Click here to view this media [h/t Heather ] During tonight’s massive Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York, a local Fox News affiliate reporter and his crew found themselves on the wrong side of the NYPD. While covering the Occupy Wall Street protests on Wednesday night, Fox 5 photographer Roy Isen was hit in the eyes by mace from a police officer and Fox 5 reporter Dick Brennan was hit by an officer’s baton. The protests on Wall Street continued to grow all day. The rallies and their participants are showing no signs of slowing down. In the evening, crowds surged past barriers and NYPD officers moved in to contain the protesters. By many accounts, mayhem broke out. Officers, many wearing white shorts indicating supervisor rank, swatted protesters with batons and sprayed them with mace, video from the scene showed. Fox 5′s Isen and Brennan were there and witnessed the chaos. At one point, Brennan was hit in the abdomen by a police baton and Isen got irritant in his eyes. Both journalists were all right and continued to cover the protests and arrests. Note what’s missing from this story: Violence on the side of the protesters. Crossing a barricade is not violent. It is not threatening. It is simply crossing a barricade. The response of the officers left me feeling pretty shaky. Batons, pepper spray, and yes, done by the white shirts, but not only the white shirts. Evidently these policemen do not understand that beating and pepper-spraying protesters and hapless reporters in the area will do nothing but increase resolve in every person who watches to join the protests. Do they learn nothing from previous experience? No, evidently not. Check out this officer standing at a barricade bragging about what he and his little nightstick are going to do: While there’s certainly a story here in the fact of police not only attacking protesters but also reporters and their crew, I think the larger story will unfold when we see how Fox News handles this story. Will they ignore it? Will they gloss over it? Will they blame those who tried to cross the barricade? Can you imagine what their lede would be the next day if a tea party protester and news crew were pepper-sprayed and beaten? This will be a moment of truth for Roger Ailes. How will he spin an attack on reporters for a Rupert Murdoch-owned news channel? Inquiring minds want to know.
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Experts say turning point had been reached in England’s heroin epidemic, with fall particularly sharp among under 30s Young people in England are turning their backs on the most dangerous drugs for the first time in 30 years, according to the head of the national treatment agency. New figures show that the total number of drug users entering treatment for heroin or crack cocaine has fallen by 10,000 over the past two years. The official data shows that the fall in heroin use is particularly sharp among under 30s with the number of 18-24 year olds in treatment more than halving and the 25-29 age group almost matching this fall. Drug treatment experts say that they are “cautiously optimistic” that the heroin epidemic which has gripped Britain since the 1980s may have finally passed its high water mark. Paul Hayes, NTA chief executive, said the new figures which also show an 18% rise in the number of people officially defined as “recovering from addiction” were an indication that the trend was moving in the right direction: “We’re a goal up, but it’s not half time yet. I think what it shows is that we’ve probably passed the high water mark of the impact of the epidemic of the late 80s and 90s.” Hayes said that the once popular images “heroin chic” and Trainspotting culture were no longer fashionable and young people instead see the damage heroin and crack use has done to their older siblings and, sadly, in some cases even their parents. “If you see people in your community who actually can’t cope because of heroin and crack use. If you increasingly see heroin and crack dependency concentrated among the people in society who do life least well, as that becomes apparent, it’s difficult to see it being fashionable or chic.” But he warned that the onset of the heroin epidemic that scarred the late 1980s and 1990s on the back of a sharp rise in youth employment could yet return: “We need to be vigilant that if we see a rise in youth unemployment that it doesn’t lead to a return to 1980s level of heroin use. It is not inevitable but we have to watch the situation very closely.” The latest NTA drug data for 2010/11 shows that 52,933 drug users entered treatment for heroin or crack cocaine in the past year, down from 58,016 in 2009/10 and 62,963 in 2008/09. The national drug treatment monitoring system figures show that 27,969 adults left treatment “free from dependency” last year – an 18% increase over the previous year. The figures echo estimates from Glasgow University’s drug misuse research centre which put the number of heroin and crack users in England in 2009/10 at 