Press Release: 27th January 2012
Responding to the Chamber of Commerce’s proposals that the taxpayer invest money into Birmingham Airport rather than a new one in the South East, Joe Peacock of Birmingham Friends of the Earth stated:
“Not only is it environmentally irresponsible to encourage more public funding of airports, but is likely to increase the amount of job losses locally and the amount of money flowing out of the region as people fly abroad.
“In 2010, the number of British citizens travelling abroad for tourism from Birmingham Airport was 6 times the number of foreign leisure travellers coming in.
“The Thames Estuary airport plans are complete madness and never likely to be built, but using that to opportunistically propose even more government money to damaging the local environment and increasing noise here is equally reprehensible.
“We hope that the government’s new aviation policy will finally give us a framework that recognises the need for aviation to meet its environmental costs, as well as paying a fair amount of tax.”
Notes:
1) BIrmingham FoE’s report on the costs to the local economy from aviation is available here. www.birminghamfoe.org.uk/images/final report.pdf
2) This is a response to the Birmingham Post article “Chamber Calls for Investment in Birmingham Airport instead of Boris Island”:
