Today’s Tip

By Keith Waterhouse

I SUPPOSE if I lived a bit nearer Heathrow I would get more worked up about its planned expansion and the Camp for Climate Action demo which is now under way.

As it is, my attitude is a bit plagueon-both-their-houses. Heathrow is a tip, and nothing is going to make it any less of a tip until someone starts running it as an airport instead of an out-of- town shopping mall with limited planeboarding facilities.

It’s said that 100,000 jobs depend on this inflated hell-hole becoming more inflated yet. So are these 100,000 dependents working, most of them pointlessly, in security? They’re certainly not manning ticket or immigration desks. Or cleaning the lavatories.

As for the Camp for Climate Action, it’s a long time since we had a full-blooded demo but from what I can gather most of them are in it for a lark. Perhaps they will take themselves more seriously when the police begin to riot, as sooner or later they are apt to do on these occasions.

I liked the po-faced note in yesterday’s Independent newspaper: ‘The gathering is taking place against the wishes of the Government and BAA.’ Yes, we didn’t think they were handing out State grants for the demo, but what exactly is it for? If the idea is to disrupt Heathrow, how as the cover of this week’s Private Eye asks will they know?

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