When something must be done...

Norman Baker is a curious fellow. Liberal Democrats tend to be a bit peculiar at the best of times, but Mr Baker appears to enjoy taking it to interesting extremes.

An opponent of such nefarious and unconnected evils as the monarchy and Brighton & Hove Albion FC, he is now to be heard railing against airlines:

Airlines which fail to get at least 95% of passengers through check-in within 15 minutes should be fined, the Liberal Democrats have said.

Transport spokesman Norman Baker said queues had to be minimised at Gatwick and Heathrow to ensure a "smooth and efficient journey".

No-one likes queues, we'll give him that. And smoothness and efficiency, yes, we're all big fans of that.

But he added that no penalty existed for excessive queues at check-ins run by airlines.

Presumably because it's none of the government's business how companies choose to treat their customers, nor do they have a remit to act as the Queue Police.

Those failing to deal with at least 95% of passengers within 15 minutes should be fined by the Civil Aviation Authority, Mr Baker said.

I would be fascinated to learn who WILL act as the Queue Police, however. One hopes the Civil Aviation Authority choose to focus their activities on more important topics than spewing out lots of clipboard-wielding aspirant traffic wardens to officiously declare such abominations as only 94.78% of passengers being processed within the permitted time period. Horror of horrors.

"Delays should not hold up planes for long periods of time on the runway, nor should flights be left stacking over cities, wasting time and creating significantly increased carbon emissions. Unfortunately this is not the case at present."

I am no expert on aviation, but I am willing to bet that jet fuel is not at its cheapest right now. It is therefore no great leap of imagination to suppose that airlines are not exactly going to be keen on keeping their aeroplanes in the air much longer than necessary. The incentive already exists for them to not waste time, and it's better than the earnest intonations of a notoriously odd politician.

Mr Baker's report also calls for the carbon emissions details of passengers' journeys to be printed on tickets.

Oh for crying out loud. What exactly does he think will be achieved by this? "Oh dear, my flight to the south of France is going to emit 0.2kg of carbon dioxide per mile, I'd hate to be seen as a advocate of polar bear genocide, best cancel the booking and go on a nice cycling holiday in Pembrokeshire instead".

Or more likely, it's an attempt at futile guilt-tripping, allowing another AGW fantasist to take the moral high ground about the Impending Global Cataclysm that's been due to occur "any day now" for about twenty years.