900. The billing reveals that just 144 is the actual air-fare. The rest is charges and taxes. Here is the text of the SoS' speech . It's the sort of waffle you would expect in a wafflers' gathering; the real work is done away from the public gaze. Perhaps it's time that the Irish delegation was cut down to size; 25 from Dublin and 5 from the devolved administrations is a nonsense. Can Nevin repost that link to the text of the speech? The hot-link @ 11:25am isn't opening for me; I'm under the cosh to do "other things"; and other routes take me to irrelevancies (Sammy Wilson at the NI Assembly?). Thank you, Nevin : I now see where I was going wrong. I was searching for a speech with a major contribution on APD and NI air traffic. Blink or sneeze and you missed it. I'm grateful for this thread: it has caused me to re-think my personal attitude to APD. In retrospect I was seduced by the "Green" buzz around it. I now see I was wrong. I retraced to when it was introduced by Ken Clarke in 1994. It had some validity then: Clarke's argument was that air transport was lightly taxed (no fuel duty, no VAT) compared to other modes of transport. He was so convinced by his own logic, he doubled the impost in 1997. With Brown as Chancellor it was first halved, then (2007) restored to Clark's level. Darling made what was little