I always thought the buffon act was just for show, this however tells me he is as dumb as he like to make out.
Lets just forget for a minute the fact that £bn's have or are being spent on T5, T2 Crossrail links to LHR etc.
Suppose you turn LHR into a housing estate, all the people that worked at the airport or in airport related industries such as cargo, hotels etc. (which is tens of thousands) will now be relocating to Kent to go and work at Boris Island International. I think there is some very none-joined up thinking going on.
LHR will not be allowed to close, it will be a political nightmare as thousands of people and businesses will be forced to move or lose out on work. The fact that a few people in Ealing are worried about their house prices will be nothing compared to the backlash of taking away the largest source of income in West London and the Thames corridor.
The politicians know this, it is all just a game, the way to play the game is to pander to those who make the most noise. At the moment this is the homeowners under the proposed new flightpath who are suddenly all concerned over environmental effects of aircraft and nothing to do with their house prices at all.
Should it come to a stage where the government were seriously talking about closing down LHR then the loudest people would be those whose jobs/businesses were affected. Then the politicians would forget their friends in Ealing and try to appease these people and any plans for fantasy Island would be quickly shelved and a new runway given the go ahead.
The problem is we allow them to play these games with our money, why are they allowed to wait until after the next election before publishing the report? Everybody knows why they want to, but why are they allowed to get away with it?
What we need is for a group of businesses to get together and force the government into making a decision without wasting anymore time and more importantly money, on these political delaying tactics. The country needs LHR expansion and that's what we will get. The question is when?