Richard's blog

Just when BAA thought it was safe to return to the business of destroying communities and the climate, their new 'troubleshooter' Chairman, Sir Nigel Rudd, gets named in a BAE bribery lawsuit.

After the UK Serious Farce Office decided to drop the investigation (in return for Saudi Arabia buying lots of new Eurofighters), the American Department for Justice began investigating the dodgy dealings and bribery allegations. Now shareholders in the States have launched a multimillion dollar lawsuit against the directors of BAE, including Rudd, claiming that they have wrecked the company's reputation with "improper and/or illegal bribes, kickbacks and other payments" to the Saudi regime.

Hot on the heels of their dodgy dossier, easyJet have launched a campaign to save the planet by encouraging more of us to piss off to Barcelona for a night on the town.

According to easyJet's national advertising campaign, flying could reduce its emissions by 50% in just 10 years - but the Government and 'greedy Gordon' are conspiring to ensure this doesn't happen. Only scrapping APD will save us all from climatalogical oblivion.

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.

What is it with economists that gets them so confused about climate change? The poor fools seem convinced that they can 'cost-benefit' the planet, and just pay for any damage that they cause.

The latest example of this comes from self-proclaimed environmental airline easyJet, who've released a new report which claims that aviation pays its full environmental costs four times over.

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...

Transport Minister Ruth Kelly will be appearing in a live webchat at 10am on the 20th of September.

It's a good opportunity to ask her how the Government plans to reconcile its climate change targets with aviation expansion. Register at http://www.webchat.pm.gov.uk/index.asp?webchatID=52.

No egg throwing, now...

Regional airports might not get too much media attention, but rest assured - they're dead keen on expansion. And being out of the public eye means they often get away with the most ridiculous claims - as this latest humdinger should demonstrate.

This gibberish started with Southampton Airport and now Bristol International Airport is following suit. They're claiming that expanding regional airports means a gross reduction in CO2, because instead of driving to the nearest long-haul shopping mall, people will fly from whichever airport is closest too them.

Say what you like about the aviation industry, it's never short of a good junket. Seems like every week a new bunch of businessmen crawl out of the woodwork pleading that aviation is being unfairly demonised for pumping tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.

The latest lobbyists to be paid lots and lots of money to persuade you that flying is super are Flying Matters, who claim that "Flying is no longer a luxury reserved for a privileged elite", because 50% of people flew at least once last year.

What they decline to mention is that the Mori Poll they're quoting, entitled Climate Change and Taxing Air Travel, shows a widespread support for reducing aviation growth.