Myself with Dot & Barry Palmer

It’s not often you get to go to a community victory celebration, but there was one recently in Sipson Gardens    http://www.demotix.com/hub/heathrow  where the villages around Heathrow were celebrating a victory against all the odds in stopping the Heathrow expansion.  The following weekend (4th of Sept), l joined a demo http://tinyurl.com/2cxzmzm at London City Airport where a similar plight is being faced by local residents.

I have, in the past made the point that the Mayor supports the expansion on paper http://tinyurl.com/2u7hwdp. He also considered a report to that effect http://tinyurl.com/2aec9js. This is despite a public meeting on the 18th of January this year at a pseudo-PQT in Ilford when, following my insistence requesting his intervention, he stated that he was not the planning authority and did not think he could reverse the decision. When further pressed by the public audience, he eventually agreed to push for a public consultation using the phase “consider me lobbied”. Since then, l’ve raised a motion at the London Assembly (passed unanimously on the 24th of Feb 2010) asking the Mayor to review the increased flights at City Airport. http://tinyurl.com/34tpzlq. This was a timely demo given that BA have since, revealed their intention to introduce long-haul flights at city airport http://tinyurl.com/397hxz8 and also in view of the near miss over London’s sky when a private jet from city airport nearly collided with a Heathrow plane http://tinyurl.com/39dr6lv

Watch this space for the latest developments on London city airport!