The plans by the National Air Traffic Services to increase the traffic above Cambridgeshire are up for consultation. These plans put many more aircraft in the skies above the rural areas and threaten the relative tranquility of those areas. As if it wasn't enough to have cars and lorries charging along the smaller country roads, they now want to make more noise above us.

Well, take it from me, they will be noisy. I live in Gamlingay and there are aircraft now flying across the village towards Luton on a regular basis and they make a noise. When the holds are moved to above the village, the noise will get much worse. Although the holds are set at 7,000ft and above, airliners flying at that height are still instrusive, especially if they change power settings. And there will be nothing to stop them descending below those heights when they are cleared to do so to make their approach to Luton.

So, if you care about the amenity of relative quiet in your countryside, have a look at the Rural Peace website. It will tell you some of the facts about the changes to air traffic above our countryside and let you understand what is behind the arcane language and noise graphs on the NATS website; it should prompt you to do something about it before it's too late.

cb

Tags: noise, airliners

George Brown really did look silly when he posed "with the troops" in Basra last week. When I first saw one of these ghastly publicity shots, it was of Tony Blair just after the Kosovo Campaign. Blair was in Iraq, looking earnestly as if he was giving a morale-boosting speech to the troops, but they were all behind him! Since Blair had arrived briefly at RAF Brüggen (from where the RAF were launching raids on the Serbs), and talked to no one, I realised that he was going places only for the photos. But who was he fooling? Certainly no one who had been at those places to be "visited" by Blair. And, I suspect, no one seeing the photos in the newspapers was fooled. Well perhaps people who read the Sun or the Daily Mail ...

And that brings me back to Broon. Blair managed to carry off the deception for a while as he was young(ish), good(ish) looking and used a winning(ish) smile. Broon manages none of these attributes and so we see through the deception to the rather cynical person beneath. Add to this the fact that it appears that he was in Basra to announce the withdrawal of 1,000 chaps and chappesses, 500 of whom were being withdrawn anyway and the silliness of Broon was pronounced.

Then it appears that he was out in Basra to draw attention from the rather unwelcome success that Dave was having at the Conservative conference in Blackpool, and Broon looks more and more like a spinning stuntman. How ghastly! And what an insult to the poor troops who are bored and terrified in varying measure for his political ends (he supported the Blair administration did he not?).

Sometimes, I despair ...

cb

Tags: prevarication

Well, I hold no brief for George Galloway MP, but Mark Steel has it right in his article in yesterday's Independent, Why should Galloway be the only fall guy? This is the august body that gave Mr Blair a standing ovation, that judged it wise to go to war in Iraq and they are censoring Mr Galloway for bringing the House into disrepute. They make themselves look ridiculous!

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Tags: ridicule, corruption

Well I forced myself to watch the Alastair Campbell Diaries last night, on BBC2. Why is it on the BBC? Why is it on at all? Why did the Today programme put him in the prime 0810 slot a few days ago? Thank goodness I missed it.

Tony Blair always was one for posturing and Campbell's non-event of a book seems to be a series of postures and poses adopted for effect. He reminds me of Robson Green, the actor who has only a limited repertoire of expressions and gestures ...

Tags: media

So RyanAir is suing the Government. It's not for the money, no, no ... it seems to be a matter of principle. Now this is RyanAir, and I am not sure that principle can sensibly come into the same passage of text. But they have found a law under which they say that the Secretary of State for Transport is almost bound to recompense businesses for extra costs resulting from a dire emergency; and Mr O'Leary says that he will present any monies gained in a successful court case to charity. But I am sure that he will find a reason to deduct airport taxes, fuel surcharge and credit card fees from the sum before he presents it to a charity.

I find it ironic that Mr O'Leary has found such a law, mainly because the Government reckons that it imposed the security restrictions under a different law, thus disqualifying RyanAir's suit. But it is also ironic because Mr O'Leary's company used the law to excuse its non-payment of compensation for losing a valuable (well £50) part of my baggage that its ground staff in Knock made me put into the hold for reasons of security. The law that it used was the the Prague (or Warsw?) Convention on carriage on an aircraft: that it was required to compensate me only according to the weight of what they lost, not its value.

I am steadily going off flying on airlines. I am not afraid of flying as I am a professional pilot, nor am I afraid of dying, not in the overall scheme of things. But I cannot bear to waste my time in the transit process, in trying in vain to have a comfortable journey or to deal humorously with my fellow-sufferers. The whole process of getting there from here is demeaning in the way we have to queue, try to get a decent seat or try to have a pee during the flight. But most of all I hate the waste of energy in getting airborne, the damage that is being done to the environment.

But the greatest irony is that between the protagonists, I don't know whether I would trust the Government over Mr O'Leary.