Heathrow consultation is sham says Greenpeace

Environmental campaign group Greenpeace has made its feelings clear about plans to build a new runway and terminal at Heathrow.

Greenpeace volunteers wearing t-shirts with the slogan ‘This consultation is fixed – ask me how’ attended the final Heathrow consultation exhibition at the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre in London.

They handed out spoof ‘Airfixed’ model boxes containing a ‘Consultation Collusion Kit’ with instructions on how to assemble models of Gordon Brown and BAA chief executive Stephen Nelson.

The kit instructions read: ‘Carefully remove all references to climate change; make sure the interests of BAA and BA are placed in position first; attack misleading guarantees on noise and air pollution; cut out public opinion from consultation and discard; fly your planes to climate disaster’.

Greenpeace believes the Heathrow consultation document is heavily biased and difficult to read. The consultation period ends on 27 February, but many residents living close to Heathrow have apparently still not received details about the plans for a third runway.

“The government has been extremely vocal in its support for further development at Heathrow,” says jossc in a blog posted on the Greenpeace website. “Last November Gordon Brown told the CBI that he was determined to ‘press ahead with a third runway’. And Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly said in a speech to the Aviation Operators Association in the same month that she wasn’t ‘prepared to accept’ a situation which didn’t include expanding Heathrow,” jossc writes.

The blogger believes there’s ‘a big flaw’ in the government’s logic. “Most of the new traffic made possible by the third runway will be short haul tourist flights taking British holidaymakers to the sun or on a city break: the UK already has an annual tourism deficit of £17 billion,” writes jossc.

Written by: Nick Purdom

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