Boris:
Well, the Mayor is still pushing for a Thames Airport, despite all the controversy. Which I have to say is a brave thing for a politician to do in this era of vacuous popularity-politics. Blair would have just gone along with the latest opinion poll - anything an opportunity to give that inane grin and gain a vote or two.
This time Boris has got himself likened to Ado!f H!tler and Albert Speer, and their grandiose vision for Berlin:
Boris Johnson's plan to replace Heathrow with £65bn Thames Estuary airport are as 'grandiose as Hitler's' | Mail Online
However, I find this a strange attitude. Of all the many gross and deplorable errors of the Third Reich, having a grand vision for your nation, cities and your people was not one of them.
Oh that we had had an equivalent of Albert Speer who could have:
• Put Birmingham Airport in the right place outside the city.
• Orientated Birmingham airport runway in the correct direction (into wind and not over the city).
• Put LHR in the correct location to the NW of London (Watford-ish), with runways orientated to the SW (into wind and not over the city).
• Laughed out loud, when someone suggested expanding Leeds.
• Had apoplexy when someone suggested that expanding Bristol Lulsgate was better than expanding Bristol Filton.
• Questioned ministers' sanity, when they suggested selling off viable RAF airfields, instead of converting them to civil use (after all we, the people, had spent a lot of money on these airfields).
• Built the new terminal at Manch, on the correct (south) side of the runway. (It was obvious that any new runway would have to be south side.) The current layout is a Tenerife disaster waiting to happen.
So where was our 1950s Boris Speer-Johnson - an architect or politician with vision, who could have righted the many wrongs of present UK aviation? Why did politicians blunder on with so many worthless projects, because they were not man enough or brave enough to put their heads above the parapet. (Resulting in the UK being the only major nation in Europe without a high speed train system). The self-serving idiots of Westminster have cost this nation dear.
Silver