306,000 down from 332,000 in 2008/09. The annual budget for drug treatment has risen to £600m a year from £200m a decade ago. Harry Shapiro of the DrugScope, the independent drugs information charity, agreed that a real turning point had been reached in England’s heroin epidemic: “Things seem to moving in the right direction. The figures are showing an absolute decline in the heroin using population in Britain for the first time since the late 1960s.” He said that was confirmed by the ageing nature of the heroin using population and the fact that young people’s treatment services were now dealing with many more people with alcohol and cannabis problems than heroin. Shapiro said significant successes by the Turkish authorities in disrupting the traditional flow of heroin into Europe from Afghanistan via Iran had also played a role. Drugs Health Alan Travis guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Experts say turning point had been reached in England’s heroin epidemic, with fall particularly sharp among under 30s Young people in England are turning their backs on the most dangerous drugs for the first time in 30 years, according to the head of the national treatment agency. New figures show that the total number of drug users entering treatment for heroin or crack cocaine has fallen by 10,000 over the past two years. The official data shows that the fall in heroin use is particularly sharp among under 30s with the number of 18-24 year olds in treatment more than halving and the 25-29 age group almost matching this fall. Drug treatment experts say that they are “cautiously optimistic” that the heroin epidemic which has gripped Britain since the 1980s may have finally passed its high water mark. Paul Hayes, NTA chief executive, said the new figures which also show an 18% rise in the number of people officially defined as “recovering from addiction” were an indication that the trend was moving in the right direction: “We’re a goal up, but it’s not half time yet. I think what it shows is that we’ve probably passed the high water mark of the impact of the epidemic of the late 80s and 90s.” Hayes said that the once popular images “heroin chic” and Trainspotting culture were no longer fashionable and young people instead see the damage heroin and crack use has done to their older siblings and, sadly, in some cases even their parents. “If you see people in your community who actually can’t cope because of heroin and crack use. If you increasingly see heroin and crack dependency concentrated among the people in society who do life least well, as that becomes apparent, it’s difficult to see it being fashionable or chic.” But he warned that the onset of the heroin epidemic that scarred the late 1980s and 1990s on the back of a sharp rise in youth employment could yet return: “We need to be vigilant that if we see a rise in youth unemployment that it doesn’t lead to a return to 1980s level of heroin use. It is not inevitable but we have to watch the situation very closely.” The latest NTA drug data for 2010/11 shows that 52,933 drug users entered treatment for heroin or crack cocaine in the past year, down from 58,016 in 2009/10 and 62,963 in 2008/09. The national drug treatment monitoring system figures show that 27,969 adults left treatment “free from dependency” last year – an 18% increase over the previous year. The figures echo estimates from Glasgow University’s drug misuse research centre which put the number of heroin and crack users in England in 2009/10 at 306,000 down from 332,000 in 2008/09. The annual budget for drug treatment has risen to £600m a year from £200m a decade ago. Harry Shapiro of the DrugScope, the independent drugs information charity, agreed that a real turning point had been reached in England’s heroin epidemic: “Things seem to moving in the right direction. The figures are showing an absolute decline in the heroin using population in Britain for the first time since the late 1960s.” He said that was confirmed by the ageing nature of the heroin using population and the fact that young people’s treatment services were now dealing with many more people with alcohol and cannabis problems than heroin. Shapiro said significant successes by the Turkish authorities in disrupting the traditional flow of heroin into Europe from Afghanistan via Iran had also played a role. Drugs Health Alan Travis guardian.co.uk
