Jeremy Clark
Plane Stupid Jeremy Clark protests about air travel protestors. Email your comments to:
clarkjeremy@hotmail.co.uk
If you are of a nervous disposition, in any way in sympathy with the mental- environists, or even considering buying a Toyota Prius then I
urge you not to read on. Yes folks, it’s my annual rant against the anti-air nutters and those who believe we should live in a teepee and run our cars on tofu. Actually I last had a go in issue 24 in 2006, so it’s time! Anyway, other than the usual bunch of deluded
souls from the likes of Greenpeach etc, we now have ‘Plane Stupid’, and I cannot think of a better description for these guys than the one they have given themselves. I’m not against protests, in fact I do it to my kids to little effect all the time, but when these fools prevent air ambulances from using an airport in a possible life-saving mission whilst they play mini-golf on the runway* then clearly we are dealing with dangerous people. Unfortunately, we do ourselves no favours.
I was on a website recently looking for information on ground handling exhibitions, and Greenshoots had managed to grab advertising space on the homepage. In a red haze, I actually wrote to them and explained how just the previous evening I had spent a good 45 minutes circling over London raining cancer down upon the poor urchins of the East End whilst waiting to land at LHR largely because there is still no third runway. The answer I got from a miss Donna Hayter, supporter services, Greensleeves UK was so daft I could hardly believe it. Among the claims was that a third runway would increase flights thereby increasing emissions – completely ignoring the fact that with no circling (always at lower levels) planes are in and out much faster and can descend and climb higher avoiding built-up areas more easily. These probably well-meaning people seem to
have entirely missed the point that air travel is not going to reduce, no matter how hard it’s taxed, or how many times they try to shut the airport
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www.onboardhospitality.com
with naked folk singing around a camp fire in Terminal 5. That genie is long out of the bottle. It will simply move to countries with more sense. Already, people fly short haul to FRA, ZRH, CDG and onward to long haul destinations to avoid crippling UK taxes. But lo! The anti planeists have a plan. We
must take the train. Great idea. We must lug our suitcases out of the airport, down some steps and up to a platform. Wait in the driving sleet for a delayed 19th century invention to chug us through the countryside. To see how well this works, look at the Piccadilly Line from LHR and tell me that’s a nice way to travel. Where I Iive in the UK, there are plans to build
a Hi Speed rail link from London to Birmingham which will scour a trench right through some of England’s greenest and most pleasant countryside. I have no huge objection to that – I quite like trains, but you can imagine that the Fortesque-Smythes
at the Golf Club are having kittens. Environmentally, it’s Plane Stupid. Hundreds
of sq miles of woodland and fields will be torn apart not to mention the carbon stomp of building new stations, sidings, railway, overhead wires, signaling, locomotives, carriages etc. And where does Save The Whale think the power will come from to drive these half empty trains to somewhere no-one wants to go? Not from a windmill in Ms Hayter’s garden, that’s for sure. Far better to hop on a highly fuel efficient RJ or Turboprop, whizz 300 yards along the A4, get into the air and be 200 miles in 45 minutes. I was actually aboard a BA flight and about
to reply to dear Donna when I came upon the part of her explanation urging me to take the train instead of flying but thought “what’s the point”. The last time I looked, I could not see any timetable from Aylesbury Parkway to Nairobi. *The Guardian 15/06/2010
www.nickbremer.com
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