Question for Alistair Darling

[Flat in Fifth]

Mr Darling,

Your recent statement to the House on airport expansion plans contained the following snippets.

"It’s essential that we plan ahead to meet the pressures we know we’ll face as a result of a growing economy, and in a world where people can and will want to travel more for both business and leisure. And only the Government can provide such a framework to enable everyone to plan ahead."

And

"Air travel remains crucial to our growing economy. 200,000 jobs depend on it directly, and some 600,000 depend on it indirectly"

And

"The Government recognises the benefits that the expansion of air travel has brought to people’s lives and to the economy of this country. Its increased affordability has opened up the possibilities of travel for many people, and provides the rapid access that is essential to many modern businesses."

And

"some of our major airports are already close to capacity, so failure to allow for increased capacity could have serious economic consequences."

Now one could easily replace all the references to air travel and airports in those statements with references to road travel and roads.

So please explain why for air travel you seem to adopt a policy of "predict and provide." Yet for road travellers the actions of national and local government alike seems to be to stifle the life out of the road transport industry which probably provides far more jobs than air transport.

Comments anyone?

[nonegreen]

Actually, public enemy number 1(Begg) was on the TV the other day trying desperately to align the daft "there is no point in buiding more roads cos they only fill up" routine with a similar canard with respect to air travel. It seems the skies are full according to david Begg (I wonder what with)?

[williamp]

I want to know who these "expected" 300 million travellers are. There are 60 million in the UK, so that means that the Governemnt expects everyone to fly 5 times a year. Including my Gran...

[accident]

williamp said:

I want to know who these "expected" 300 million travellers

300 million travellers? just think of how many burned out cars and old mattress' they will leave behind,even the asylum seekers might move away

[hockeyalan]

Indeed it appears that predict and provide seems to be the method adopted for airports but that does not mean it is correct.
As a nation we should be aiming for more sustainable travel choices so it does seem a mixed message is being put over.

[nonegreen]

hockeyalan said:

Indeed it appears that predict and provide seems to be the method adopted for airports but that does not mean it is correct. As a nation we should be aiming for more sustainable travel choices so it does seem a mixed message is being put over.

Erm like what? Crawl?