Brown is right on the third runway at Heathrow

If you've read any of my other posts you'll know how much it pains me to say this, but Gordon Brown is right about the proposed third runway for Heathrow, and current Conservative party policy is wrong.

Heathrow is more than an airport. It is the beating heart of much of the West of London, the western home counties, the City, and many high tech industries and consultancies from the M4 Corridor round to Redhill.

Let be clear these are high skilled, good paying, and internationally mobile jobs.

Killing Heathrow, which not doing something about its capacity will be, is the equivalent of killing the Golden goose that lays the eggs.

Heathrow is also fast becoming an embarrassment due to its lack of capacity.

You can't just move the air traffic East of London - which is shown by the fact that Stansted hasn't challenged Heathrow at all. For this reason the "In the Thames" solution isn't any help.

Also whilst high speed rail may be of value in itself, it just won't provide the necessary capacity. ( If you think the planning battle about the third runway looks tough - wait till you try to build new high speed rail lines through the rest of our major cities ). The only flights it will replace are those to Manchester. The other locations will just build more demand for Heathrow. ( At even if a high speed line was built at fantastic cost to the English tax payer - it still wouldn't compete with a flight from Edinburgh/Glasgow for a transfer to long hall.