The amount of individuals objecting to aviation expansion is unarguably growing by the month, much to the distaste of airport owners and the aviation industry as a whole. This should not really come as a surprise either. More individuals are affected by aviation now than ever before and if the aviation sector, and the government with their daft white paper on aviation get their way the communities we live in will only suffer more, and across wider areas than ever before. And, the objectors will grow by the thousands. It looks like there are some rocky times to come, and with much of the aviation industry often behaving in a way which indicates that they are most certainly their own worst enemy, then sympathy with them, even from hardened travellers will dwindle.
The aviation industry sometimes attempts to negatively stereotype anti aviation expansion campaigners. However this is a foolish move due to the negative effects of aviation expanding over greater areas and as a result campaigners against expansion are mostly representative of their whole community. So the aviation industry needs to be wary of labelling campaigners negatively, as they are mostly made up of a cross section of the local communities.
FTF is clear about their view: more flights will ruin East and South East London. We have enough flights over central London, many are being flown half empty/empty and when was the last time you couldn't get a seat on a flight with even a week or two's notice?
We'll we've not experienced it, even at 24 hours notice, and neither has anyone we've spoken to. So we see it as 'pure greed not need' on the part of LCA who clearly don't give a care for the local communities at all. FTF are not anti flying but there is such a thing as finding a balance and the current proposals from London City Airport in their masterplan to increase flights up to 176,000 in total is not balanced and will damage the communities in many ways as listed on this blog site in articles. In fact you could say that LCA's plan could be better entitled as 'How to make lots of money whilst making whole communities unliveable'. Nice neighbour? We think not.
Anti expansion campaigners have a variety of concerns, global damage may be one, but it's not primarily always the main concern. But for many their concerns are more to do with the negative issues that aviation expansion creates in their daily lives and the environment in their community. So we'd thought we'd list a few of them, which as you will see are issues which affect most households one way or another personally:
- Increasing levels of noise pollution
- Not being able to spend time outside due to noise levels: children need to be able to play outside freely in a safe environment, not locked inside buildings to protect their hearing.
- Not being able to have windows open
- Health issues: hearing, deafness, high blood pressure, heart attacks, cancer etc
- Mental health issues due to consistent 'annoying' levels of noise: stress, irritability, unable to concentrate, sleeplessness, aggressive behaviour and: their affects on residents relationships and whole communities.
- Children's Development:children need quiet, they also need to be taught in schools which are not subjected to increasing levels of aircraft noise. This affects their achievements in the future
- Local wildlife and nature being driven away or damaged by aircraft noise and air/water pollution. Just this week it was announced that sea horses are present in the Thames at Dagenham purely due to the river becoming cleaner. More flights over the river Thames with 100% thrust as LCA use aren't likely to help that situation in a positive way at all.
- Communities becoming 'undesirable' and this having a huge affect on the local economics and finance of residents, and councils. There is a high cost to councils, (not that you'd think it as clearly Newham hasn't sussed that one out yet) and residents by way of taxpayers to deal with the outfall from the negative affects on communities from increased aviation activities. So yet more money from the public purse to subsidise the ever insatiable aviation industry who hang on tight to their purse strings regardless of outcomes on communities it seems.
We are simply people that care about our communities and who are willing, and not afraid to speak up for them.
