Ah, yes: the environment

Flying has been nonexistent lately due to a lack of funds. Anyone who lives in the UK will know that the economy is in trouble and that tax, electricity and fuel bills are all rising rapidly, the latter two by 30% per year. It's ridiculous. I have yet to find out if the rise in fuel costs will affect the price of flying lessons. The tax issue is what really annoys me though: without wanting to rant, how the government thinks that it is reasonable to send taxes on fuel and cars through to roof to encourage us to use public transport and yet still let NI's only bus company to charge me about £2.50 ($5) for a return journey to the City Centre (20 minutes away) and a truly disgraceful £9 ($18) for a return trip to Belfast International Airport (30 minutes away) is completely beyond me. Most likely they don't think it is reasonable but do it anyway for fear of upsetting Greenpeace.

I'm all for protecting the environment, the lengths some people will go to to make a profit are disturbing (for example various activities in the Amazon Rainforest), but arguably environmental pressure groups would be better off devoting their considerable resources to the research of alternative fuels, or picketing the head offices of Translink Northern Ireland to get the fares down, or something - anything but climbing on to the fuselages of planes at Heathrow Airport (which they seem to have done with relative impunity) or, and this is what really baffles me, protesting against the building of a third runway at Heathrow. I'm sure you have heard of Heathrow, one of the busiest airports in the world, which therefore has pretty long queues of planes waiting to take off. Hasn't it struck anyone that building a third runway would mean that there are less planes sitting on a taxiway with their engines on doing nothing but burning expensive fuel and emitting all kinds of nasties into the atmosphere instead of doing the useful and necessary work of transporting people from A to B in safety and comfort? But no, this sensible measure might destroy a field or two so Heathrow security must spend hours prising people off the tailfins of A320s...

This post was actually supposed to be about my ongoing search for a job to do with aviation to fund both my flying and life in general but that will have to wait because I seem to have gone on for a bit. Sorry. I'd like to hear your thoughts - from both sides of the fence - on the issues above.