"Birmingham is a hidden gem and the missing part in the UK's aviation capacity jigsaw"
He has clearly had a logic bypass in the rush to get a crass soundbite:
"Birmingham has many hidden gems" - of course it does, just like any medium-large sized city. I think the canals are great for urban walks.
=> "Birmingham" - the UK's second city, well known to all who need to - a) hidden? Come on
And b) a gem? Now that is really stretching it - good parts yes, but a gem? Rough diamond at best!
And this 38 mins rail link still doesn't explain how people are going to fork out £2-300 for a cab fare to London or why outbound pax would drive so far up the M40 / M1&6 to take a flight which is guaranteed to be available from another LON airport (why would that change?), and is unlikely to be much more expensive anyway (if at all) due to economies of scale*.
*Caveat - some flights will always be cheaper from BHX some of the time, I gather this happens with EK every now and then. But these are still the exceptions (high freq route), and any price differences are still counterbalanced by the cost of getting to / from BHX.
Right, where were we? Let's get back to Boris Island. Not sure which is more idiotic - London Johnson International (LJI) or LBI? At least LBI is only throwing £130m odd at the extension - less than 0.5% of LJI - and the HS2 project simply stops at Rubbish Dump Interchange because it suits the planners, serving the airport is just a co-incidence - otherwise they'd actually stop near the terminal.