Plane Stupid

On Monday the 8th of December; so on Monday, a bunch of retards camped out on the runway of Stanstead Airport; London’s third airport, which no-one has ever heard of. It would have been funnier if they’d just walked onto the runway, thinking that it was a park made completely of concrete or something suitably retarded, unfortunately they were there as part of a protest to stop climate change.

The group was called ‘plane stupid’ which sums themselves up rather well I suppose, I mean they can even spell ‘plain’ for fuck sake… anyway, they decided that a great way to stop climate change would be to plant themselves on the runway and construct a security fence around themselves. What they failed to notice was that a plane would most likely be undeterred by a flimsy security fence and plough through it fairly easily. Disappointingly no pilot was given clearance to do this, as it would have made for a much more amusing blog.

In any case the group managed to stop planes taking off from the airport for a full three hours, from 5 ‘til 8 in the morning and managed to stop a massive 52 planes from landing and taking off from Stanstead, forcing the inbound flights to fly even further to find an alternative landing spot, I think these people may have failed to think their plan through.

In fact there are several times, when reading a report on the protest (from this website), where it seems the protester didn’t really think their plan through. That claim to by trying to ‘stop as many tonnes of CO2 as [they] can’, by sitting on the runway of the third largest airport in Britain, really early in the morning. I’m sure that is really the most efficient use of their time. Apparently they want to ‘stop climate change by whatever peaceful means [they] have left.’ Obviously their imagination is not all that vivid if the most effective means of stopping climate change they can think of is to park in front of a few planes. That is plane stupid.

The protesters were indignant when they were attacked by security staff armed with a snowplough. “I was terrified. You don't expect to be attacked with a snowplough on a peaceful protest.” Said one of the protesters. I can sort of sympathise; a snowplough is not exactly the textbook weapon for dealing with protests, it is a pretty original and not particularly professional way of handling the situation. I can’t imagine it would be all that effective against a security fence either; a plane would be better.

The whole episode is a hilarious series of absurd events that underlie the sheer ineptitude of everyone involved. For a start they should never have been able to get into the airport in the first place; they could just of easily have been terrorists intent on planting a bomb into one of the planes, good security. It then took them 5 hours to remover them from the runway (they got there 2 hours before the runway reopened after some overnight maintenance); it’s a bunch of hobo’s and students with a security fence and nothing better to do, how hard can it be to arrest them? The protest itself was all very futile and, while it was front-page news for one day, it has not been mentioned again all week, apart from by me, reflecting how ineffective an awareness stunt it actually was.

Not only was it hopelessly futile and a catalogue of cock-ups, it was also very misguided. I understand the whole climate change thing and how we need to use less fuel, but the solution is not to stop flying, or to park ourselves on runways to stop other people flying, or disadvantage ourselves in any way; what we need to do it invest in finding alternative ways of providing us with the energy we need and being more efficient with the energy we do use. Buying a more efficient car, or using a renewable source of energy will, in the long run, be cheaper, help stop global climate change and make the world a slightly more beautiful place. One wonders then why people don’t invest in renewable energy, rather than waste theirs and everyone else’s time by sitting on a runway in the early hours of the morning. Whatever floats your boat I suppose.