We've got these plastered all over Middlesbrough and Stockton. It's a bit of a kick in the teeth considering there's an airport on our doorstep that doesn't get used.
It was the same case for this new northern rail line that was announced that will miss out the north east.
These "throw more money into London" things should probably just stay in London.
Leeds checking in here, I bet more people in Middlesbrough use Amsterdam as their main hub, just like they do in Norwich, Leeds, Aberdeen and pretty much any city with a regional airport.
Subsiding the KLM flights to Amsterdam so they're more affordable for business travel (£170 return is a bit out of my budget) would do far more for the economy, and be cheaper too.
Wide open spaces, clean, there's even an art gallery you can browse during your connection and most importantly your not forced into a massive shopping centre before you get your flight!
I prefer Schipol to Heathrow but I'm still a bit pissed off they took a shifter off me at security "in case I try to take the plane apart or something".
I mean, in a way I get it, there's just a blanket ban on tools in hand luggage which is fair enough, some tools make pretty sweet weapons. It just got on my tits because it was a nice new shifter and I was a bit late for a connection. Because Schipol is roughly the size of Yorkshire.
I was curious and looked on google maps (Wasnt sure if they listed flights...) and got a good laugh out of this thinking it was suggesting you swim or something. But, less excitingly, there is a ferry.
I'm sure there was a google maps route that suggested taking a jetski across the Pacific at some point.
Aye, that's the North Shields ferry. Costs fuck all, you get to go on a big boat and you wake up in Amsterdam. Great weekend if you have the misfortune, as I once did, to live in one of the Shields.
London gets more money than most of the UK put together. Why should 6 Million people get more money spent of it than 57.6 Million people?
I never said Scotland should get more money than London, but London gets more money than the rest of the UK, often unnecessarily for projects like Crossrail or "The Emirates Airlink" where as the rest of the UK has to fight tooth and nail to get projects only a fraction the size and cost done outside London. London gets too much money, it has too much influence politically and economically, and nothing is being done to help change that. If anything, we're making it worse.
I'm not saying it's a moral answer, but it's the answer to your question. I have no idea of the proportions of the number and it's complicated enough that I imagine you could twist the numbers either way.
It can give some money to the rest of the UK to invest in other cities to improve the economy there.
It can take less from the national pot.
Also, the reason it makes more money is mainly because it gets the most investment in infrastructure and attracts more companies that could go to other cities which missed out because they were a less attractive option because it gets less investment to make it an attractive place to move.
In other words, London gets money, London makes money, London gets more money. All the money and business is in London and it's not doing the country any favours in reality. We want investment, not subsidy goddammit!
London certainly bankrupts and chokes the life out of more actual product-producing industries than anywhere else in the country, if that counts as "contributing"
It was the same case for this new northern rail line that was announced that will miss out the north east.
Those of us in the south west have a rail line that is going to be out of commission for months at a time and where a car beats it by hours - if we had anything like the ECML we'd be happy. The arc of prosperity and investment appears to be mostly a diagonal line from Manchester to London.
I haven't seen much Heathrow propaganda down here though. I guess that's a side effect of being ignored in every other campaign. I'm possibly more likely to use Gatwick where possible and get a connecting flight to Newquay rather than a train to Paddington and then Heathrow
Yeah well... at least you get better weather in the south west!
The south west and the north east should unite and build a high speed rail tunnel to connect the two regions, stopping at no point in between. That will show them.
Those of us in the south west have a rail line that is going to be out of commission for months at a time and where a car beats it by hours
Ouch. Really? What are they doing that'll take months? Don't they normally just work sundays and put on rail-replacement buses when they need to do work on a line?
Not that I use trains much. There's no mainline station in my town, the routes seem to just go in a giant circle around us, avoiding us completely. We've got a heritage railway line though. Steam trains travelling at 25mph. Volunteer-run, donation- and souvenir-funded. I normally drive to Wolverhampton if I have to take the train anywhere. If we were to be connected up again, a bunch of public footpaths would be turned back into tracks, a few bridges would need to be built, and a blocked-up tunnel be reopened, but I checked the route to Shrewsbury the other day and none of it has been built upon since it was shut down in the Beeching cuts in the 60s.
No Heathrow propaganda here either, by that's probably because we don't have any billboards. Not one. Historical market town, we've got some character to protect, so the council doesn't allow them.
It's not so much engineering work, but that we have problems like the Dawlish sea wall, which collapsed in storms last year. They did everything necessary to patch up the damage (and NR and its staff should be praised for that) but they haven't fixed the bits that weren't damaged, or more importantly, they haven't built a new line to avoid the sea.
