expansion

Scottish activists to link up with Heathrow residents

By Richard on 16/02/2009
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Residents of Sipson have started a tour of Scotland to make links with local residents around its four airports. The SNP is pushing ahead with expansion at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Glasgow Prestwick and Aberdeen airport and the affected communities are being completely ignored. Now fed up campaigners have promised an epic battle to save their homes and neighbourhoods from aircraft noise, pollution and climate change.

Maggie Thorburn, 54, a former IT manager from London and a spokeswoman for HACAN ClearSkies, will be one of the residents giving talks about the Heathrow campaign and direct action. "I would never advocate violence," she says, "but I would advocate being a bit of a nuisance. Anybody can do direct action and should do it if they feel frustrated enough.”

Third runway to cure cancer and end world poverty

By Richard on 06/02/2009
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Heathrow snow

Is there anything a third runway at Heathrow wouldn't do? Not according to its promoters in the aviation industry. The recent snowfall that crippled most of our airports shut Heathrow after a plane skidded onto the icy grass. Some 18-30s club rep from the Association of British Travel Agents thought they'd whack out a press release claiming that it could all have been avoided with a third runway.

This is what scientists refer to as "complete bullshit", but it's not the first time the industry has tried to sell us the runway as the curer of the world's ills. In January last year, when a plane nearly landed on West London, industry pundits queued up to lay the blame squarely on the airport only having two runways. Rather bad taste, you might say.

Sadly this straw clutching is just a taste of things to come as the battle for Sipson gathers pace. Expect more nonsensical press releases from self-publicising organisations like ABTA whenever anything goes wrong at Heathrow between now and whenever the runway gets cancelled. Years of campaigning against airport expansion have taught me one thing: the industry will say anything to get what it wants. Expect a Daily Mail front page linking the third runway to rising house prices any day now.

Manchester airport: emissions cleared for take-off

By Robbie on 05/02/2009
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Manchester airport take off

Manchester City Council announced their 'Call to Action' on climate change last month, which plans to reduce the City's emissions by one third by 2020. "Great!" we thought: the Council owns 55% of Manchester Airport Group (MAG), so surely this call to action would see the Airport's emissions reduce as well?

Alas no: the Council simply washed their hands of this issue. Council Chair, Sir Richard Leese thinks they can't constrain the Airport and is using that old excuse that if the planes didn't fly out from Manchester then they would just fly from somewhere else. That two of MAG's directors, Brian Harrison and Lord Peter Smith are on the Council can't have influenced his decision, right?

The Council Executive are going for a green airport; this oxymoron involves letting the airport grow as big as it likes while talking a lot about it becoming carbon neutral. Unfortunately this carbon neutrality won't include emissions from planes, but will cover magic lightbulbs in the toilets. It's clear that finding credibility in Manchester's climate change plans is like attempting to nail jelly to a wall - the harder you try, the more it falls apart.

Revealed: the truth behind Tory support for South-East airport expansion

By Richard on 02/02/2009
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Snow

Last week Tory Transport supremo Theresa Villiers admitted in the third runway debate that a Conservative government would not rule out airport expansion in the South-East. This rightly confused many people: if there is no case for expanding Heathrow or Stansted, then where do the Tories want to expand? And why, if they are persuaded that climate change = bad, do they want to expand any at all?

I've been puzzling over this for several days now. If airport expansion leads to more CO2, and CO2 causes climate change, and climate change is bad news bears, then why support expansion? Then I had one of those lightbulb moments. I looked out the window and the answer lay in front of me: several feet of it, in fact. The Conservatives are supporting airport expansion because it's snowing.

Clearly all this snow could only mean that global warming was a myth; I mean, how can the world be getting warmer when for one or two days in winter we have a couple of inches of snowfall? Those crafty Tories must have checked the weather forecasts and worked it out in advance of the vote! Suddenly opposing Heathrow (where the votes are) and supporting airport expansion (because climate change is a conspiracy or whatever) makes perfect sense.

Trump's golf course fuels airport expansion

By Anonymous on 02/02/2009
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Donald Trump

Donald Trump, the American tycoon behind the theme-park golf course set to trash the beautiful Aberdeenshire coast, has been linked to plans to expand Aberdeen airport. Not content with making a mockery of the Scottish government by ignoring local decision makers (not to mention 9 of the holes being built on a Site of Special Scientific Interest) Trump has been a driving force behind aviation expansion. The destruction of the largest and most superlative dynamic dune system in North-west Europe appears to not even register when a back-hander from a rich American is in the equation.

Trump’s golf course is aimed at rich foreign tourists; he plans to keep them on site as much as possible, minimising any economic gains for the local community. Obviously wealthy tourists will be flying in, and Donald has also planned helicopter rides from the airport to the resort! Aberdeen airport has been using his golf course to justify expansion. It's plans to support almost 6 million passengers by 2030 are yet another blow to the 'groundbreaking' climate bill.

