The Stop Stansted Expansion campaign are vociferously opposing BAA’s plans to increase the number of permitted air traffic movements at Stansted from 241,000 to 264,000 a year and thus increase their maximum passenger handling ability by an additional ten million passengers per year.
A spokesperson for the group told the BBC: "If Stansted were permitted to expand to maximum use of the existing runway, the local environment would suffer, the national economy would suffer and we would have taken a giant step backwards in the battle to combat climate change."
They added that the expansion would not help the economy because it was encouraging people to go on holiday abroad - Rather stretching it there perhaps, certainly if would pour millions of pounds extra into the airport and presumably, local jobs and the wider local economy. Anthropomorphic Global Warming is a new weapon in their armoury.
The villages surrounding the airport are, it must be said, very picturesque, with many thatched cottages. There is a direct motorway link to the airport so little need for airport traffic to pass through them.
I suspect the fact of the matter is that very few of these people could possibly have been resident in the area before Stansted became one of London’s airports. The writing was on the wall in 1970 and by 78 there was a white paper laying things out very clearly and the latter was the best part of 30 years ago. No one who moved there after 1978 could have been in any reasonable doubt of the situation.
No. The protestors are more in the position of someone who buys, or builds, a house next door to a busy public house - and then complains bitterly about the noise and customers.
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