More than time for me to start blogging again. This time though I feel the need to vent and try and persuade the majority to agree with me (and a lot of others) to back a campaign to get the Davies report binned.
I have seen the figures for another runway for both Birmingham and Gatwick and while my home heart says back another runway for Birmingham I know the London centric government won't allow it even though with HS2 Birmingham won't be much further away timewise than Heathrow especially if you want to drive from Heathrow. Unless they build some more motorways. Specifically widening the M25, again, and adding another lane to the M4. Oh and adding another rail line from Heathrow to Victoria. That should considerably shorten the journey time, but hang on a bit!
There is nothing in the proposal for an extra runway at Heathrow which addresses these necessities. No budget, no proposed act of parliament and no consultation with the people whose lives and properties will be affected by them.
Compare the proposal from Gatwick, which by the way, has the backing of Paul Kehoe the MD of Birmingham ariport, which was researched to include the cost of widening the M23 and the spur road to Gatwick, improving the rail links and the lines to cope with the extra traffic. Building a new terminal and runway with ancillary support teams and infrastructure. Consultation with local authorities and communities (which included the offer to pay the council tax for affected properties for the life of the owners or until they sold up) the whole package was costed and delivery dates for the completion of the project would be 2 years earlier than the Heathrow debacle.
I'm not sure that Sir Howard Davies actually knows how a plane works when he states that Gatwick isn't recognised nor would be suitable for long haul flights! No Sir Howard, you accelerate down the runway, take off and fly to wherever the hell you like. Actually having a destination to arrive at is a matter for negotiation and persuasion and is accomplished by people like Paul Kehoe who has just announced long haul connections direct from Birmingham to Beijing, in fact just about every month for the last three or four years Birmingham has added to it list of destinations somewhere that either didn't exist in the life of the airport or like New York which stopped flying direct from Birmingham a long time ago.
These things don't just appear because those airlines and destinations think it might be fun they do it for clear and lucrative benefits and those benefits were explained and profitability of the flights speaks for itself. With more and more inward foreign investment into the Wes Midlands area, a lot of it from the USA, connectivity for this region is considerably more important than another batch of tourists and more imported goods flown into Heathrow because another so called reason for expanding Heathrow is the number of freight flights but if you look carefully the balance of payments for Heathrow freight flights is negative.
So let's all have a go at getting a public enquiry chaired by an impartial judge to review the Davies report and show it up for the sham it really is.