The resort has already been criticised by Architecture and Design Scotland as destroying a very sensitive area and devaluing Scottish architectural tradition with mock Victorian construction, so the extra airport capacity is just a small part of the problem. Hollyrood is trying to trick us, showing artificial financial input with one hand, whilst hiding the real cost with the other. This golf course will bring nothing but irreversible environmental degradation on a local and global level. Do they really think that we are that blind?

Suffrajets lock on as Labour scrapes to victory

By Richard on 29/01/2009
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Suffrajets at Parliament

After a bruising 6 and a half hour debate, in which we learnt that Hoon has the manners of a drunken wife beater and Villiers would quite like some airport expansion in the South-East, MPs finally got off the benches and stumbled in to vote. Despite 57 Labour rebels signing an Early Day Motion opposing the third runway just 28 of them voted against it; Labour scraped through by just 19 votes.

Outside the Commons a band of suffragettes chained themselves to the railings; inside many Labour rebels found new ways to justify supporting the runway. It was a pathetic display of abstention and issue-ducking. I have little faith in politicians at the best of times, but watching people who'd promised their constituents that they'd fight expansion either avoid voting or siding with the bullying Hoon is surely a new low.

Scottish Government's stupidity goes intergalactic

By Michael on 28/01/2009
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Space ship

The Scottish National Party has recently called for an RAF airbase in Moray to become the UK's first commercial spaceport. Put all those Star Trek fantasies out of your mind: once you take into account the impact of running a space station the eco-impacts go into orbit. Will Whitethorn, President of Virgin Intergalactic, described the total environmental cost per launch of your average NASA rocket as the same as that of New York over a weekend.

NASA launches space shuttles twice a year; Virgin wants to have 2 flights per day. Space travel is not covered in the climate change act, so the Government is just pretending the emissions don't exist. They must want to turn Scotland into a playground for international jetsetters. Flights on one of the shuttles will cost somewhere in the region of £150,000, far beyond the reach of most Scottish citizens.

Politicians are living on another planet if they think that they can cop out of our commitment to deal with climate change. Going over our carbon budget will have a devestating impact on our citizens. The problem is that they get caught up in these mad schemes for super golf courses and magic spaceports. Perhaps they are betting that when climate change kicks in they'll have a seat on one of Virgin's rockets out of here.

89% of consultation responses opposed expansion

By Graham on 16/01/2009
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Paperwork

Do you remember the Heathrow ‘consultation’? No? Well you probably live in Hammersmith, Shepherd's Bush, Chiswick, East Putney, Kensington, Holland Park or Southall and the Government didn't bother to consult you. Anyway the results are in and the winner is… the Government *.

A staggering 11% of respondents’ submissions supported building a third runway, only 1,494 of which came from British Airways. Even when you discount the retired BA workers who supported the third runway because BA said they’d cut off their pensions if they didn’t, you’re still left with over 9% in favour. Looking on the bright side, democracy has triumphed over the shrill protesting cries of an unrepresentative and extremist fringe.

* Whilst in most opinion surveys 11% would be seen as quite a poor result, and the 89% opposing would be interpreted as a majority, this is a government ‘consultation’, and so the standard statistical measures don’t apply. Due to BAA writing half of the thing, and the government collating the responses, the margin of error has been estimated at +100%. Therefore, the results clearly show that up to 111% of respondents supported the runway, which even the deepest green would have to admit is a pretty impressive majority. You can’t argue with that. Really, you can’t. I know you think you can, but you can’t. We tried already. You just can’t.

Heathrow expansion: fight back begins

By Richard on 16/01/2009
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Smash and Grab

This just in: three female climate change activists carried out a nocturnal smash-and-paint on the Department for Transport. Draped in red sashes, they hurled bricks through the windows and chucked paint over the front of the building.

A spokeswoman said: "The government has opened the flood-gates for radical action. Yesterday they sacrificed all of our futures and spat in the face of democracy. The third runway is unwanted and is a global threat. When they make democracy meaningless what other reaction could they expect?"

"We have less than ten years to turn climate change around. Women cannot just stand by and let this government treat our futures as a joke. We fight for the safety of humanity, and if the government will only listen to the smash of windows, then so be it."

Ner ner ner ner ner we've got your runway

By Richard on 15/01/2009
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Ner ner ner ner ner

Gordon Brown may be feeling like the cat that got the cream, but you and I know that his runway won't get off the ground. Like thousands of people, I've signed up to be a beneficial owner of Greenpeace's scrap of land in Sipson. They emailed me today, asking if I'do tell Gordon that he's not getting his hands on our land.

It sounded like a good idea, so I popped over to their website and fired off a missive. Why not do the same yourself? You can sign up to own the land while you're at it. If you need some inspiration, here's what I sent our glorious leader.

Dear Prime Minister,

Like thousands of other people who care more for the environment than 'saving the world', I've got my hands on a bit of your runway. And like them, I'm not going to give it back.