Good News For Tegan - Heathrow 3rd Runway!

[Rob McCow]

So, the Government has said 'Yes!' to a third runway at Heathrow. As I see it, there are pros and cons to this.

Positives:
It will generate around 3,000,000 extra jobs.
BAA will get enormous, enormous profits. They couldn't make more profit if they found traces of lucanol on the site.
Now BAA can sell off Stansted without losing a runway.
Planes won't have to go to French airports on international flights. Yaaa Boo Sucks to be French!

Negatives:
They have to demolish a village. Hopefully populated by 700 Arthur Dents who can lie in front of the bulldozers.
The environment will quite literally be destroyed. Metaphorically.
Anyone living nearby will suffer the even-more-constant unbareable aircraft noise making their lives EVEN MORE of a living hell.

Overall I think that this is a very, very, very bad idea. Sucks. What do you think?

[Pip Madeley]

Maybe they could demolish the site at Stansted and move the population of The Village there?

They could have a little Stansted museum. And a big white sphere called Rover.

[Si Hunt]

It will generate around 3,000,000 extra jobs.

Are you sure about this? There are only 60 million people living in the UK, so 1 person in every 20 would have to go and work at Stanstead.

Si.

[SiHart]

I think he's rounding up a little.

Si xx

[Dirk Gently]

It will generate around 3,000,000 extra jobs.

Well we only have 1.85 million unemployed at the moment so we need this recession to make enough people unemployed in order to fill those jobs.

[Larry]

Negatives:
They have to demolish a village.
Overall I think that this is a very, very, very bad idea. Sucks. What do you think?

and the government will force all the residents to sell their homes and you just know that the government will only offer the lowest going rate and won't be any thing near what the momes are really worth.

[Dirk Gently]

Actually as far as I've seen compulsory purchases are very favourable to the property owners.

[Captain Tancredi]

I think this is as much about maintaining Heathrow's position in the airline industry as anything else- there's a small and select group of European airports including Paris and Amsterdam which set themselves up as hubs for worldwide travel, so you have your transatlantic flight with BA, Air France or KLM and your European connection with the same airline. It's fairly common knowledge around here that if you're flying from Leeds Bradford across the Atlantic it's usually cheaper to go with KLM and change at Amsterdam than with BA via Heathrow. There are also issues with the number of flights passing over central London with the increased risk of accidents and environmental issues.

But the depressing thing is that we've reached the stage economically where pretty much anything can be approved if you say the magic words "it'll create jobs". Making the whole of Britain into a vast shopping mall would create jobs, but it wouldn't make it the right thing to do. Unfortunately the alternatives aren't too promising either- a fistful of technical issues mean that Eurostar can't go much further than it does at the moment, for example.