This month we got a glittering new airport – well, terminal but who’s counting? Designed by one of our most lauded architects and opened by Her Majesty the Queen. Drum roll, please. Yes, Heathrow Terminal 5 is upon us. Rejoice! Or maybe not. Those in the flight path and Heathrow protestors – not to mention the people living under the melting ice caps – might be forgiven for being less jubilant.
Before nose-diving into a frenzied recycling episode in a desperate attempt to compensate for all those extra emissions, I comforted myself with a closer inspection of the gleaming beauty of Rogers’ new structure. Much has been made of its modernist and pioneering feats. It’s the first straight-through check-in (which makes me wonder why all airports aren’t built this way), the first project of this scale delivered on time and on budget – Google ‘Wembley Stadium’ for an example of what happens when the opposite is the case – and you can check yourself in online; goodbye surly check-in lady.
Gone too are the seemingly endless miles you have to schlep from check-in to gate number 101. Here, the planes come to you – for all but one fifth of passengers, the remainder of whom have to get the bus. For most, when the pilot announces over the intercom that your aircraft is ‘taxi-ing’ to the airport now at least the word makes sense.
Accusations of the new terminal – the size of 50 football pitches – being one giant shopping mall are music to my ears: Tiffany’s, Harrods and Paul Smith are all setting up shop in the place with Gordon Ramsay providing the ‘Plane’ food (geddit?) and McDonalds' golden arches nowhere to be seen. The message is clear: ignore the doom and gloom financial headlines predicting frantic belt-tightening times ahead: come, fly, shop, spend! Everyone knows killing time between check-in and take-off is best dedicated to duty free shopping – go on, it’s as if the sales are on.
Cut-price electrical goods and cheap cosmetics aside, the new T5 will increase passenger numbers, though perhaps not in their droves; we have to open up a new runway for that. Without the third landing strip, Heathrow’s crown as "busiest international airport in the world" will slip in the next three years. And that’s a bad thing?
One frightening statistic puts the CO2 emissions from the proposed additional flights from Heathrow’s third runway at the same level as the whole of Kenya. That’s a whole country. A whole country that’s a whole two and a half times the size of the UK. From just one of our airports. Hardly something to be proud of.
Describing the new terminal as “a living, breathing advertisement for Britain’s ambition,” in the words of Mr BAA big wig, gives a clue as to the chief motivating factor. This shiny, new monument to modernism clearly has plenty to do with our nation’s desire to be the biggest and the best – borne out of an outmoded "Britannia rules the waves" mentality. We’re not as mighty as we once were, so what? This "mine’s bigger than yours" attitude should logically stop when it comes to noisy, dirty, polluting air travel.
It’s as if those politicians instrumental in deciding environmental policies have got together, looked at the figures and concluded: stuff the protestors, stuff the emissions, stuff global warming – there’s too much hype about that anyway. So the result is our glorious new airport terminal. For many foreign visitors the first thing they’ll see when they land in our country is this magnificent Pompidou-esque glass and steel structure, the first impression will be one of "ambitious Britain, proud to be the world’s worst aviational polluter, bar none". Oh and the shopping’s good too, if only I had some money to spend.
Some Solace for Latest Bond Flick
The latest Bond movie, partly being shot at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire since November last year, has been given its official title: ‘Quantum of Solace’. A reference to Bond’s broken heart (reference the final scene of ‘Casino Royale’, the most recent Bond movie). More interesting snippets from the set include a quote from Mathieu Amalric, playing the villainous Dominic Greene, who told reporters his character had “the smile of Tony Blair and the crazy eyes of Nicholas Sarkozy”. A more frightening prospect than Jaws’ murderous metallic teeth we think.
Election Fever
No, we’re not talking about Barack and Hilary, we’ve got election fever of our own. Though admittedly not as headline grabbing, London’s mayoral race is hugely significant for the city’s inhabitants. On May 1st we’ll find out who wins the battle of Bumbling Boris vs (allegedly) Corrupt Ken. Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly, firmly in the Ken camp, has been busy rubbishing Boris’ transport proposals, “Boris Johnson’s transport policy is in tatters given this extraordinary underestimate of the cost of his bus policy by £100m a year,” Kelly said in response to Johnson’s plans to bring back Routemaster buses. Great idea, Boris, as long as the maths add up.
Spitfire Sparks Fly
A group of RAF men gathered in Trafalgar Square this month with a full-size replica Spitfire. Their point? To highlight the lack of recognition of neglected RAF hero Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park. They’ve got their eye on the square’s fourth plinth, currently filled with a piece of contemporary art – ‘A Model for a Hotel’ at present – changing every year or so on a rotational basis. With the other three plinths filled by Army and Navy figures it would be fitting, they argue, to have an RAF hero to stand alongside. Keith Park, the man proposed, played a pivotal role in saving the country from a Nazi invasion in the Battle of Britain. Honouring him is “a matter of national honour”, they believe.
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