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Home secretary should challenge researchers after claiming man avoided deportation because he owned pet cat, justice secretary says Kenneth Clarke has raised the stakes in his confrontation with the home secretary, Theresa May, accusing her of using a “laughable, child-like” example to criticise the Human Rights Act. In an intervention that will infuriate Downing Street, the justice secretary said May should challenge her researchers after claiming that a man had been able to avoid deportation because he owned a pet cat. Speaking to the Nottingham Post, he said: “I sat and listened to Theresa’s speech, and I’ll have to be very polite to Theresa when I meet her – but in my opinion she should really address her researchers and advisers very severely for assuring her that a complete nonsense example in her speech was true. “I’m not going to stand there and say in my private opinion this is a terrible thing and we ought to get rid of the Human Rights Act. “It’s not only the judges that all get furious when the home secretary makes a parody of a court judgement – our commission who are helping us form our view on this are not going to be entertained by laughable, child-like examples being given. “We have a policy and, in my old-fashioned way, when you serve in a government you express a collective policy of the government – you don’t go round telling everyone your personal opinion is different.” Downing Street will be furious with Clarke after No 10 said it was delighted with the announcement in May’s conference speech that illegal immigrants were abusing the Human Rights Act to fight deportation from Britain. The home secretary illustrated her case by citing the example of a Bolivian national who resisted deportation on the grounds he owned a cat, called Maya. May, who wants to abolish the Human Rights Act, told the Manchester conference about “the illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because – I am not making this up – he had a pet cat”. Speaking an hour later at a fringe meeting hosted by the Daily Telegraph, Clarke ridiculed May’s remarks. Clarke, a strong defender of the European convention on human rights, which provided the basis for the Human Rights Act, said: “I’ve never had a conversation on the subject with Theresa, so I’d have to find out about these strange cases she is throwing out. “They are British cases and British judges she is complaining about. I cannot believe anybody has ever had deportation refused on the basis of owning a cat. I’ll have a small bet with her that nobody has ever been refused deportation on the grounds of the ownership of a cat.” Kenneth Clarke Theresa May Conservative conference 2011 Conservative conference Human Rights Act Human rights Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk
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New registrations in September, which traditionally account for nearly one-in-five transactions for the entire year, were down 0.8% on the same month in 2010 UK car sales will be flat next year, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), as lacklustre figures for the key buying month of September crushed hopes of a strong recovery in 2012. The trade body for British carmakers and retailers said new registrations in September, which traditionally account for nearly one-in-five transactions for the entire year, were down 0.8% on the same month in 2010, with 332,476 vehicles signed up. The top 10 vehicles also appear to reflect straitened times on the road as well as the high street, with the Ford Fiesta and Focus the top-selling brands. It means the UK car market is on track for a 5% fall on last year’s performance, when the industry and motorists were still benefiting from the tail-end of the government’s scrappage scheme, which subsidised the replacement of dated vehicles with cars straight off the production line. The SMMT’s chief executive, Paul Everitt, said a hoped-for recovery in sales had yet to materialise, forcing the adjustment of predictions that vehicle acquisitions would rise by up to 5% in 2012. Instead, they will just edge above the predicted 2011 total of 1.92m units, to 1.96m. “We had expected at this point to see more positive growth and a stronger recovery, something which we are clearly not seeing. As a consequence we have downgraded our forecast for 2012. We had expected it to be just above 2m [units].” Everitt said sales of car fleets and vehicles to businesses had been strong in September, “as has been the case throughout the year”, but that has not been matched by the consumer. “There has been a much weaker demand in the private retail part of the market. It means that dealerships are having a difficult times.” The private market fell 9% in September, the SMMT said. Brighter outlook for domestic manufacturers The SMMT stressed that a weak consumer outlook has not translated into doom and gloom for resurgent domestic car manufacturers. Britain is set to make 1.5m cars this year, rising to about 1.6m in 2012, underlining the industry’s strength as one of the UK’s biggest exporters, with about eight out of 10 of those vehicles to be sold to overseas buyers. Everitt said there was no sign of an effect on UK manufacturers – led by the likes of Bentley, Jaguar Land Rover, Bentley and Japanese giants Nissan and Toyota – of the ill winds blowing through the world economy.”There are some issues out there but at the moment we feel reasonably confident on exports. Markets like China, India, Russia and even the US are all growing. Companies like Bentley, Rolls, Aston Martin and Jaguar Land Rover are seeing good growth