Improve Heathrow before expanding it

If the Tories really didn’t want a third runway at Heathrow they should have called for one. That would have stopped Gordon Brown. He is only going ahead because he thinks it will draw a dividing line between the supposedly pro-business Labour and naïve tree-hugging Tories. And I confess that I started out being in favour of it, so fatuous were the environmental arguments against it. Farting cows produce more greenhouse gas than aircraft (or cars), as does rice production – and do we see Greenpeace activists campaigning outside Aberdeen Angus steakhouses or Chinese restaurants’?

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David Butterfield

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But the debacle over Terminal Five brought home to me a more important point. Britain needs and deserves a flagship airport, yet Heathrow is a national disgrace. Sir Thomas Harris, vice chairman of Standard Chartered Markets, put it well recently when he said that after its ridiculous hand luggage limitations “The result is an experience so unpleasant that many international executives I meet will do almost anything to avoid travelling through Heathrow.”