Alan Fry wrote:
This new airport would be big enough to provide more capacity than close Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, City, and Southend combined, so new jobs will be created for a start. It won’t be full as soon as it opens, but later on (god know what will happen by then)
Investors want to make money, but they want a decent airport or otherwise they will go to Frankfurt and Paris. Why is a building of a new airport a “dangerous signal” to investors, they would make rather strong returns on this project (in the long term). Did they do so in Honk Kong?
Lastly, for god sake I am not a Stalinist (they were bad as running an economy anyway), we need to have a decent otherwise it will cost jobs and investment. Expanding London current airport (along with “minor” improvements) is like fixing a crash victim with a plaster. What I am suggesting is major surgery!
Ok then, how big would it have to be to replace those six airports? To my knowledge they have seven runways between them. So the new airport would need at least eight runways to add capacity? Plus a whole lot of extra terminals so the planes didn't have to cross each other or taxi miles. Perhaps ten or fifteen.
History obviously doesn't matter as much in Hong Kong as it does in the UK. Building a new airport on this scale would signal to these investors that we no longer value the rich built environment and stability that attracts them in the first place. In any case, London already has a considerable advantage over Frankfurt and Paris in terms of agglomeration effects, simply because so much is here already compared to those centres. In my opinion the UK government reforms to banking from 2018ish, the new immigration quotas, the possibility of attempts to limit executive pay and excessive EU financial regulation are likely to cause far more damage to foreign investment than the lack of a new airport. Not to mention the underlying lack of skills and the entitlement culture.
In any case, I don't get your sudden obsession with investment, because you also tell us that under your 'plan' business would be either a co-operative or state owned, in which case FDI doesn't matter.
Your obsession with building infrastructure by diktat with no thought for people makes you sound Stalinist to me. People forced to take trains, city centres, historic sites and natural habitats destroyed, families broken up and relocated, people forced to move jobs because it will be 'better' for the country, and retroactive legislation passed. Russian and Chinese investors will simply leave because they came to the UK to invest in a stable environment without authoritarianism. If you want to see what a mess central planners make when they are let loose, I suggest you visit somewhere like central Cumbernauld.
Ultimately what you are suggesting is adding a third leg to the crash victim while not carrying out the major surgery at all.
