What's worse than an airport? An airport which is being turned into gentrified flats for yuppie arseholes who work in the city but want a little bolt-hole to nip to at the weekend. Loft apartment, great view of the commercial district... yah yah yah excuse me while I pluck my own eyes out with a copy of the Foxton's Gazette.
So rest assured that when German anarchists heard about plans to do just that to an old airport of theirs, they started organising. And on the 20th of June, they're taking the airport back. With, if their film is to be believed, the armies of Mordor by their side and a full death metal soundtrack.
Take that yuppie scum. Next stop, the Dalston tube.
Ever wondered why so many people feel compelled to fly? Rail fares in the UK are the highest in Europe, whereas flying gets a £10 billion subsidy because there's no fuel duty and no VAT on tickets or planes. Sure, you can get a cheap ticket if you book ahead, but it's a nonsense that it's often cheaper to fly than to hop aboard a choo-choo.
Despite what the industry tells you, it's often faster, easier and certainly greener to go by rail than to fly. There's no check-in, no probing searches by bored security guards and no one tries to sell you crappy perfume and a pen with the airline's logo on. But we're indundated with adverts pushing 'cheap' flights and all that jazz on us day after day, so we forget the horrors of air travel and plop over to the Ryanair website to indulge ourselves (because we're worth it).
But where rail is given a fair playing field it can more than compete. Virgin runs the London-Manchester rail link, and has aggressively marketted its trips to the same audience as currently flies. It's paid off: they now have 77% of the market share, with passenger figures up 12% in the last year. This is, I should point out, despite 60% of their trains running late, and their walk on tickets being astronomically expensive.
So stop advertising aviation (and end that ludicrous subsidy) and give those poor trains a fighting chance. Don't delay, deface an airline advert today!
BAA security staff have been ramming the Stansted protesters with a snowplough.
Protester Richard Claxton, who was d-locked to the fencing at the time, said, "I was terrified: you don't expect to be attacked with a snowplough on a peaceful protest."
Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo. In my other life I am an animator, and just graduated from the Royal College of Art. This is my graduation film explaining the concept of the tipping point in the climate system; this is the point of no return, after which truly catastrophic change becomes inevitable.
It takes a lot of things for Plane Stupid to be able to do what we do, one of these is funding. If you too believe in stopping aviation expansion please make a donation ...
