Giant Elephant attacks Manchester Council meeting

……well sort of. New coun­cil­lors were remind­ed yes­ter­day that Man­ches­ter Air­port is still the ‘ele­phant in the room’ when it comes to the local Cli­mate Change Action Plan – since the Coun­cil have refused to include the flight emis­sions from the Air­port in their car­bon reduc­tion tar­gets.

……well sort of. New coun­cil­lors were remind­ed yes­ter­day that Man­ches­ter Air­port is still the ‘ele­phant in the room’ when it comes to the local Cli­mate Change Action Plan – since the Coun­cil have refused to include the flight emis­sions from the Air­port in their car­bon reduc­tion tar­gets. The 9ft inflat­able ele­phant high­light­ed that the Coun­cil’s much-laud­ed plans are total­ly under­mined by the omis­sion of the Air­port– espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that Man­ches­ter City Coun­cil own 55% of Man­ches­ter Air­ports Group.

As Coun­cil­lors met alto­geth­er for the first time since the elec­tion, a trail­er bike soundsys­tem played a set of air­craft nois­es as a reminder of what life under the flight path can be like for com­mu­ni­ties in Stock­port and Knutsford.
Air­craft Noise — audio/x‑ms-wma 4.4M

In Novem­ber 2009, Man­ches­ter City Coun­cil released ‘Man­ches­ter: a Cer­tain Future’ which laid out plans to reduce the city’s CO2 emis­sions by 41% by 2020. These cal­cu­la­tions did not include the full impact of the air­port. The next day the Coun­cil Plan­ning Com­mit­tee approved pro­pos­als to bull­doze res­i­dents homes at Hasty Lane, to expand the World Freight Cen­tre at Man­ches­ter Air­port. [1]

A report by the Com­mit­tee on Cli­mate Change (Decem­ber 2009) has pre­dict­ed that Man­ches­ter Air­port could become as busy as Heathrow with the num­ber of flights dou­bling by 2050, lead­ing to a flight tak­ing off or land­ing every 70 seconds.[2]

Recent­ly, the new coali­tion Lib­er­al Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment in Lon­don have blocked expan­sion plans at Heathrow, Stanst­ed and Gatwick. It seems the avi­a­tion indus­try will be look­ing to expand region­al air­ports like Man­ches­ter to increase their prof­its.

Alex Foun­tain from the Stop Expan­sion at Man­ches­ter Air­port coali­tion said, “The new coun­cil­lors need to take a fresh approach to air­port expan­sion. The coun­cil can­not con­tin­ue to ignore its effects on local com­mu­ni­ties – such as ris­ing car­bon pol­lu­tion and noise impacts.”

He con­tin­ued, “There is a tourism defecit in the North­west of Eng­land amount­ing to £2.2 bil­lion. [2] That’s £2.2 bil­lion more being tak­en out of the region than being brought in by air­ports. The argu­ment that air­port expan­sion is good for jobs and the econ­o­my is unfound­ed. We need an update assess­ment of the air­port’s role in the region.”

Man­ches­ter Air­port plan to become car­bon neu­tral by 2015 — but this will not include emis­sions from flights.

A ren­di­tion of ‘Nel­lie the Ele­phant’ by the Toy Dolls was also heard play­ing out the soundsys­tem.
TUNE: Nel­lie the Ele­phant by the Toy Dolls — mp3 3.1M

Notes
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[1] Coun­cil Approve Expan­sion Plans — Man­ches­ter Evening News — 21st Novem­ber 2009 http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1183425_fury_over_airports_move_to_demolish_family_homes

[2] Man­ches­ter Air­port to be as busy as Heathrow — Man­ches­ter Evening News – Mon­day 8th March 2010
http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/s/1194908_manchester_airport_to_be_as_busy_as_heathrow

[3] Bren­dan Sewil­l’s ‘Air­port Jobs: Cru­el Hoax, False Hopes’ – page 21.
Avail­able here:
http://www.aef.org.uk/uploads/Airport_jobs___false_hopes_cruel_hoax.pdf

http://www.stopmanchesterairport.org.uk