Baa

More on how the Heathrow public consultation is being fixed.

Today the government begins its long-awaited consultation process into the need for a third runway at London's Heathrow Airport. Strangely enough, given Gordon Brown's recent public declarations that tackling climate change is right at the top of his agenda, it's already looking as though Heathrow expansion will be given the go-ahead. But then documents we've been given by Justine Greening MP show just how closely the government has been working with BAA on preparing the consultation.

This move towards a third runway is despite the fact that it will mean a 70 per cent increase in flight numbers and the resulting rise in climate change pollution will be equivalent to the entire annual emissions of Kenya. Worse still, the bulk of the additional 500 flights a day from Europe's busiest airport will be short-haul hops to cities like Paris, Brussels, Edinburgh and Newcastle - all easily reached by rail.

Despite changing a misleading title on my previous post (which seemed accurate on the scant information available earlier this morning), I'm now beginning to think even 'BAA wins its case' is a bit too strong. Sure, they managed to get something out of their High Court injunction but it's a far cry from what they applied for.

Just a very quick update. The Heathrow injunction hearing has closed and Mrs Justice Swift will be ruling at 10am on Monday.

If you want some weekend reading to keep you going until then, The Times has a piece on the legal basis of the injunction attempt (an anti-stalkers law), the BBC has a round-up of yesterday's happenings at the High Court and Sian Berry mulls over what it all means in the New Statesman.