It wasn't stolen. It was bought for £1, with a whole load of clauses attached. So if someone buys a house for £1, spends a huge amount of time and effort doing it up, and then sells it on for a profit a thief too?
If someone buys a housing estate for £1 in an area in need of housing and then spends a huge amount of time and effort doing it up into a leisure centre, that would be pretty close to stealing. I'd say scr
wing the public purse over by getting land for £1 and then turning into something very, very profitable is pretty much stealing because the asset was probably worth significantly more than £1 in the first place. Either way, the money for a link road which had to be spent on condition of an airport being in operation was more-or-less stolen because that airport is not in operation.
Business doesn't work on hopefully and one day. Either there is a business case to do something, in which case someone can give it a go, or there isn't. Even in the case of the former, having a business case and executing it are two different things.
Perhaps you're not in business, but I'm afraid you aren't quite right here. We happen to be in the biggest economic crisis since WWII, which means many investment projects have been put on hold until there will be enough capital available and market demand to make them worthwhile again. Demand isn't fixed when real incomes are decreasing.
Airports don't develop for the sake of a few industrial units. For routes to succeed, they need volume, and they also need that volume to generate the right yields. If a very large bank was moving its whole operations to Sheffield, then it might be slightly different.
The city of Sheffield is not composed 'of a few industrial units' as you might patronisingly suggest. The population is almost 0.6m, having grown significantly since KLM had its great success at SZD in the late 1990s (as you know, their SZD-AMS route was the most successful start-up they had ever experienced) and was then forced to leave due to lack of radar and safety concerns. Demand is there but we see from DSA's chronic lack of business-orientated routes it isn't well placed to take advantage of such demand. Next year, KLM will be operating MSE-AMS and not DSA-AMS! Does that not seem the most ludicrous decision when the population of the whole of East Kent is only slightly larger than that of the city of Sheffield alone?
No it wouldn't. Rail systems are far more than just a case of linking bits of metal. You need to ensure system compatibility and, like the airport itself, you need a business case.
Firstly, branch lines into airports tend to get built when the airport hits somewhere around the 5-20m pax pa mark, clearly well outside the scope of what's been talked about.
Secondly, even if the airport was busy enough, you'd have to take a branch of at Carbrook, thus watering down the service to Meadowhall. Now let's work this one out - serve a thriving (albeit horrid) shopping centre or a tiny airport?
London-Southend's station, opened when it had only a few thousand passengers every month going through, seems to be doing pretty well? Southampton only has small regional jets and similarly has a successful little railway station. Don't get me wrong, I understand it would be difficult in practical terms but in principle there doesn't seem too much wrong.
Sheffield to London trains aren't the best either - they are no quicker than Manchester or Leeds to London, but you do have an hourly headway on the faster services, and overall two trains per hour.
So the plane can't win on overall journey time or frequency to London, and this isn't a loco facility so you can't take the trains on over cost either.
Until HS2 opens in 2033 between Sheffield and London, I'm not sure a true case can be made about time-saving by rail. Smaller airports require less time for check-in/security (like LCY) so I would envisage some benefit by travelling by air. Frankly, though, the world doesn't entirely revolve around London and we should also be looking at flights to other cities like Amsterdam as already mentioned.
Don't get me wrong, in its current shape the airport just won't work. But if they cared to extend the runway a little and put in the necessary investment as Stobart has at Southend then they could see healthy returns.