Paul Kingsnorth

You have to hand it to Plane Stupid: they do a great line in stunts. This morning they were up on the roof of the Houses of Parliament, being startlingly effective with their message about new airport construction. Good on them. The sheer cheekiness of it all is an inspiration in a nation in which nothing ever seems to change but for the worst. The ever-witty Gordon Brown responded by saying that "decisions should be made in this house and not on the roof of this house, and that is a very important message to send out to protesters." Isn't that brilliant? So characteristically humourless and clunking and utterly self-defeating. Good old Gordon. It was worth it just to hear that. Oh, and to read the response-by-numbers from this wanker - and the splendidly barbed comments below it.

Readers of this blog will know, of course, that I am stoically unconvinced about our ability to prevent the climate going tits up - though when I see things like this it does give me a momentary flicker of hope. Unfortunately, I then see things like this. This is an article about the world's largest building - Beijing's new airport. It's twice the size of Heathrow's Terminal Five. 97 new airports are planned for China, 45 of which will be built in the next five years. Try climbing on the roof of this and see where it gets you. Bayoneted, I would imagine, by the defenders of the Glorious Revolution.

This seems, incidentally, to be a point entirely lost on arch-tool Norman Foster, the architect responsible for this monstrosity. He was all over the media yesterday, smugly observing that it has taken less time to build his new Ozymandian construction than it has taken to hold the public inquiry into Terminal 5. He sounded like he thought this was a good thing. That's the way it tends to work, Norm, when actual people aren't allowed to get in the way. Hitler had a good line in ruthless architectural efficiency too. I'd bet he paid his architects handsomely as well.