Flights of Fancy

It's worth repeating our dictum that in matters green, things are seldom black and white. Hence I read with interest an article about an aspect of governmental internal behaviour, namely the use (and abuse) of air travel: Ministers use the Queen's Flight 'like private taxis'

I actually have some sympathy, as many criticisms do not reflect the realities of modern life. Can't very well have the PM unable or not present to make a decision on some new global excitement because he's waiting for the No 37 bus. Or for that matter, have the leader of our country standing around in the open at all, lest a Father for Jihad in a funny outfit decide to go for the front page of the Sun.

However, as with all things, we get to matters of degree. And it all gets complicated when one weighs 'efficiency' (of time, etc), with economy and, latterly, security issues and the environment. 

So we have that: "The Prime Minister has used the aircraft on 677 occasions since 1997 and spent about £140,000 on five trips abroad, mainly devoted to family holidays." While "senior ministers, including Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, have regularly used the Queen's Flight to ferry them from London to Brussels rather than take the train." And my personal eyebrow-twitching favourite: "Margaret Beckett, the Environment Secretary and the minister in charge of Labour's response to global warming, is also under fire for regularly ordering the aircraft, based at Northolt, near London, to fly to East Midlands airport, near her home in Derby, to pick her up for Government trips."

I can go along with the security issue. And, in the national interest, the time efficiency one, but this does of course start to drift into whose time is more important when we are told to do something that is patently not done by those telling us to do it. Especially when the disconnect is so grotesque: "In a statement on behalf of Mrs Beckett, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said it was entirely reasonable for aircraft to pick her up near her constituency home, especially if it were a Monday morning.' I still recall her on a radio show during the election justifying helicopter tips because she was 'very busy', like the rest of us are not. Sorry, this is not the right person to lecture us on how to be green.

And it seems a spokesman for the fiscally prudent Mr Brown has said that using the Queen's Flight to Brussels was cheaper than even standard class in Eurostar. That seems a pretty damning indictment on the attractiveness of train travel. But imagine the fiscal and environmental gains all round if they'd opted for a few seats with the masses on what I imagine to be a not-dissimilar levels-of-exhaust-venting aircraft operated by such as EasyJet? 

And finally, I must sigh when I read the now inevitable: 'It said that, "conscious of the environmental impact of aviation", all ministerial flights during Britain's presidency of the European Union last year were "carbon offset", partly by paying for environmental projects overseas.'

For a start, 'It is said that..' seems pretty blooming vague. Were they? Yes or no? And why only during Britain's Presidency? And what projects exactly? It would surely be no great effort to get taxpayers to fund the environmental consequences of all the jollies as well as those that are valid, but I for one would certainly like to know where the money is going and and why. 

Money talks and politicians should, on occasion, be made to walk.