Lembit Opik does love his odd modes of transport, most recently embarrassing his party with a stunt on a Segway. Previously, he used to give the Liberals that other-worldly touch with his obsession with asteroid strikes, prevention thereof. I always suspected he wanted to go on the spaceship himself for that mission.
Today he turned up in Fife to back their local candidate from the cockpit of a plane, presumably to get the message across that Liberals back aviation, not carbon cuts. Or perhaps to try carpet-bombing the residents of Glenrothes with leaflets that say "Only the Lib Dems can win here", which would be just as accurate as usual.
One curious thing, though, is that the release says he was "behind the wheel" of the plane, presumably his Mooney M20J. I am not an expert, obviously, but I think the word here is "yoke".
It looks like one or two of his colleagues would rather he tried the balloon chair (pictured), though, unless there is in fact a genuine campaigning reason why he's resigned tonight.
Of course our very own minister for climate change Stewart "Beaker" Stevenson is another who likes his private flying if you see my post at http://loveandgarbage.livejournal.com/139821.html . He still lists this as an interest on his official SNP profile at http://www.snp.org/node/6526 .
I remain bemused why none of the other parties have suggested that there is some possible contradiction in his behaviour (especially given his desire to excuse aviation from the climate change targets in the forthcoming bill), but I may be missing something...