in those markets. We are probably more positive on manufacturing than perhaps some other sectors. We can see the desirability of these products in some key markets,” said Everitt. The Mini – also popular in the US and China – makes an appearance in the September top 10 best-sellers list. Despite the SMMT’s bullishness, Everitt urged the government to give more support to manufacturers, including extending tax credits for research and development, using capital allowance loopholes to encourage investment in factories and ensuring that a forthcoming “credit easing” programme helps companies rather than banks. “It is important that they develop a mechanism that allows the money to find its way to the companies that need it and want to spend it on the economy,” he said. Automotive industry Motoring Consumer spending Ford Dan Milmo guardian.co.uk
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Actor who plays mechanic Kevin Webster in ITV soap denies allegations he abused a schoolgirl Coronation Street star Michael Le Vell has denied allegations that he abused a schoolgirl and says he will do “everything in his power” to clear his name. The actor, who plays mechanic Kevin Webster in the popular ITV soap, was arrested last week on suspicion of a sexual offence. Le Vell, 46, was arrested at his Cheshire home on 30 September by Greater Manchester police before being taken to a police station, where he was held for questioning. In a statement, he said: “I strenuously deny these allegations and will do everything in my power to prove my innocence.” A police spokesman said: “A 46-year-old man from Hale has been arrested on suspicion of a historic sexual offence. He has been bailed by police until 16 November 2011, pending further inquiries. The report was made to police on Thursday 29 September 2011.” Le Vell, whose real name is Michael Turner, is married to actor Janette Beverley. The couple have two children. A spokeswoman for ITV said: “We are aware these allegations have been made. Given that a police investigation is under way, it would not be appropriate to comment further on this matter.” Coronation Street Television Soap opera guardian.co.uk
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In a letter to supporters, Sarah Palin said: ‘I have decided that I will not be seeking the GOP nomination for president of the US’ Sarah Palin has ended her year-long tease of American conservatives by finally announcing she will not be joining the presidential race. In a letter to supporters, Palin said: “After much prayer and serious consideration, I have decided that I will not be seeking the 2012 GOP nomination for president of the United States. “When we serve, we devote ourselves to God, family and country. My decision maintains this order.” Her departure clarifies the Republican field, with no other candidates likely to join the race at this late stage. The Republican contest is shaping up basically as between former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Texas governor Rick Perry, in spite of a recent surge in support for businessman Herman Cain. As well as saying she was putting her family first, she added she could be more effective for the conservative cause in helping getting Tea Party supporters and other rightwingers elected to Congress, governorships and the White House rather than standing herself. She did not need a title to help America recover, she said. “My decision is based upon a review of what commonsense conservatives and independents have accomplished, especially over the last year. I believe that at this time I can be more effective in a decisive role to help elect other true public servants to office – from the nation’s governors to Congressional seats and the presidency.” Still a strong voice in the Tea Party movement, she intends in the coming weeks to co-ordinate strategies to help Republicans retake the White House and Senate next year, and hold its control of the House. Palin has long toyed with the idea of a presidential run but has come up against poor poll ratings. One of the most recent polls, in the Washington Post this week, showed two-thirds of Republicans did not want her to stand. Palin rose to prominence in 2008 when she was the surprise choice of John McCain as his running mate against Barack Obama. She enjoyed high ratings among conservatives in the aftermath of the election and remains a popular figure on the right. Last year, she seemed to be a likely contender for the presidency but with each month that passed this year, her chances became slimmer, and irritation crept in among her supporters over her indecision. She was too late, seeing the right-wing ground she would have sought to occupy already claimed by figures such as Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and now Texas governor Rick Perry. She frequently left an impression that she would liked to have stood, turning up at key Republican events throughout the year that were attended by declared candidates. She launched a tour this