AlphaCharlie
If you re-read 120.4's posting you will see that he is saying that the problem is too many slots for the runway capacity.
As for the argument that LHR must be bigger than any european hub - the UK is the 4th biggest economy in the world and can support a large aviation industry on its own. With the growth in air travel by the residents of the UK there will be a need for more capacity - but to say that we must continue to be the biggest transfer hub for Europe does not take account of the fact that transferring large numbers of PAX does not make enviromental sense. You yourself AlphaCharlie say that you would prefer point to point routes.
London has 3 major international airports - if LGW and STN were each given one extra runway this would total 6, enough for any forseable growth in the medium term. This option would also spread the load on the infrastructure of the South East.
If you do go ahead and build an extra runway at LHR, it will not be long before there will be a clamour to have it rebuilt to a full length runway, then there will be the requirement for it to have its own terminal - where does it stop (we have already seen the backpeddling over commitments given during the T5 enquiry and the thing isn't even built yet!).
There is already zero unemployment in the surrounding area so any increase in jobs (T5 and the extra runway estimated at up to 15,000) will require more people to come and live in the most congested part of England with the added load on the crumbling infrastructure of the South East.