silverstrata
However, I was not so happy with the suggestion that the Chinese should pay for it. All this 'inward investment' through the purchasing UK businesses may give us jam today, but it also makes us slaves of the Chinese for the future (and the future's future).
Too late!! The Chinese have been quietly colonising the world for more than a decade. They have got most of Africa sewn up and are now working their way through the other continents.
The expansion forces in this country that have driven demand for a proper hub are no longer there. In the next ten years, the economy of the country is going to stagnate as we haul ourselves through the recession - which will probably come to be seen as the Second Great Depression.
The demand for hub connections that we failed to provide has already moved to the usual suspects on the Continent. We cannot get it back and the demand still seen is residual but America is in the same economic state as ourselves, so they are not going to be needing the kind of capacity that people talk about.
So ... there is no money to build an island and there will be shown to be no demand for such capacity. In the end, the lack of a 3rd at LHR is not a problem as the traffic goes elsewhere. Yes, some folks have lost out on jobs but most will not notice.
The politicians have made a comprehensive hash of civil aviation from the second war onwards. They have meddled with the airlines, merging them and then selling them. They have meddled with the manufacturers, supporting them and then not supporting them. They have not bravely built airports when needed.
And, as we know, they have completely stuffed up the railways too. So, I would not get too bothered about all of this, because the time has past and nothing will be done, whilst wasting money that could have built runways!