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The Sunday Times has a report today, confirming the government's intent to investigate the possibility of building Silver-Boris airport in the Thames estuary.
"Chocks Away for Heathrow by the Sea"
Heathrow | Search | The Sunday Times
Sorry, article is behind the S.T. paywall
Quote:
Justine Greening, the transport secretary says she is: 'determined to find a long term solution to Britain's airport crisis'.
In reality, my sources say that the government wants Silver-Boris to go ahead, but they are scared sh!tless of the political fallout.
On the plus side, they need to find a worthwhile project for all that 'quantitatively eased' printed money (Q.E.). The public perception is that Q.E. is simply propping up bankrupt banks and funding the bonuses of bankers. And instead of being grateful for this largesse, and contrite about their loosing so much money and jepardising the entire economy, bankers are simply sticking two fingers up at both parliament and the public, and paying themselves big bonuses for failure - at our expense, using our money.
In addition, a BoE report last week said that Q.E. was not getting money into the economy anyway, and was merely rewarding banks for failure. The report urged that money should go directly from the government to businesses and be used for infrastructure projects - just as I said in my previous postings.
Bearing the above in mind, Silver-Boris airport would definitely be seen as a worthwhile project. But would the population back it - with all the disruption it would entail? That is the government's biggest worry. Labour won three elections based upon the fundamental premise of never making any big and controversial decisions that would scare the electorate. David Ca-moron is a true heir to Blair, and is similarly scared of bold decision-making, or of upsetting the Lib-Dems.
Thus the government are not kicking the Silver-Boris project into the long-grass, they are putting out more and more feelers to see what happens. If there are riots on the street, they will look the other way, whistling softly, and pretend they had nothing to do with Silver-Boris in the first place. However, if the omens look positive, they will put out more feelers in the autumn, to see what the public reaction is again. If that goes well, expect a decision to go ahead next year.
What the government wants, is an election bathed in the accolades of a bold new infrastructure project, but before any of the messy disruption to people's lives starts. So they have two years, between the announcement and the election, to capture this honeymoon period.
What they would really like, of course, is for the pampered pilots of BA to go on strike, complaining about having to leave Windsor to go and live in Sheerness or Canvey Island. Daaarrrling, this is so not acceptable.... This would be a golden opportunity to swing public opinion behind a project that is rapidly becoming a class war. Toffs who don't want jobs and opportunities to go to the deprived East End, let alone having to live there with the 'great unwashed'.
Standby for more updates, but I imagine we shall get an announcement to build Silver-Boris within a year.
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