Jabird:
A thread about infrastructure has to dip into politics, but it is completely ridiculous to say you should cut back on other government spending to build a new airport
Thats not what I said. I said we should use the latest £300 billion of 'quantitive easing' to fund transport infrastructure, instead of wasting that money on the parasitic banking sector.
And direct infrastructure projects would lubricate and expand the UK economy more than any bank lending will, as that money would go directly into primary businesses, wages and jobs; which would then trickle down into secondary businesses, wages and jobs.
PhilW:
You're right wing extremism is bordering on repugnant. You're obsession with Labour bashing or pro Thatcherism is taking things way of course. Wind it in.
What you mean is that you have been fed such a diet of liberal fantasy propaganda over the last 15 years, that you have forgotten what a realistic and rational viewpoint is. And if you read my posts more carefully I also bash Thatcher, where bashing is due - like her open-borders trade policy, when it was obvious that our workers could not compete with the Far East on price.
BTW - I presume you are also a product of our wonderful new liberal comprehensive education as well as its propaganda - its 'your' and not 'you're'. The latter is not a possessive determiner, it is a contraction of 'you are'. That is when the rot set in: when our grammar education system was destroyed.
Frank:
These comments reveal a very selective memory. Who sold off airports and airlines? You can argue the merits or otherwise, but it can't be difficult to see that with this policy, the government loses direct control over the sector.
The government still retains the whip-hand on policy. Whether a new train line is privately or publicly owned, the government can still determine where it goes - by deed of law.
Ditto for the aviation sector. The government can strongly indicate where it wants a new airport to be built, and by economic or legal carrots and sticks, get its policy acted upon.
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As an aside, there was an interesting article in the latest Log Magazine, which said that we needed to be really bold in aviation, we need to invoke the spirit of Isambard Kingdom Brunel - and build a third runway at LHR. Sorry, but Brunel would not have been seen dead overseeing the plans of a third runway - he would have been down in East London designing the Silver-Boris airport.
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