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Suppose Heathrow didn't exist, try writing a proposal for it as we stand today. There is no way it would ever happen."
On the other hand, apart from Heathrow village growing to become an urban area, or the area being part of green belt Hounslow Heath, there is a third possibility: we'd all be arguing about expansion at Heston Airport which would probably have been what Heathrow is now.
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Do we really think there are many Tory voters in Stanwell?
Surely this is a safe way of increasing his majority! "
No need, he has a pretty safe and consistent Conservative seat
.
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The logical thing to do would build a new 4 runway airport somewhere north of London, on the HS2 line, between the M1 and and the M40."
Sounds very much like the conclusion of the 1971 Royal Commission on the "third" London airport. They recommended Cublington, Bucks.. Indeed, it's obvious that any
new airport site has to be west or north west of London, and not in the Thames estuary. It was the same in 1971: the Royal Commission rejected Foulness/Maplin, Essex.
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Plenty of space, good connection, and no birds. Unfortunately, lots of historic village and the Chilterns, so lets all just accept that whilst LHR is no perfect, its the least bad option of all these things and get on with it! "
Quite.
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The Daily Mail comes out in favor of the Silver-Boris airport.
London has a vision for new airport capacity. Now all it needs is the Victorian spirit to get it built and paid for | Mail Online"
That's a relief! Expect this campaign will be as successful as the one to have weekly bin collections reinstated. For those who remember, just one council (Stoke-on-Trent) has done this, and that was the result of a bribe from Eric Pickles.
Quote: " Quote from the Mail article:
"Planning permission, even with new fast track procedures, could alone take several years given the degree of opposition in middle class neighbourhoods like Richmond, where I happen to live. But as the new runway is North-South existing neighbourhoods should not be affected".
Clearly they've assigned their top aviation journalist on this story ... "
Er, what's all this about north-south rwys? Where would they go and how would that increase capacity? Desperation, or more sloppy journalism?
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So you're going to keep LHR open after all then and not build housing on it?! We all know there is no way that you can justify a 4 runway estuary airport without closing LHR, because airlines simply wont go there. So if we keep LHR open, it has to have three or ideally four runways.
If we propose the estuary airport, then LHR must be closed. Quite how you convince BAA to do that, remains to be seen though!"
Precisely the reason why the estuary airport (whether Silver Island or Foster's Folly), apart from all the other considerations, is a complete non-starter.