensible outpouring is not what we've come to expect from the Government and their advisors. The Department for Transport is so in bed with big carbon that we just shrug when officials turn Kew Gardens into Terminal Seven or convert the West Midlands into a motorway. Suddenly I start hearing rumours that a senior Government Minister thinks domestic aviation in this day and age is the epitome of madness! Any more sensible comments and I might have to revise my opinions and stuff.

After writing the last blog I had to hide myself in a darkened room to recover from a bought of despair brought on by wanton idiocy. There I was, knees hugged to chest, repeating "we're not all going to die because of flying pets" when a new email arrived in my inbox. Stupidity, it seems, is not widespread: councillors in Leeds have rejected plans to expand Leeds-Bradford airport because - shock horror - it would increase CO2 emissions.

The airport currently handles 3 million people, so its owners decided that it would be just perfect with another 2 million plonked on top. Unsurprisingly this would lump the local community with traffic jams, pollution and increase greenhouse gas emissions. Greenpeace reckon that the expanded airport would be emitting more than the whole of the city of Leeds.

Rejecting this expansion seems to have taken everyone by surprise, with the BBC running a piece about how it was all getting the go ahead, and much shocked whinging from the self-appointed guardians of progress: the business community. Witness prize buffoon Sandy Needham, chief executive of the Leeds Chamber of Pollution, bleating on about "cogs" and "private-public partnerships" like a lemon.

By the way, can we clear one thing up right now? The expansion is not "expected to create 3,000 jobs": modern terminals use far fewer staff per passenger than older ones (more computers and automation, you see) and low-cost airlines, like Flybe and BMI, use far fewer staff than 'flagship' carriers. The only people who actually think 3,000 jobs would be created are the pseudo-journalists who scribe for local papers (a thankless task consisting of selecting a company's press release and hitting Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V in quick succession).

It seems that for all our efforts, a small, determined percentage of society has decided that pointless things which trash the planet represent the pinacle of human achievement. It was for these people that Plane Stupid launches the Third Runway Award for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty. Last year this prestigious award was won by the inventor of Dairylee Lunchables, because they are just so gobsmackingly pointless.

This year's winners are Dan Wiesel and Alysa Binder, who have just launched an airline company for pets. I for one welcome this anti-speciesist move: for too long our pets have had to sit by, like second class citizens, while we send the climate to hell in a 747 just so that we can get places really fast. Forget stopping animal testing - all pooches really want to do is fly, and these guys are helping them achieve their doggy dreams.

The BBC puff-piece (which combines those mainstays of daytime TV: pets doing funny things, and crap inventions) is littered with more puns than even our website could stand: the pets are "pawsengers", it's "bone voyage", etc. Ha bloody ha. Of course the whole thing is made worse because the inventors look so bloody smug, like they popped to the loo and while there jotted down the cure for cancer on the bog roll without really trying.

Note to potential customers: your pets really don't want to fly. They'd rather be left at home with some kitty treats, a new scratching post and the next-door neighbour's son or daughter popping over to feed them each morning. Your next-door neighbour's kid would also prefer that, as they'll take the time to hoover up any loose change you left lying around, or pinch cigarettes from the stash your partner doesn't know about. So please: think of the children. Leave your pets at home. Or something.

Leila Deen was today cautioned for disorderly behaviour under section 5 of the Public Order Act for throwing green custard over Peter Mandelson last month. She has issued this statement in response:

"I have always been honest about throwing green slime over Mandelson to highlight the hypocrisy of this government’s attitude to climate change and the third runway at Heathrow. Despite the harmless and comic nature of my antics, the police informed me that throwing custard over an unelected government minister could be seen as a public order offence and have cautioned me accordingly."

Play Leila Deen - Custard Queen here...

"Climate change is the greatest threat we have ever faced through which millions will lose their lives and livelihoods. Thankfully the solutions are out there, but corrupt and unelected political stooges like Mandelson keep colluding with their rich friends and pushing ahead with runways nobody wants. They are trying to stop us doing what’s necessary to change our future.

"I don’t regret taking action against this government’s hypocrisy and am grateful that the country cheered me on for what I did. The movement to stop climate change is large and growing, and since our democratic system is crippled by people like Mandelson, we have no choice than to continue to use the noble tradition of direct action to effect the urgent change we need, and to call the government to account."

The first legal challenge to Heathrow's third runway has been launched: a coalition of thirteen groups, including local councils and NGOs, has brought a judicial review of the consultation process. If successful the Government would have to scrap its blatantly fraudulent consultation and start the whole process again.

Calling in the lawyers is so commonplace now that I can't help but wonder why the Government keeps getting caught by them. It was only a couple of years ago that they got stung by Greenpeace over the consultation on nuclear power, in which they were held to have prejudiced the outcome by announcing in advance that they wanted new nukes all over the country.

So how did they launch this consultation? By colluding with BAA to rig all the data, to make it look as though Heathrow could expand within strict "local environmental limits", and by announcing at every opportunity that they were "minded" to expand, but needed to ask us exactly how they should do it. I'm looking forward to hearing from DfT's legal beagles as to how being "minded" does not mean "building it whether you like it or not".

It's clear from the outcome that the Government wanted to build the third runway. The only consultation we had was on the immensely technical (and rigged) analysis of the environmental and traffic modelling - there was no question that the runway was getting the go-ahead. It was, as Swift put it more elegantly than I, not a question of whether we should be eating the baby, but rather, whether it would taste better boiled or fried.