BAA's Stansted staff paid to protest for expansion

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.

Staff, told that their jobs were under threat were the airport refused the right to expand all over middle England's heartland, were bused to the inquiry to heckle Sir Alan Haslehurst, the MP for Saffron Walden and dedicated opponent of BAA' splans for Stansted.

When questioned by The Times, BAA admitted that its claim that jobs could be lost was based on the premise that airlines would move to other airports if expansion was rejected. But all other airports in London are full or close to capacity, making this scenario practically impossible.