Nicely put Pat,
I've a lot of sympathy for the people that have been lied to by numerous governemets over the years.
Unfortunately it's all too easy to promise everyone that "This'll be the last terminal, honest" when you know full well you won't be in office to handle the ramifications in 20yrs time.
I remember spending a lot of time studying airport expansion as part of an Economics A-Level - it came under the heading of
'Market Failure'.
If politicans were open about the required long term rate of expansion for given airports, people would be in the position to decide for themselves.
As it is plenty of people (i guess they're not in the airline business
) believe that there's only one round of expansion to go all the time. That makes house prices artificially high, and of course with the inevitable long term increase in flights they fall behind unaffected areas.
Why's it fair for someone to get pushed down the house ladder because they were lied to/not given the full picture?
The only solution I can see is for the government to draw up long term expansion plans and make them public. That way the free market will sort out the true value of the affected areas and people shouldn't loose out in the future.
Although they could just avoid all the hassle that would bring them of course....
Stu
p.s. as for the wingers that start complaining as soon as they move into the area
