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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."
Examples needed please,
silverstrata, can only think of one new airport recently opened, Sheffield (now closed).
AFAIK, there was no government involvement whatsoever in this enterprise.
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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."
"...
our wonderful new liberal comprehensive education.." is not that new,
silverstrata, your hero, Margaret Thatcher, killed off most of the
grammar schools in the early 1970s when education secretary in Edward "Grocer" Heath's government. Her successor, Shirley Williams, finished off the job.
Funny enough there was a percieved problem with secondary modern schools, so they closed the grammar schools. Strange politicians' logic but there we are.
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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."
Quite right, let's have some forsight, build the fourth as well, do it now.
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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."
You know this how? Surely he'd have found a site somewhere in the LHR area, in his old stamping ground, with links to
his railway!
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And Silver giving US grammar lessons. Come on"
Would like just one lesson from Silver: how the estuary airport is going to be finanaced.