Does appear that Theresa May is developing a reputation as a bottler. She already bottled an October general election to give her a mandate which she needs because there are storms clouds on the horizon, such as grammar schools, Heathrow, fracking, NHS/junior docs, and brexit.
Look at her opposition: the Labour party is doing back-to-the-future with impersonations of Michael Foot/militant and making itself deeply unpopular with voters; leaderless UKIP are fighting like ferrets in a sack (Nigel will be back); the Libdems are still, unsurprisingly, not trusted.
A pity that she has not learned the mistakes of Gordon Brown and Sunny Jim Callaghan and that is to go the country
before the **** hits the fan.
There'll never be a better time from her point of view.
Oh dear... this news isn't really unexpected unless you don't understand national infrastructure planning approvals.
Isn't the national infrastructure planning procedure supposed to speed things up.
Embarrassing news. Just embarrassing.
Just build a third (and a fourth) and get it over and done with!
Indeed!
The UK is the most densely populated country in Europe. France has the same population in twice the land area.
Wrong, Malta is, and both Belgium and the Netherlands are more densely populated than the UK.
Countries by Population Density 2015 - StatisticsTimes.com
Enclaves such as Monaco, Gibralter and the Vatican are even more densly populated.
According to the 'pedia the Govt of the day started the HS2 process in January 2009 & the Sec.of State gave a decision to proceed in January '12, so it can be done. Certainly HS2 has a significant environmental impact & substantial costs - or am I missing something?
Yes, a hell of a lot more than another rwy, and in the case of HS2, it's tax-payers money being wasted.
Yes we used to do things like the Chinese when we built railways and canals and yes we could do it again: as follows:
1. Abolish all judicial review processes and any rights to question all and any Government decisions.
2. Abolish any duties on the government to "consult" various groups.
2. Abolish all right to compensation. Look how wartime legislation gave HMG a head start to 'create' Heathrow as it became by edict rather than actually have to "pay" landowners to buy the land plot by plot.
3. Abolish all H&Safety, Human Rights Acts and employment protection legislation.
4. Remove the right to vote from women - they are the main activists and complainers about usually everything.
That's one extreme to the other. Let's face it,
we've already had 50 years (Harold Wilson stated that we needed another rwy in 1968) of endless reviews, commissions, enquiries, consulations, dither, indecision, decision, revoked decision, procrastination, fantasy (Boris island), balls and long grass, and cans being kicked down the road.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
edi_local 
We shall see. With the way things are going from this government so far, combined with their new found anti-foreigner, anti-expert, anti big business rhetoric then I remain to be convinced that LHR will be anything like as busy as it is now in 10 years time as focus moves away from London and towards other EU cities. If we ditch the EU open skies agreements, which this Govt may well do just for a laugh, because let's face it they dont' give a toss about aviation anyway, then we will really be in for a rough ride and LHR will become a shadow of current itself. That is possibly their reason for delaying it, because they know it won't be needed in the future.
Suspect that you are right...
One major flaw with this argument: no one had an inkling that the UK would vote to leave, not even the leave campaign. So how do you expalin the last 50 years?