Now who says Democracy is a Joke.

Back in 2001 the UK government gave planning permission to plans to expand the Heathrow airport site by building a fifth terminal. In order to appease 8 years of protest over the issue the government announced that the building of this new terminal would not lead to the building of a third runway. Now just 9 months after the new Terminal 5 opened the government has announced that it is going to build a third runway along with a sixth terminal and a hub railway station to connect to Birmingham. The government feels this expansion is needed to project jobs through a huge infrastructure building project and allow Heathrow to increase it's capacity so it can maintain it's status as a European hub airport.

As these objectives can be achieved by simply building a high-speed rail link to the north of England and Scotland there is massive public and political opposition to the expansion plan with both the minority Conservative and Liberal Democrat Parties announcing that they will not support the idea. A significant proportion of the governing Labour party have also stated their intention to vote against their party leadership on the issue. In short this expansion plan has no chance whatsoever of passing a Parliamentary vote but the government, not wanting something like democratic process get in the way of their rule have come up with a solution. They're simply not going to allow Parliament to vote on the issue instead passing it directly onto the planning consultation stage. By an amazing coincidence the government have just changed the planning consultation process meaning that little issues like the ownership of private property no longer have to be resolved through the courts in accordance with the law because they can simply be disregarded if the minister in charge feels they represent an impediment to planning permission being granted. The government has also used the new parliamentary session to re-introduce it's plans to formalise the governments powers to bribe judges in Coroner cases. This of course was part of the anti-terrorism bill 2008 which was rejected by the House of Lords but they should be able to sneak it through under the guise of the Coroners and Justice Bill.

Meanwhile in the Israel - Gaza the death toll has risen to 13 Israelis and over 1000 Palestinians while the Egyptian peace talks are stalled over the issues of when and how Israeli troops will withdraw from Gaza and who will police the Gaza/Egypt border. The Israelis want the border to be policed by Israeli troops in the same way it has always been. Egypt wants it to be policed by Fatah who were defeated by Hamas in the Gaza civil war. Hamas want it to be policed by an international force operating under a United Nations mandate. The IDF have today taken the opportunity to show their contempt for the UN through the sick media stunt of shelling the main UN compound in Gaza and using white phosphorus shells to set fire to a UN run hospital. These atrocities give Israeli representatives plenty of opportunity to appear on television drawing comparisons between Hamas and the UN as if to say "You can't trust the UN, they're helping Hamas by trying to act as a politically impartial aid agency rather then helping Israel achieve it's aim of overthrowing the elected government of Gaza".

Oh and the IAF also took the time to bomb the Reuters news agency in Gaza so those troubling reports about the number of Palestinians being killed should dry up quite soon.