Bagso read it again, that's not what it says at all. You guys need to lose the chippy mentality here. MAN is getting world class new terminal facilities and US pre-clearance, no one relevent in the industry cares what HMG did with Sabena at MAN when 707s were all the rage anymore than SAS or KLM DC8s out of PIK would have become based A330s today only if BOAC hadn't objected. They would have gone anyway!
The "London centric" attitude was to protect the UK flag carrier interests at a UK airport, my geography isn't perfect chaps but even in days of monochrome, MAN was still in the UK and they were protecting British interests and jobs, something we should perhaps do more of. Do you seriously imagine BOAC would still be allowed to have flown long haul from BRU and harm SABENA? No, of course not.
Leave Heathrow to itself, bagso is actually going out of his way to build an anti-northern narrative that's not even on their radar. If Gatwick doesn't threaten them, and much to GIP's annoyance it doesn't, MAN barely registers. The whole BA operation could stop serving MAN-LHR tomorrow and it wouldn't dent plans for a third runway. Can we not celebrate all the positive things without banging on about the grass being greener elsewhere?