Climate activists protesting against Heathrow’s planned third runway caused lengthy delays on the M4 by blocking a tunnel leading to the airport. Campaigners for Rising Up used three cars to close the tunnel leading from the motorway to Heathrow Terminals 1, 2 and 3 at about 8.25am on Tuesday.
Three protesters chained themselves to one of the vehicles, which had a banner reading: “No new runways”. The drivers of two vehicles were arrested for obstructing a highway by about 9.30am, according to the Metropolitan police, and their vehicles had been removed. But the third car remained in place.
A contra-flow was in place to allow traffic to move through the blocked tunnel but police warned travellers delays were possible. Long tailbacks on the M4 eased but the road remained busy, the BBC Radio London traffic bulletin warned. A four-month public consultation into the decision to open a third runway at Heathrow is under way.
Rising Up, which staged a similar protest last November, says if the runway goes ahead it will allow an extra 250,000 flights a year, causing carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to the entire output of Kenya.
Simon Bramwell, one of the activists involved in Tuesday’s action, said in a statement released by Rising Up that he also participated in November’s protests. He said: “I am breaking conditions imposed on me by the courts, following road blockades in November, but the government is not listening to the science or to our concerns. They have left us with no alternative but to keep taking action. We will not stop until plans to build another runway are fully and finally shut down.”
A Rising Up spokesman told the Guardian: “History has shown that unless we can disrupt the status quo, the powers that be will say the right thing and kick doing the right thing down the road for as long as they can.”
He added: “The inconvenience of some people missing their flights is absolutely nothing compared to the inconvenience of your country being flattened by a typhoon.”
Peer 'kept taxi running while claiming £300 Lords allowance'
A peer kept a taxi waiting outside the House of Lords so he could dash inside to qualify for a £300 daily allowance, a former Speaker of the Lords has claimed.Baroness D’Souza, who stepped down as Lord Speaker last year, told a BBC documentary that many peers “contribute absolutely nothing” and attend only to take advantage of the daily attendance allowance. Meet the Lords, a three-part BBC Two series, follows a number of peers over the course of a year, marking the first time programme-makers have been given free-rein to film inside the Lords chamber and behind the scenes at committee meetings.
Lady D’Souza would not name the peer in question, but said that a “sense of honour” that came with being a member of the House of Lords had been lost. She told programme-makers: "There is a core of peers who work incredibly hard, who do that work, and there are, sad to say, many, many, many peers who contribute absolutely nothing but who claim the full allowance. “I can remember one occasion when I was leaving the House quite late and there was a peer who shall be utterly nameless who jumped out of a taxi just outside the peers' entrance, left the engine running. He ran in, presumably to show that he'd attended, and then ran out again while the taxi was still running. “So I mean that's not normal, but it is something that does happen and I think that we have lost the sense of honour that used to pertain, and that is a great, great shame.” Some peers questioned in the programme suggested that more should be done to persuade elderly peers to retire.
Lord Tyler, a Liberal Democrat, said the Lords “is the best day care centre for the elderly in London”. He added: “Families can drop in him or her and make sure that the staff will look after them very well nice meals subsidised by the taxpayer, and they can have a snooze in the afternoon in the chamber or in the library." Others criticised the calibre of appointments made by recent prime ministers.
Lord Blunkett, the former home secretary, said: “You have got people who may well be, out of the patronage of the government of the day, rewarded for either keeping their mouth shut or opening their mouth or their purse at a particular moment in time." Lord Tebbit, the Conservative peer, said: "Far too many people have been put in here as a sort of personal reward.You wouldn't have imagined Mrs Thatcher wanting to give a peerage to Denis Thatcher's tailor or something like that.But we have come pretty close to that in recent years."
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