Gatwick

Gatwick given green light for £2.2bn second runway plan

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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/sep/21/gatwick-given-green-light-for-22bn-second-runway-plan

Gatwick says its plans will generate an additional 14,000 jobs. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

Heidi Alexander approves expansion to allow 100,000 more flights a year

Gatwick airport’s £2.2bn second runway plan has been given the go-ahead by the transport secretary, Heidi Alexander.

With the privately financed project, the West Sussex hub is aiming to increase its capacity by 100,000 flights a year.

Gatwick will move its emergency runway 12 metres north, enabling it to be used for departures of narrow-bodied planes such as Airbus A320s and Boeing 737s.

The new runway is expected to add 14,000 jobs and as much as £1bn in extra economic activity.

Alexander backed the scheme as a “no-brainer” for economic growth, a government source said on Sunday, suggesting flights could take off from the new full runway by 2029.

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https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2025/sep/22/rachel-reeves-gatwick-second-runway-growth-jobs-environmental-disaster-business-live-news

“A second runway at Gatwick is a disaster”

Environmentalist have slammed the government’s decision to approve a second Gatwick runway.

Green party leader Zack Polanski has said:

“Signing off on a second runway at Gatwick is a disaster. It ignores basic climate science and risks undermining efforts to tackle the climate crisis. Labour keeps wheeling out the same nonsense about growth, but at what cost? What this really means is more pollution, more noise for local communities, and no real economic benefit.

Expanding Gatwick is a tired, 20th-century answer to a 21st-century crisis. Labour’s obsession with ‘growth at all costs’ is driving us deeper into a climate breakdown and social inequality crisis.”

Rosie Downes, head of campaigns at Friends of the Earth, argues that the economic case for the expansion is ‘massively overstated’:

“With emissions from aviation rising as climate extremes increasingly batter the planet with more intense floods, droughts and wildfires, it’s a struggle to see how the government can conclude expansion at Gatwick is a wise move.

“The Secretary of State says a second runway is a “no-brainer” for the economy, but the economic case for airport expansion is massively overstated. Any growth in air passengers leaving the country is likely to mean more UK tourists using their spending power overseas than anything we might gain from visitors.

Continue ReadingGatwick given green light for £2.2bn second runway plan

Thoughts of the day 27 May 2025

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Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards

So BP representing the fossil fuels industry and the filthy rich has given the climate, biodiversity and all humanity an unambiguous big two fingers. They’re saying fekk you, our profits come before anything, we continue to destroy the climate and all else. Despite the UK government saying no new licences in the North Sea we don’t know where they’re at with licence decisions pending for Rosebank and Jackdaw and government support for airport expansions at Gatwick and Heathrow. If they were serious about climate there would be no hesitation in refusing all these projects. Then there’s the big orange slug that Starmer is reporting to today. The planet can’t afford any of this. Capitalist scum have already fekked the climate, it’s going to get destroyed at a far greater rate now and these absolute bstards are pulling out all the stops.

Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Continue ReadingThoughts of the day 27 May 2025

Greens warn of burning world and call for faster transition

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Image of the Green Party's Carla MP Denyer on BBC Question Time.
Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer MP on BBC Question Time.

Responding to new data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service showing that the global temperature was the highest on record for a January, Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer MP said: 

“In light of this latest scientific evidence, it would be dangerously foolish to do anything to put our burning world in even greater danger. 

“Yet that is exactly what the government is doing – determined to expand Heathrow and Gatwick airports and refusing to rule out giant new oil and gas fields at Rosebank and Jackdaw coming on stream. 

“Indeed, Equinor, one of the oil giants wanting to exploit the Rosebank field, has decided to cut promised investments in renewables in favour of increased oil and gas production.

“The government is sending totally the wrong signals to the markets. We need a government committed to speeding up the transition away from fossil fuels. The government must make it clear now that it will not allow new North Sea oil and gas drilling go ahead. 

“We must also get serious about how we make our communities more resilient to the now-unavoidable impacts of climate change. We need our homes and our communities to be fit for the future.” 

