Richard's blog

Coming to the march this Saturday? Think airport expansion is not your cup of tea? Then why not hang out with Plane Stupid and the combined force of Airport Watch and Climate Camp in the anti-aviation bloc.

The march, organised by the Campaign Against Climate Change, is designed to coincide with the international climate party in Bali. Meet 12pm in Victoria Park (near the Houses of Parliament) then stroll about to the US Embassy.

The anti-aviation bloc is easily identified by the presence of large banners extolling the problems with aviation, a series of smaller banners decrying local airport expansion, and a few people in Plane Stupid t-shirts loafing about.

Sorry to go all Daily Mail on y'all, but you really couldn't make it up. The emissions trading scheme, the Government's preferred method of reducing aviation's contribution to climate change, is likely to generate up to £4 billion in windfall profits for the industry.

A report commissioned for the DfT and Defra into the effects of the ETS, reveals how the scheme will reward airlines with too many free credits, which will then be sold on by industry. The airlines are expected to use the spectre of the trading scheme to raise their own prices, charging customers for the emissions generated by their flight - despite recieving 96-97% of their current emissions in free credits.

News reaches us that yet another BAA senior staff manager has walked the plank.

This time it's Greg Ward, operations manager for Heathrow, who left the broke and ailing company "to pursue new challenges".

I don't really blame him - I wouldn't want to work for BAA right now either...

Hell hath no fury like an airline scorned - as BMI showed this week. Yorkshire businesses beware - if more people don't start flying from Yorkshire to London, then BMI will take their toys and get the hell out of there.

The airline is angry because not enough people want to fly from Leeds to London - possibly because it's not very far, and there's a regular train service. But BMI think it's not that people don't want the service, but more that "Anti-terrorist security, environmentalist propaganda, 'green' taxation and Heathrow's failings had all hit trade".

In my years of campaigning I've come up against some tough opponents. Riot police in fields of beans behind the Camp for Climate Action; over-zealous security guards determined to keep carbon criminals operating; even angry businessmen prevented from getting to work. But nothing had prepared me for the wrath of Gwyneth Dunwoody.

Yesterday, five of us entered the Transport Select Committee inquiry into "the Future of BAA". After thirty minutes of whinging from Easyjet, BA and American Airlines that BAA weren't helping them profit from the 'cheap' flights bonanza, BAA's head honchos took the stand.

You can call the Heathrow consultation many things, but there's one phrase the Government doesn't want you to use: 'predict and provide'. But what does predict and provide mean - and is it a fair description of the industry's unprecendented expansion plans? In the first of two articles, I'll focus on how a phrase that was once transport policy gospel fell into ill repute.

For years, transport policy was based around a growth model, whereby the Department for Transport would "provide road capacity where and when it will be required". This primarily applied to traffic growth - road building - and it was widely (and erroneously) held by civil servants that the "main drivers of traffic growth [were] outside policy control"; they felt that income was the primary driver of growth - and who in the 80s was going to suggesting reducing that?

It must be hard being a fat cat now that climate change is taken seriously. Gone are the days of ignoring 'the loony left' and their 'peer-reviewed science'; in the aftermath of Kyoto and Stern, everyone - Gordon Brown included - is keen to be seen to be green.

This puts organisations like the CBI (motto: "the voice of business") in a quandary. On the one hand, they're firmly wedded to Adam Smith and his ignorance of externalities (for which read: growth at all costs), on the other they're facing considerable consumer pressure to start doing something about rising CO2 emissions.

...turn out the lights. In a shocking outburst, the CBI has declared that failing to expand Heathrow will cause total economic meltdown. Like a petulant child demanding more candy, the fat cats of London Town have declared that if they don't get a new runway to play with right now!, they'll up sticks to somewhere less concerned about the climate.

Richard Lambert, the Director General of Fat Cats Inc, has sided with the Government, arguing that "The question is will a bank like Deutsche Bank continue to expand in London or will it not? Will UBS? They are not going to move away but they will not put their prize assets here. They will go somewhere else. There are plenty of people who want to eat our lunch."