If the demos ground me, I'll join the airport camp

Only when the flight approach into the airport switches to the north do you realise you aren't in some still sleepier part of the 'burbs.

The only reason I even know what Harlington looks like is because a few years ago I walked to Heathrow from my house, along the Grand Union Canal then across Hounslow Heath. Otherwise I would've remained in the same blissful ignorance of the airport's surroundings as the rest of its 20 million annual users.

Now a protest camp has been set up between Harlington and the adjoining village of Sipson, and already there are fears that the peaceful environmental campaigners have been infiltrated by eco-warriors and anti-globalisation protesters. Instead of waving their little banners ineffectually at the thousands of holidaymakers who will be being thrust over their heads by carbon-dumping jet engines, these hard-core elements are going to provoke security emergencies and generally try to disrupt the running of Heathrow.

I would say "smooth" running, but this would be an oxymoron. BAA, the company that has a monopoly stranglehold on London's airports, is determined to have another runway there, and, as yet, the PM has shown no more inclination than his predecessor to stop it. Soon, he'll be mouthing the shibboleth that restricting Heathrow's growth is tantamount to putting a bomb under the entire British economy.

It's nonsense, of course. Heathrow is, was and always shall be a disastrous airport for London: it's too near the capital, it operates at way over capacity, and has no high-speed rail link to the rest of the country. Building more runways and terminals is simply putting a sticking plaster on this wound, which continues to fester with more and more traffic.

I don't doubt that there is already a hardcore element at the camp that wants to screw things up for BAA and British Airways, which benefits from an equally monopolistic position with its landing slots. I have no more time for these quixotic Luddites that I do their opponents: they're the lineal descendants of every bellowing Trot and febrile class warrior it's ever been my misfortune to attend a demonstration with. I don't think their "direct actions" will be any more effective in galvanising the Government over climate change than the pop poseurs of Live Earth.

Nevertheless, I can't help but have a sneaking hope that they will screw things up; and this despite the fact I'm jetting away from the airport myself, this coming Saturday. If my flight is grounded by eco-warriors, I'll take it as a divine signal, and spend my time at their camp, perhaps delivering a few stiff lectures about the economic implications of the Stern Report on climate change. At the very least, I can help familiarise the protesters most of whom probably arrived by road with the local area..