London mayoral candidate, Boris Johnson, is sitting tight on his Heathrow-on-Sea bandwagon despite all the howls of protest, voiced most loudly by the RSPB.
Boris, who slated incumbent Ken Livingstone’s green credentials at hustings yesterday, wants Heathrow expansion plans halted and a new airport built in the heavily protected Thames Estuary.
Or at least that’s what he told the Sunday Times this week. Yesterday he decided it was City Airport that should be shifted. Hmmm.
Ken, meanwhile, accused by Boris of incurring criminally high flying bills, says he will not relocate City Airport but close it altogether as part of his drive to cut the capital’s carbon.
He’s promised unpopular measures to achieve this aim but is pacifying voters with hints of an artificial beach on which visitors can soak up the sun's globally warmed rays.
He’s promised a ban on aviation expansion too, and plans to make Rainham Marshes ‘the biggest bird sanctuary in Europe’. A Thames Estuary airport would devastate those proposals, he says.
Ken is right and Boris should realise that there will be no appeasing those joining the massive protest an estuary airport proposal would spark. The idea has come, and gone, several times in the past two decades and will be shot down again if Mr Johnson doesn’t see sense.
The estuary boasts as much protection as any site in Europe because of its value to wild birds, and Boris would be foolish if he were to ignore this. And if he cares not a jot for wildlife he must surely bear in mind the terrible consequences of just a handful of the estuary’s 200,000 birds flying straight into an aircraft’s engine.
Don’t go there Boris, if you want to be Mayor for long.
Click here for the RSPB's reaction to Boris's Big Idea
We should be considering closing both Heathrow and Gatwick Airports; travellers could land at Orly Airport then take the train to London. It would probably be quicker than getting to London from Heathrow or Gatwick!