Plane speaking
There’s a protest on the roof of Parliament about the proposed third runway at Heathrow airport. Benedict Brogan, political editor of the Daily Mail, isn’t happy. He picked up one of the paper aeroplanes the protesters were throwing to find…
…it’s a photocopy of an email from someone at BA to a Dept of Transport official about something complicated that I can’t be bothered to read…
…thus neatly summing up the problem with most modern journalists: things are complicated and they can’t be bothered. Any government minister wanting to sneak something dodgy past the Daily Mail now knows what to do: get folding.
Posted on February 27th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
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Filed under Culture, media and sport, UK politics |
Diana Appleyard sure would’ve picked it up if it had been written in Polish.
I know a guy who’s a journalist on the Vile. Or rather, we’ve met - I actually know his sister. She’s a teacher. So it’s kind of her social function to undo the damage done by her brother.
Plane Stupid explained that their action - like the Greenpeace folks sat on a Boeing 777 at Heathrow - is timed with the government’s consultation on Heathrow expansion.
The thing that our man at the Mail couldn’t be bothered to read are “documents – obtained under the Freedom of Information Act - [which] prove that airport operator BAA wrote parts of the consultation document and that the government has already decided to build a 3rd runway and 6th terminal at the world’s biggest international airport.”
Heathrow’s planes are already responsible for more emissions than most countries. The government talks of a 60% emission cut by 2050, yet its plans to expand airports mean that aviation alone will account for more than the entire target.
Something’s gotta give.
Right at the end of Andrew Gilligan’s Dispatches documentary about Heathrow last night, there was a tantalising mention of a letter from the Civil Aviation Authority which apparently points out that, if the Government’s figures on future demand were to turn out to be even vaguely accurate, it would be impossible to manage the airspace above the airport anyway.
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