St Helena airport will require an 'open chequebook'
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...pen-chequebook
Stephen Phillips, a Conservative committee member, pointed out to Lowcock that in the 19th century the anthropologist Charles Darwin in his travel journal The Voyage of the Beagle referred to the wind shear on St Helena.
“Darwin wrote this: ‘The only inconveniences I experienced on my walks [on St Helena] were from the impetuous winds. One day I noticed a curious circumstance: standing on the edge of a plain, terminated by a great cliff of about a thousand feet in depth, I saw at the distance of a few yards right to windward, some tern, struggling against a very strong breeze, whilst, where I stood, the air was quite calm.’
“If Charles Darwin, as he does in this passage, gives a very good example of wind shear in St Helena in 1836, how have we got a position where DfID commissioned a £285.5m airport, paid for by the British taxpayer, without appreciating the danger of wind shear?”
Lowcock replied: “That is a very good question, and one I will attempt to answer in my review.”
Yes, Sir Humphrey ...