year accompanied by her family aboard a bus painted like a campaign one and arrived in New Hampshire at roughly the same time as Romney was there announcing his decision to stand. In August, she dropped into Iowa as Republican candidates gathered for the Ames straw poll. She developed a strong dislike of much of the media, with the exception of a few trusted friends at Fox, where she is a paid employee. Some commentators predicted she would not stand because she feared the impact of renewed media scrutiny on her family, while others said she was enjoying the money from her new celebrity career too much to enter the fray. She suffered a serious political setback with the attempted assassination of the Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, in January. The attempt came after Palin had put out a graphic saying that Giffords was in her crosshairs. Although there was no evidence linking that to the shooting, it opened up a debate about whether rhetoric in American politics had become too violent. In her letter, Palin thanked her supporters who had defended her throughout the years and encouraged her to stand. She insisted that her decision not to stand meant she will fade out of politics and she set out her agenda for smaller government. “I will continue driving the discussion for freedom and free markets, including in the race for president where our candidates must embrace immediate action toward energy independence through domestic resource developments of conventional energy sources, along with renewables. We must reduce tax burdens and onerous regulations that kill American industry, and our candidates must always push to minimise government to strengthen the economy and allow the private sector to create jobs.” Sarah Palin Republicans United States US politics Ewen MacAskill guardian.co.uk
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NEW YORK — As the most powerful man in the universe, or one of them anyway, Roger Ailes can look back on the first 15 years of his crowning achievement, Fox News Channel, with satisfaction. And he does. It was way back in February 1996 that, at the behest of News Corp. chieftain Rupert Murdoch, Ailes began creating from scratch an all-news network to challenge the venerable CNN as well as upstart MSNBC, which was set to launch that July. “It was a risky move,” Ailes recalls, and not just for News Corp., whose $900 million or so would bankroll the venture. Fox News Channel was also risky for Ailes himself, who, then 55, was a communications guru of legendary savvy – a former Republican media strategist, TV producer and, until his abrupt resignation in January 1996, the head of CNBC and creator of another cable network, America’s Talking, that was being sacrificed to free up room for MSNBC. “I realized at my age that if I screwed up, or it didn’t work, I’d probably never work again,” says Ailes. “You just don’t go out when you’re over 55 years of age, have a colossal failure and expect to find work in your field again. “That was on my mind,” he confides, then pauses half-a-beat. “For a half-hour. Then I said, `I’ll make it work.’” He made it work. Fifteen years ago this Friday – on Oct. 7, 1996 – Fox News Channel signed on, as scheduled. And little more than five years later, it eclipsed that epic initial feat with another, by topping rival CNN in viewership for a full month. Allowing himself to gloat for a moment, Ailes savors the ill-advised prediction from a top executive at CNN parent Turner Broadcasting Co. who in May 2001 was quoted saying that, within a year, CNN’s new management team would vault CNN “well ahead of Fox.” Since 2002, Fox News has sealed the deal as ratings leader, dominating cable-news competition (and tying them in knots) in daytime, as well as in prime time with a murderers’ row of hosts led by Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity. The past year, Fox News Channel drew an average 1.1 million viewers – more than CNN and MSNBC combined. Propelled by Ailes’ “fair and balanced” branding, it successfully has targeted viewers who believe the other cable-news networks, and maybe the media overall, display a liberal tilt from which Fox News delivers them with unvarnished truth. Preaching its fairer-than-thou gospel, Fox News leveraged the public’s distrust for the media while positioning itself as the anti-media news-media alternative. Or so it seems to Fox News’ detractors, who lodge nonstop salvos against a network they decry as a conservative soap box writ large, even a mouthpiece for the Republican Party shaping public opinion on its behalf. These critics came to include Media Matters, a nonprofit group that polices Fox News as part of its larger stated mission to “correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media,” and filmmaker Robert Greenwald, who in 2004 released the scathing documentary “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism.” From the start, Ailes has steadfastly denied any such political bias or agenda on the part of his