More Than Living

Terminal 5: sky’s the limit or takes the biscuit?

Today is Pi Day – a cel­eb­ra­tion of math­em­at­ics’ most com­pel­ling number.

But even those who have mem­or­ised the number to fifty decimal places (or, hey, to 628 places) would have trouble work­ing out how much is enough when it comes to air travel.

For today the Queen opened Heathrow’s long-​​awaited (and long-​​fought) fifth ter­minal – to the delight of some and the des­pair of others.

Sev­eral industry fig­ures have seized the oppor­tun­ity to attack the “absurdly pro­trac­ted” plan­ning laws, which meant that it took 15 years for the ter­minal to be built.

“Ter­minal 5 has taken far too long to come to fruition,” said Gareth Elli­ott of the Brit­ish Cham­bers of Com­merce. “This cannot be allowed to happen again.”

Others, how­ever, see the com­ple­tion of the build­ing as a capit­u­la­tion by the gov­ern­ment in the face of cli­mate change.

Green­peace trans­port cam­paigner Anita Gold­smith blas­ted Ter­minal 5 as a “monu­ment to the binge-​​flying cul­ture this gov­ern­ment has done so much to encourage”.

We wonder what the Queen, who described the ter­minal in glow­ing terms today, makes of the controversy.

Just four days ago, she urged action to back up rhet­oric on cli­mate change:

In the Com­mon­wealth, gov­ern­ments, busi­nesses, com­munit­ies and indi­vidu­als should each strive to match words and good inten­tions with deeds.

IMAGE by Flickr user emdot

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Ori­gin­ally posted 2008-​​03-​​14 09:43:00. Repub­lished by Blog Post Promoter

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