Heathrow third runway opponents win court challenge

Campaigners have won a High Court battle over plans for a third runway at Heathrow Airport. Councils, residents and green groups had said the government's approval of the runway was flawed by "conspicuously unfair" public consultations. All this has been couched in terms of the green agenda.

Lord Adonis said, "A new runway at Heathrow will help secure jobs and underpin economic growth as we come out of recession. It is also entirely compatible with our carbon reduction target, as demonstrated in the recent report by the Committee on Climate Change." He always sounds like a pained angel, completely at odds with the argument.

A third runway is neither needed or desired. This is some fictitious fact dreamt up by Gordon Brown as some panacea for our problems. It is also a desire by British Airways to have folk flock down to London in order to use Terminal 5. Anyone living near a regional airport can come and go as they please. Birmingham has flights to all parts of the globe. But many in the West Midlands have been duped into thinking that London is the gateway to Paradise, so they endure the travails of train travel and the sweaty tube.

Madness is all around us. Boris Johnson thinks it a great idea to dump Heathrow and build a brand new airport in the Thames Estuary (or beside it, to be more factual). Such nonsense I thought had passed with the last century.

Birmingham Airport needs £25 million to expand its runway in order to have flights to Los Angeles, Beijing and other far flung parts. It will create jobs for a genuine service. The Heathrow business will be an expensive elephant on the runway. I think anyone north of Watford should give this project a wide berth.