Plane Stupid Activist Glued To PM Inside Downing Street

22nd July 2008
A cam­paign­er from the cli­mate action group, Plane Stu­pid, is cur­rent­ly super-glued to Prime Min­is­ter Gor­don Brown in the State Din­ing Room of 10 Down­ing Street.

Dan Glass, a 24 year old MSc stu­dent based in Scot­land, gained access to the PM’s offi­cial res­i­dence at 5pm this evening. He greet­ed Mr Brown and asked the Prime Min­is­ter why he and his min­is­ters have refused to meet West Lon­don res­i­dents opposed to the con­struc­tion of a third run­way at Heathrow. He simul­ta­ne­ous­ly put his super-glue cov­ered hand onto Brown’s poly­ester suit. When Brown went to turn away he found he had been super-glued by his cloth­ing to Plane Stu­pid, and had no option but to lis­ten to Dan.

Dan read mes­sages to the PM from peo­ple whose vil­lages will be bull­dozed if Brown agrees to BAA’s expan­sion plans. He also read out tes­ti­mo­ny from com­mu­ni­ties across the world threat­ened by cli­mate change while Down­ing Street aides attempt to extract the Labour leader from the green cam­paign­er. Dan hoped to stay glued to the PM long enough to begin quot­ing from con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ments secured through the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act, which reveal the government’s pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on Heathrow expan­sion was fixed. The papers reveal Min­is­ters have engaged in an extra­or­di­nary lev­el of col­lu­sion with air­port oper­a­tor, BAA, fid­dling pol­lu­tion fig­ures and devel­op­ing a joint strat­e­gy to beat oppo­si­tion groups.

The gov­ern­ment con­sul­ta­tion received 80,000 respons­es from the pub­lic, almost all of which opposed the government’s plans, despite the fact that peo­ple were not even asked whether they want­ed a third run­way and no con­sid­er­a­tion of the cli­mate impacts appeared in the con­sul­ta­tion doc­u­ments.

Dan took today’s extra­or­di­nary step because Brown and his Trans­port Sec­re­tary, Ruth Kel­ly, have refused to meet res­i­dents from Sip­son – the west Lon­don vil­lage, which would be wiped off the map if new Labour gives into BAA’s demands for a third run­way. Some of the mes­sages Dan is read­ing out to the Prime Min­is­ter are quotes from news­pa­per inter­views with Sip­son res­i­dents.

Plane Stu­pid activist, Gra­ham Thomp­son who is cur­rent­ly fac­ing pros­e­cu­tion for scal­ing Par­lia­ment in Feb­ru­ary and brand­ing the Palace of West­min­ster “BAA HQ,” today said:

“Gor­don Brown’s only got two pos­si­ble lega­cies, the first Prime Min­is­ter to real­ly get cli­mate change or the last one not to. Brown needs to realise we can beat cli­mate change, but not by dou­bling the size of the world’s biggest inter­na­tion­al air­port. That’s why we took our peace­ful cam­paign from the roof of Par­lia­ment to 10 Down­ing Street.”

When BAA first sought per­mis­sion to build Ter­mi­nal 5, the com­pa­ny wrote to near­by res­i­dents promis­ing nev­er to seek fur­ther Heathrow expan­sion. Now they have col­lud­ed with the gov­ern­ment to get a third run­way and a sixth ter­mi­nal by manip­u­lat­ing the con­sul­ta­tion process which has been wide­ly con­demned as unfair, unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic and fun­da­men­tal­ly dis­hon­est.

Gra­ham Thomp­son con­tin­ued:

“Brown’s con­sul­ta­tion was a fix, pure and sim­ple. It was the sin­gle most anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic thing this wretched gov­ern­ment has done since the Iraq war, and that’s say­ing some­thing. Dan thought that if super-glu­ing him­self to the Prime Min­is­ter was the only way to cut through the pow­er of giant cor­po­ra­tions like BAA and ensure he hears what peo­ple from West Lon­don real­ly think, then so be it.”

- ENDS -

MORE INFORMATION AND AUDIO OF THE ACTION:

www.planestupid.com
press@planestupid.com

NOTES:

Dan Glass biog:

Dan Glass is a 24 year old stu­dent from Bar­net, north Lon­don. He is cur­rent­ly study­ing an MSc in human ecol­o­gy and cli­mate change at Strath­clyde Uni­ver­si­ty in Scot­land where he is research­ing the impacts of air­port expan­sion on com­mu­ni­ty cohe­sion. Dan joined Plane Stu­pid about 18 months ago after he was inspired by read­ing George Monbiot’s books. Dan is a grad­u­ate of Sus­sex Uni­ver­si­ty where he stud­ied Geog­ra­phy and Devel­op­ment Stud­ies and where he was elect­ed to be pres­i­dent of the uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent union. His father is a lawyer and his moth­er works for a Jew­ish Music Insti­tute. Dan says he draws his moti­va­tion to stand up for what he believes in from his grand­par­ents who are holo­caust sur­vivors.

Details of the FoI doc­u­ments detail­ing the fixed con­sul­ta­tion:

Sun­day Times rev­e­la­tions: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3512042.ece

FoI doc­u­ments: www.greenpeace.org.uk/baa

Audio link avail­able here

info@planestupid.com
http://www.planestupid.com