Continue ReadingGreens warn of burning world and call for faster transition

Optics over outcomes: How the Chancellor’s airport expansion plans don’t add up

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https://neweconomics.org/2025/01/optics-over-outcomes-how-the-chancellors-airport-expansion-plans-dont-add-up

By the government’s own analysis, expansion will not improve outcomes for communities across the UK

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Source: Civil Aviation Authority and ONS Travelpac

Of the 70-odd million additional passengers the proposed expansions of Heathrow, Gatwick, and Luton would put in the air at their peak, we can expect between two-thirds and three-quarters (or 45 – 50 million) to be UK residents on their way out of the country. Making air travel cheaper while the cost of domestic leisure, hospitality, and overland travel remains prohibitively high leaves many squeezed households with little choice. Between 25 – 50% of travellers report ​‘cost’ as a key factor in their decision whether to stay in the UK or travel abroad.

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From a high point in 2022, the UK’s domestic tourism industry has now seen two years of decline, contributing to the very stagnation that troubles the Chancellor. At the same time UK residents have poured overseas in record numbers, taking their hard-earned cash with them. New NEF analysis suggests trips to Mediterranean resort destinations and the Canary Islands hit a new record in 2024. Our top 20 direct routes saw passenger numbers rise from their 2019 peak of 52 million to 56 million last year.

The last line of economic defence of the proposed expansion of Heathrow is perhaps the weakest of them all. Many desire to increase Heathrow’s standing as a hub airport, this means capturing ​”international to international” passengers changing flights in the UK. As these passengers stop in the UK for a matter of a few hours at most they leave little economic value behind. They also pay no air passenger duty so the benefit to the Treasury is minimal. Their flights do, however, come under the UK’s climate responsibilities. Transfer passengers are a boon for the airports and airlines, and the predominantly foreign-domiciled entities which own them, but of little value to the rest of us.

Today’s airport decisions hint of desperation from a government seemingly more interested in optics for a select group of wealthy international investors than actual improvements in economic outcomes for communities all across the UK.

https://neweconomics.org/2025/01/optics-over-outcomes-how-the-chancellors-airport-expansion-plans-dont-add-up

Continue ReadingOptics over outcomes: How the Chancellor’s airport expansion plans don’t add up

Look at Labour’s acts of environmental vandalism and ask: did I vote for this?

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I am only able to quote small sections of this copyrighted article by George Monbiot published in the Guardian. The whole article is here.

A plane comes into land at Heathrow airport, London. Photograph: Avpics/Alamy

Our rivers, our wildlife, the air we breathe: the government is sacrificing all to the insatiable god of GDP – and mocking our objections

I can scarcely believe I’m writing this, but it’s hard to dodge the conclusion. After 14 years of environmental vandalism, it might have seemed impossible for Labour to offer anything but improvement. But on green issues, this government is worse than the Tories.

The last prime minister to insist that growth should override every other consideration, and to fling insults at anyone who disagreed, was Liz Truss. She called those of us seeking to defend the living world an “anti-growth coalition”, “voices of decline” and “enemies of enterprise” who “don’t understand aspiration”.

Now Keir Starmer has picked up her theme and run with it. Those who challenge government policies that might promote GDP growth, however destructive and irrational, such as the planned expansion of Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and Doncaster Sheffield airports, are “time-wasting nimbys”, “zealots” and “blockers”, engaged in “self-righteous virtue-signalling”.

After all, these are the kind of people who might send “congratulations to the climate campaigners” whose legal challenge stopped plans to build a third Heathrow runway at the court of appeal. Or who insist that Heathrow expansion should be blocked because “there is no more important challenge than the climate emergency”. Oh, hang on, that was Starmer, writing in 2020. You know, the one you voted for, not the new model, channelling the worst Tory prime minister of modern times.

Now his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, insists that growth “trumps other things”, including the government’s environmental commitments. The verb is unfortunate. The government’s new rhetoric is horribly reminiscent of the convicted felon: monomania, slogans and insults take the place of nuanced and complex policy.

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I am only able to quote small sections of this copyrighted article by George Monbiot published in the Guardian. The whole article is here.

Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Continue ReadingLook at Labour’s acts of environmental vandalism and ask: did I vote for this?