Do you remember Jo Moore, the Labour aide, who was spinning away at the Department of Transport on September 11, 2001?

While the people of the rest of the world watched their TV screens in silent horror as New York’s Twin Towers collapsed in flames and thousands of people lost their lives, Ms Moore was busy firing off an email suggesting that it might be “a good day to bury bad news”.

Of course, this heartless harpy was ultimately fired, although her real crime was being caught in the act. After all, she was absolutely right that it was a really good day to bury bad news, but perhaps not such a brilliant one to send an email round to everyone suggesting that?

The bare fact of the matter was that Jo was just doing her job. While the rest of us were atrophied with pity in front of the live news feeds from Manhattan, Jo was busy at the keyboard serving her masters at the Department of Transport, which shows both an incredible devotion to duty and an equally unbelievable lack of human decency.

Mind you, while the Government publicly decried her actions, it hasn’t deterred it from continuing to utilise good days “to bury bad news” – although, obviously, these days spin doctors have learned their lessons and don’t send incriminating emails. I imagine they probably pick up the phone instead or use a post-it note.

Last week, as you probably noticed, presented a quite outstanding opportunity to slip out a bit of bad news.

As the world plunged into economic chaos, stock market screens plummeted to infra-red and journalists struggled to find yet another adjectival sequence beginning with the letter ‘m’ to describe an unfortunate Monday, someone deep within the bowels of the Department of Transport (yes, them again) sensed the stirring of an opportunity.

Considering that last week, news stories about imminent financial meltdown were stacking round newsdesks like planes queuing to land at Heathrow, you’d be forgiven if you missed an important piece of news about the expansion of Stansted Airport in Essex.

In a written statement to Parliament on Thursday, Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon announced that the Government has given the green light to BAA’s proposals to increase passenger numbers to 35 million a year – that’s a whopping ten million more than at present, roughly increasing capacity by one third.

Of course, if you are sitting looking at your shares taking a nose dive on the Footsie at the moment or contemplating the imminent bankruptcy of your pension fund, you are probably thinking something like: “What on earth is she banging on about now?”

Well, I’m no economist (obviously) but I’m willing to bet that in 10 years’ time the economic turbulence of the past few days will be the stuff of comfortable City legend (“I was there for the great crash of 08, my boy”). But while it will be a case of business as usual on the Square Mile, miles of beautiful historic countryside in Essex and Cambridgeshire will have been irretrievably damaged to make way for the expanding airport and its ancillary services.

On top of the increase in passenger numbers, BAA is also hoping to build a second runway at Stansted and Mr Hoon’s announcement about raised passenger capacity will be undoubtedly be used as a powerful argument to support this.

Regular readers of this column will be aware that I’m not exactly a dyed-in-the-wool greeny, but quite apart from the increased air pollution caused by thousands of extra flights, the countryside (and wildlife) will be ravaged as the airport and the many operations connected to it spread.

Quite apart from all the building this will entail, you probably aren’t aware that miles of historic, tree- and hedgerow-lined lanes that snake between the historic villages are likely to be bulldozed into straighter lines to allow increased access for massive cargo carrying lorries.

And don’t get me started on the hundreds of ancient, beamy listed buildings that are under threat. A fair number of them even stand smack in the footprint of the proposed new runway. Or – as in the case of the very beautiful medieval church in the little village of Tilty – about 20 feet from it.

Just imagine holding your annual Harvest Festival service or Christmas Carol concert as a Boeing 747 takes off directly over your roof.

Considering we are hectored about climate change at every money-making opportunity by the Government, it is odd the same people who get all hot and frothy about the over-use of plastic bags or insufficient loft lagging are unable to recognise the damage wreaked on so many levels by allowing at least 10 million more people a year to spew jet exhaust over a lovely swathesof southern England.

As I said, last Thursday was definitely a good day to bury bad news.

While in years to come I am completely confident that the economic climate will eventually achieve equilibrium, the decision that sneaked out in the eye of the financial storm last week will probably change our landscape forever.

I think on the stock market that’s called selling a future.

Just room here for a mention of something much more uplifting. Each year, October is designated as Big Draw month by the Campaign for Drawing and I can’t think of a hobby that has given me more pleasure in recent years than sketching – unless you count evenings spent with a couple of friends and good stockpile of Rioja.

A couple of years ago, a friend and I signed up locally for a course of life drawing lessons; you know, the ones where you draw a real, live, naked human being.

Stop sniggering at the back there; I can assure you there’s nothing remotely smutty about it.

After the initial surprise of the first session where we were confronted by the full frontal shock of being less than two feet away from a bloke in the nuddy you’d be amazed at the way we completely forget the strangeness of the situation.

Believe me, you are far more worried about getting the proportion of your drawing right than assessing the – ahem - ‘proportions’ of the chap in front of you.

Anyway, after week three, 23-year-old Gavin, whom we’d both become quite fond of in an entirely aesthetic way, was replaced by Carla, who was pushing 70 and weighed in at about 17 stone. In my archive I now have a selection of challenging works that could easily stand comparison with those of Lucien Freud.