Expansion plans
The BHX thread reports the enthusiasm of Teresa Villiers, Tory shadow transport secretary, for BHX as a greener alternative to expanding Heathrow.
Villiers says that it would be better to use BHX saying, 'stuffing more and more flights into the same overcrowded corner of the south of England starts to impose an unacceptably high cost to our environment and to our quality of life'.
This is in stark contrast to her view on the expansion of BRS as reported in the Bristol Evening Post where Villiers is said to be not enthusiastic about BRS's major expansion plans. Furthermore, she will give no undertaking that the electrification of the main railway line from London to Bristol (recently promised by Labour) would go ahead under the Conservatives.
Rather an odd stance from someone who always seems so keen to get domestic air travellers out of the sky and into trains, and a graduate of Bristol University to boot. What did they do there to upset her?
Now that the South West Regional Development Agency has written to the planning authority at North Somerset Council expressing doubts about BRS's expansion plans, along with formal letters of objection from Bristol City Council (the former owners of the airport!) and Bath and Northeast Somerset Council, not to mention the opposition of nearly all the neighbouring parish councils and a number of local MPs (Tory and Lib Dem - most Labour MPs are getting splinters in their backsides wondering which way to jump following their government's White Paper of a few years ago, no doubt waiting for the result of the General Election), it might not be surprising that the Tories nationally don't want to rock boats with support.
So it may be that in the years ahead West Country aerial travellers will be heading north along the M5 rather than east along the M4 to lift their feet from terra firma.