Heathrow writer-in-residence helps plant orchard to stop the 3rd runway
third Heathrow runway, a new element is being added to the
makes it perfect for what we’ve got planned today, which is planting an apple
orchard.
Duffy and former Heathrow writer-in-residence Alain de Botton, we’re planting
yet more roots into the land we own on behalf of tens of thousands of people around
the world, a right spanner in the works for advocates of bigger airports at Heathrow
and elsewhere.
Briers, returning after
various groups who oppose plans for a third runway, including Labour and Conservative
MPs (David Cameron and Oliver Letwin have lent their names to the Tory one), while
the Lib Dem and Green parties have trees of their own. Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg
is there to reaffirm his party’s stand against a bigger Heathrow and local Labour
MP John McDonnell is also on hand for some tree-planting duties.
57,000-plus Airplotters out there, as well as the massive coalition of scientists,
local councils, celebrities, and campaigning groups (including fellow apple enthusiasts
the
by Reverend Tafue of Tuvalu, the Pacific nation which is already feeling the effects
of climate change.
does stand in front of a Langley pippin tree. During his week-long stint as
he says that “I love airports and air travel”, he also recognises that “if our
society is to tolerate them, we’re going to have to learn to fly a lot less.”
poem Mrs Scrooge as the Ghost of Christmas Past visits the orchards of Sipson.
You can read it on the
it’s also firmly rooted (if you’ll pardon the pun) in the history of the Heathrow
area. In the mid-1800s,
Harmondsworth, one of the villages under threat from the runway plans. His legacy
is seen in supermarkets around the country, as the Cox’s orange pippin accounts
for more than half of all UK-grown dessert apples.
food for London. Until the 1960s, market gardens proliferated and produce was
sent in to the old Covent Garden market for sale to city-dwellers.
Greenpeace supporter networks around the country will hold their own tree planting
events in solidarity with Sipson –
Actors stage third runway protest
site of the proposed third Heathrow runway during a protest on Friday.
Laureate Carol-Ann Duffy joined residents and activists.
area and is buried on the site.
Movement were represented on the site, which is the size of a football field.
building a bridge between the past and the future, because this community will
have a future.
 |
to build this new runway they will have to dig up trees owned by and on behalf
of millions of people from every area of British society.
ever roll into the new orchard. The third runway cannot and will not be built.”
it is “right” for the UK, but opponents have vowed to fight it.
struggles and the extra demands would create gridlock.
would be demolished and hundreds of acres of greenbelt land would be swallowed
up.