Quite right, let's not bother then. Great news for KLM, Air France and Lufthansa and for their emplyment growth.
How is an additonal runway at a two runway airport "surprisingly limited"? There's a whole new terminal complex planned as well. Opponents love to overstate the problems, it's LHR or not at all I am afraid, even Cameron's commmision says so.
combined with more efficient use of existing regional airport assets
You speak sometimes like we live in a planned economy. In reality we have BFS and BHD at war, LPL and LBA trying to fend off MAN's ambitions and GLA and EDI knocking lumps out of each other. Now all very good in some ways but the lack of joined up strategy is troubling. The airlines LHR would bring in will never bring similar levels of traffic via the regions, no realistic analysis suggests they could.
Also, we're not going to market for a pint of milk. The analogy isn't realistic here.