Sadiq Khan Racks Up Enough Air Miles to Fly to the Moon and Back
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been accused of “preaching Net Zero from the comfort of his many plane journeys” after racking up enough air miles to fly to the Moon and back in attending international climate summits and events abroad. The Telegraph has the story.
Analysis of the Mayor of London’s international travel expenses show that the architect of London’s ultra low emission zone (Ulez) expansion has flown more than 73,000 miles across the past eight years.
This equates to over 473,000 air miles when flying with a team of people, producing a total of 43.6 tonnes of carbon through 13 flights.
It is roughly the equivalent to flying 19 times around the Earth’s circumference at the equator – or just under one trip to the moon and back.
In total, his office purchased at least 70 seats on international flights – enough to fill up an ATR 72 aircraft (a type of carrier used for short-haul flights).
This included an entourage of eight accompanying Khan to New York last September as he represented C40 Cities as its co-chair at an international climate conference.
In total, data from 2023-24 reveals Sir Sadiq took 23 members of staff with him on four trips to events in New York and Rome and Paris – two of which were climate related.
Other flights from previous years include a trip to India and Pakistan in 2017 with seven members of staff, which cost nearly £21,000 and racked up over 66,000 air miles.
In 2016, he also made a trip to Canada and the USA with a team of seven, which cost over £32,000 and amounted to over 56,000 air miles. …
Sir Sadiq has historically opposed Heathrow’s proposed third runway, telling reporters in June 2023 that “we don’t want more flights”.
In January 2025, he said: “I remain opposed to a new runway at Heathrow Airport because of the severe impact it will have on noise, air pollution and meeting our climate-change targets.”
He added: “I’m simply not convinced that you can have hundreds of thousands of additional flights at Heathrow every year without a hugely damaging impact on our environment.”
In May 2023, when asked about private jets, he said: “Frequent air travellers should consider firstly whether a particular journey is needed at all and, if so, to take the lowest carbon options wherever possible.”
The Mayor has also repeatedly encouraged Londoners to “reduce carbon emissions to help save the planet”. …
Victoria Atkins, the Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “Anyone who lives, works or visits London knows how it has become one giant traffic jam under Sadiq Khan. In a textbook example of Left-wing hypocrisy, ‘Climate Khan’ is happy to close roads, drive up costs for drivers and waste our time in jams, while preaching Net Zero from the comfort of his many plane journeys.”
Worth reading in full.
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Odious narcissistic hypocrite, with a sever case of little man syndrome. He revels in being despised because he thinks this is a badge of honour in the circles (bubble) he frequents.
His disdain for ordinary people is clear to see in his less than frequent interactions in public forums
He only gets involved in things he is interested in: where was he last week when his friends the RMT were disrupting the people who still want to use London as a place of work
I just find him such an obnoxious individual.
His performances at mayoral question time reveal him to be a total shit.
A nasty, hypocritical poison dwarf. But morons keep voting him in!!
The hypocrisy argument should be devastating. And of course it applies to almost every single politician, billionaire and bureaucrat aggressively advocating for NetZero totalitarianism, starting with the patron saint of the movement Al Gore.
And yet, it never makes a dent. This argument goes literally nowhere and convinces no one who doesn’t already think NetZero is a scam.
I suppose it has something to do with slave mentality and the ingrained notion that our “superiors’ are entitled to certain privileges.
The ends justify the means. What possible problem could there be?
When did we add “for” to the verb “to advocate”.
When standards dropped and poor grammar became more acceptable? 🙂
I admit to butchering the English language from time to time. Well, no need to admit it, right?
I wouldn’t call this hypocrisy. Khan wants to limit what mere people are allowed to do according to what he and his “enlightened” political friends consider sensible for them or – IMHO more probable – according to what the people paying him as their inoffcial PR representative consider sensible. There’s only one mayor of London and the mayor of London obviously needs to do certain things millions of Londoners who aren’t mayor don’t need to do. An IMHO better argument would be to point out that no reduction of CO₂ emissions in the UK or, for that matter, all of Europe, will lower world-wide CO₂ emissions by a meaningful amount. If man-made CO₂ emissions will be our downfall, emissions by China and India must urgently be reduced. But these aren’t even subject to UN proposed CO₂ controls because they’re considered “developing countries”. How does the climate distinguish between “developed CO₂” and “developing CO₂”, however? The atmoshpere as enormously large “swimming pool” of different gases has certainly no way to track the origin of a molecule and behave differently depending on that and neither do we: Measured CO₂ levels include “developing CO₂” but only “developed CO₂” is ever supposed to be… Read more »
Apparently during “Covid” it was fine to meet via Zoom, but that just won’t do now apparently.
I have travelled a bit for work and apart from it being fun to meet some different people and eat in nice restaurants and stay in nice hotels at someone else’s expense, I did not find it an overly useful experience. Underlings who do actual work collaborate remotely and work gets done, the bosses who just talk (mainly bollocks) apparently absolutely must fly and spend ££££s. I suppose it keeps the industry going but it doesn’t seem very efficient to me.
You can get a lot done via zoom but periodically face to face meetings are imo valuable.
I have not found it so but my experience is limited to one business sector only and coloured by my own approach to my work, which I feel is very focused on the task at hand and takes little account of the interpersonal- or rather if someone is on my wavelength workwise, I don’t feel that meeting them in person adds anything, and if they are obviously not then there is no hope anyway. But that’s just me.
I suppose it depends what you do.
I’m quite certain that fixing pot holes and dealing with knife crime in London does not require flying large teams of halfwits around the world on a regular basis.
Khan should certainly not be flying anywhere on taxpayer’s money
I expect he sees his political mission differently- all of these bastards think they are above just doing the basics right
The little khant is in charge of the C400 project.
Delusions of grandeur
The Civil Service loves meetings. If they did not have meetings there would be strikes because they would be in danger of actually doing some work.
Can’t stand them unless they are to the point and only attended by those who need to be involved
They are kept to a minimum at our place
The lawful purposes of councils, quangos and agencies should be tightly written. Activities outside their primary purposes should be ultra vires.
Self promotion at the expense of ratepayers, TfL passengers etc should be illegal and dealt with by the fraud squad.
100%
Sadly we slide further towards people having lost all sense of what it’s acceptable to demand money with menaces for
One of the few mistakes the Founding Fathers made was to include the woolly words about “for the common good” when talking about the tax raising powers of the federal government
….and back? Dammit!
Apparently some people voted for this little squirt.
Not in great numbers though….
Of course us mugs – the taxpayers – pick up the bill for all this climate junketry. Yet again if anyone thinks cutting taxes would be unfunded with all this massive waste of money to be axed.
The title of Sir should be earned, it’s been granted to him, but he hasn’t earned it from the people, I can think of much better and appropriate monikers to use!
Next Tuesday.
The bigger the hypocrite, the more air miles.
Al Gore and Bono must have millions of miles each
Dinger’s comment in the NR nails it…
“Can’t we just buy him a one-way ticket?”
So the Khunt’s a massive hypocrite. Who’d a thunk it.