For:
This house believes that London needs new air infrastructure to keep Britain at the forefront of commerce.

Against:
This house doesn't believe that London needs new air infrastructure to keep Britain at the forefront of commerce.

Surely the last thing this country needs right now is more London-centric infrastructure which more London airspace would be.

A much better solution would be to focus on creating high speed rail links, TGV style, between major urban centres and major airports such as Heathrow, Birmingham, Gatwick, Manchester and developing other regional airports such as Cardiff and Bristol. This would allow flights, even connecting ones, to be somewhat more spread out and use up airport capacity around the country instead of using a crowbar to insert more into an already overcrowded part of the country.

With any luck such transport infrastructure would also start to relieve pressure on London and spread out employment and population [relieving housnig pressure] around the regions instead of just the south east but I'm not particularly optimistic about this.

-------------------------
Jake Greenland, CEng MIET.
CCIE #22595

I agree, we need better rail links.

Original article here:

Heathrow is a disaster for passengers (at least Terminals 1-4). A confusing rabbit warren of crumbling buildings and poor facilities. It should be replaced by a modern airport - perhaps out in the estuary to reduce the noise.

I'm all for more airports and cheaper flights: You can't catch the TGV to Asia or the USA - that's where many of us do business and, contrary to the claims of the environmentalist opposing the motion - you do sometimes need to travel for business - particularly in engineering where you have to get stuff working.


What catastrophic effects? It's highly unlikely that man's 3% contribution to natural annual CO2 emissions has any significant effect on the climate. Not compared to natural cycles of sun and oceans. And there's been no warming since 1998 despite rising CO2 levels. Antarctic sea-ice is increasing - offsetting the decrease in Arctic sea-ice. And so what if sea-ice changes? Chicago used to be covered by a mile thick sheet of ice. The Earth's climate always has and always will change due to entirely natural causes. Looking at more recent history there's evidence of similar sea-ice changes in the pre-satellite age - eg. when these US subs surfaced at the pole in the 50's or when Amundsen navigated the Northwest passage in 1903.

Oh, and if you think that stopping airport development in the UK is going to make one iota of difference to global air-miles - think again: China is opening 50 new airports in the next 7 years!! An increase of 147 airports since 2006. And remember these guys are our competitors in the global marketplace.

If you carry this environmentalist's thinking to its logical conclusion, we'll be going back the caves and living short harsh lives as subsistence farmers. I despair for the future of engineering and jobs in this country if the majority of IET members support the anti-development, anti-human outlook of these CO2 obsessed environmentalists.

Edited: 10 April 2011 at 01:01 PM by Ipayyoursalary

Cabinet Office Minister Oliver Letwin would certainly be against this motion. He recently told Boris Johnson:


That's right Oliver. We don't want those filthy poor people flying - clogging up the skies and delaying ones flight to Klosters or ones holiday home in the south of France.