network. Politics, schmolitics: “I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings,” he declares. From the get-go, he meant for his network to counteract the sins he saw others committing: “I really believed there was no fairness or balance” elsewhere on the journalism landscape. And they struck back. “Everybody who’s getting their ass beat vilifies the opponent,” he says, speaking of the networks Fox News is beating handily. “This is the first rule of fighting.” Ah, the fight! Ever since a 27-year-old Ailes counseled Richard Nixon on how to use TV to win the presidency, such terms as “combative” and “ferocious” have described Ailes’ two-fisted style. But during a recent conversation, Ailes, now 71, seems not as pugnacious as he surveys Fox News Channel’s history and his place in it. “Mellow” wouldn’t be the word for this chairman-CEO, but as he talks he seems more reflective than feisty. “I don’t rise to the occasion when there’s no occasion,” he replies when asked what the passing years have taught him. Ailes has eased his heavyset frame into a wing chair in his office at News Corp.’s mid-Manhattan headquarters, where he graciously receives a guest who likely represents one of his least favorite characters: a journalist who doesn’t work for him. “When there IS an occasion,” he goes on, “I will do what I have to do, and I will win. Is that mellowing? I tend to see it more as picking my battles a little better than I used to. That’s probably the best thing I’ve learned: to save it for when you need it, because when you need it, you have to win.” But why, specifically, has Fox News Channel won against its rivals for a decade? “The consistency of our product,” Ailes sums up matter-of-factly. “I think we do better television than the other guys, and no matter how we do it, they don’t seem to catch up. We seem to out-invent them and think ahead of them, and have better story ideas, better graphics, better on-air talent. We just are better television producers.” At Fox, there’s also a consistency in leadership – consistency in Ailes’ laser-focused vision for the network – that other networks can’t come close to matching. From them, “there have been 14 or 15 senior executives thrown at me,” Ailes says. “So part of their problem is, the corporations lost confidence in their own senior executives. I think that helped me some. I think their screw-ups may have been corporate in nature, in the sense that if they had great executives in there, they didn’t back `em. And some of them WEREN’T great executives.” While he allows that, in the beginning, he “underestimated a little bit” how hard it would be to seize the ratings mantle from his rivals, “I had not counted on them screwing up as much,” he hastily adds. Ailes, who calls himself “a television producer by trade” and understands TV in his bones as well as anyone alive, points to CNN’s “The Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer” as an example of how the competition falls short. “Wolf Blitzer is an excellent reporter, but he’s not a star,” says Ailes. And since the format of the show calls for Blitzer to highlight visuals on the “news wall” behind him, “he spends half of his time with his back to the camera. I like Wolf. I think he’s a good journalist. But I get offended that his back is to the camera.” (CNN responded that it “has demonstrated that there is a place in cable news for objective coverage of politics and Washington. No journalist demonstrates this better than Wolf Blitzer.”) It is this level of detail at which Ailes scrutinizes what goes on the air, from his rivals and, especially – exhaustively – on his own channels, which also include the 4-year-old Fox Business Network. Ailes’ empire has further expanded to include Fox News Radio, Fox News’ digital platform, the Fox Television Stations Group and Twentieth Television syndication group since he flipped the switch on Fox News Channel’s first day. “If you’d asked me that day would I still be here in 15 years, I probably would have said no,” he muses, noting that his career had previously taken the form of serial troubleshooting: “People would call me and give me a really ugly problem to solve, and I would do it, and then I’d ride out of town like the Lone Ranger and go on to the next thing. “But the business channel, radio and dot-com world came along, and the competition of fighting NBC and CNN was exhilarating. So here I am.” One problem he insists he won’t be facing is the hacking scandal that has engulfed other areas of Murdoch’s News Corp. empire in London. “We don’t have a problem,” Ailes says flatly. It’s apples-and-oranges – British tabloid culture gone terribly wrong, as opposed to a U.S. television operation whose “editorial is terrific.” “I’ve stayed away from this News Corp. issue because it’s not a Fox News issue,” he says. “I know nothing more about it than I’m reading in the press, and I don’t discuss it with Rupert.” Ailes’ contract runs out in Summer 2013, after one more rollicking presidential race, and shortly after he turns 73. He says he hasn’t decided if he’ll stay on, or, if not, what’s next. “The bad news,” Ailes cracks, “is, I just went to my doctor and he said, `Other than arthritis, your chart reads like a 40-year-old’s. You’re old, you’re fat and you’re ugly, but you’re not going to die from any of those things immediately.’ So if I still feel like this and somebody offers me a job in June of `13, I may just take it.” Maybe he’ll take on this challenge back in his native Ohio: the Cleveland Indians. They won the World Series in 1948, and haven’t since. “I always wanted to raise the money to go back and buy the Cleveland Indians and be sure they won one more World Series,” Ailes says. “But I got sidetracked.” Then, chuckling, he cites his status as a favorite lightning rod for liberals’ disdain. “The politically correct crowd would go after me to change the team’s name,” he says, maybe joking and maybe not. “They’d be all over my ass because I bought the Indians!” ___
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“I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings.” —ROGER AILES, chairman of Fox News, on his apolitical reasons to hire former Alaska governor Sarah Palin as a network contributor (via Associated Press)
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Service to the Canary Islands that will be powered partly by waste from cooking oil is criticised as ‘hollow PR stunt’ The UK’s first commercial flight to be powered by biofuels will take off on Thursday, heading to the Canary Islands and into a storm of controversy. Thomson Airways’ 14.25 service from Birmingham airport to Arrecife, on the island of Lanzarote, will be a scheduled flight like any other – except that one of the plane’s engines will run on a mixture of standard fuel and biofuel made from waste cooking oil. But while Thomson, the airline business of TUI Travel, hailed the flight as the start of a new era that would take aviation beyond fossil fuels, environmental campaigners slammed the pilot project as a gimmick that would end up harming the environment. The project has the support of MPs and the government’s aviation minister, Theresa Villiers, who said: “Sustainable biofuels have a role to play in efforts to tackle climate change, particularly in sectors where no other viable low carbon energy source has been identified – as is the case with aviation. We want aviation to flourish and grow but we have also been clear that the environmental impacts of flying must be addressed.” Green campaigners attacked the use of waste cooking fat as a “hollow PR stunt”, because such fuel could only be used to power a tiny fraction of flights. Friends of the Earth calculated that each of the 232 passengers on Thursday’s four-hour flight would have to save all of their chip fat for 100 years in order to provide enough to power the plane. Kenneth Richter, biofuels campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “Biofuels won’t make flying any greener – their production is wrecking rainforests, pushing up food prices and causing yet more climate-changing emissions. The government must curb future demand for flights by halting airport expansion, promoting video conferencing, and developing faster, better and affordable rail services.” The problem is that biofuels – once greeted by green campaigners as an alternative to fossil fuels – are now regarded as even more environmentally destructive than the fuels they replace. Natural oils such as palm oil are now hugely valuable globally traded commodities, and the rush to cash in has led to the widespread destruction of rainforest in countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia. For these reasons, green pressure groups want a moratorium on the use of biofuels. There have been moves to set up standards that would ensure any biofuels from oils such as palm oil come only from environmentally sustainable sources, but the supply is still only a fraction of the demand for plant-based oils. The Boeing 757 plane with Rolls-Royce engines will use biofuel only from waste fats that have been processed to make them suitable. But the company concedes that the supply of such oils is relatively small. Aviation currently accounts for around 2-3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, a proportion that is likely to increase. Air transport is not included in emissions targets under the Kyoto protocol, but the European Union plans to include flights to, from and within the bloc in its emissions trading scheme, which would penalise the airlines with the highest relative emissions. This move is bitterly opposed by the US, China and several other non-EU countries . The passengers on Thomson’s TOM7446 flight have been informed about the biofuels. According to a spokesman, their reaction was “very positive”. Biofuels Travel and transport Energy Renewable energy Flights Tui Travel Airline industry Travel & leisure Air transport Friends of the Earth Fiona Harvey guardian.co.uk
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