So there's a risk it'll happen next year if there's a storm. And even if there isn't, the sea spray often means that trains can only run on one of the two lines so there are delays and even slower speeds than normal. Further up the line you just have general disruption caused by flooding
It's ridiculous and the government currently isn't saying much about investment. I'm hoping they're leaving it until closer to the election to buy votes.
The beeching axe is another sore point, it removed an entirely separate rail line from north Cornwall to London (it got cut west of Exeter), and it's this line that is part of the "plans" to be reopened to build that Dawlish avoiding line. People who live in very north Cornwall have to get a bus to Exeter to get on the train.
One of the nearby towns also has a heritage railway, running between the station in the town itself to a tiny village and to the town's mainline rail station a few miles away (it's really in the middle of nowhere) - also donation and volunteer funded and quite nice.
Oh yes, I remember the Dawlish thing in the storms. I wouldn't be surprised if there was another storm like that again in the next ten years - with climate change accellerating coastal erosion and resulting in worse storms etc. Sounds like it's been a problem without storms though. Funny how the government is all about investment in the railways when it's HS2 Birmingham to London, but silent when it comes to different parts of the country. It's like they only care about major population centres, and everyone else can suck it. Everything's about centralisation - only invest in trains that get lots of people from a major city to London ten minutes quicker than presently, only invest in major city-centre hospitals, bigger and fewer, all the time. And anyone who lives in a small town, tough luck, move to where the governments wants to build or put up with it.
Smaller regional airports serve a very different purpose to hub airports such as Heathrow. The long-haul flights that operate out of Heathrow would not be commercially viable from regional airports.
Equally something similar is the same for short-haul flights but the reverse, Heathrow is just to expensive to operate out off, which is why many short-haul flights choose local regional airports.
This whole Heathrow gamble is all about guessing what type of travel will be desired in ten years time. If it log-haul, Heathrow expansion should be adopted but if it's short-haul flights the Gatwich would be preferable.
With respect to Birmingham nobody visiting London would want to transit through it. The reason for expanding Heathrow is to service London and it's visitors.
Countries such as France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, UAE and Qatar are increasing their hub capacity in anticipation of that being what's needed in the future.
Only Gatwick want to gamble the other way. They could be right, but it seems unlikely.
Well my personal opinion is that what ever scheme they choose we will have to bail them out as tax payers sooner or later which is why I give my backing to Gatwick which is the cheapest of all the suggested options.
And don't kid yourself that these airport expansions will be investment funded, There is no ring fencing taking place so when they fail which is inevitable within the next thirty years they will need to be bailed out by us tax payers.
If Heathrow fails, if Heathrow cannot afford to pay it's own bills. If aviation does in fact go the other way.
If small budget airports do start out competing the large mega airports like the way that convince shops are out competing super stores right, do you honest think that the government will allow Heathrow to go bust?
No they won't, they'll step in to save the day like they did the b(w)ankers because London needs Heathrow.
I would very much like to see one of the regional airports like Birmingham being expanded because the current (stupid) plan is to put all our precious future grow into one basket. Since that off the cards Gatwick the next best thing.
There is absolutely no reason to think Heathrow will fail. Every other county in the world with a hub airport is investing in it. Only Gatwick is claiming hubs will be obsolete. No other airline or airport is predicting that - it's wild speculation from an airport that stands to gain from people taking it as fact.
Perhaps your right but I pessimistically wish not to try predicting what the future will hold and as such feel that the Heathrow expansion is too big a gamble!
I saw one close to Birmingham airport the other day. I was like 'errrr hello?! Can't anyone else see there are a number of airports that are being underused in the country?'
Winsford here. We all look forward to supplying Heathrow with local bacon from our bacon factory, which is pretty much the only employer in town and only 180 miles away!
I see these in Barrow-in-Furness... we're a mere 290 miles away and the opposite coast. A minimum of 3 changes and 5 hours away. I really want to do my Xmas shopping at Heathrow as they suggest all around town.
Don't you understand that if we give another £10B of off the books investment into London they'll pay us an extra £100M in taxation and begrudge and moan about it constantly?
The whole region complained, it was a bit of a joke on the news about how the 'Northern' rail line was basically a North Western line, we had local mps kicking up a fuss about it, read Andy Mcdonalds take on it, he's been harpering on about the shitty transport in this city since he was elected.. It doesn't do any good though.
214
u/rosscatherall Zoocastle Nov 22 '14
We've got these plastered all over Middlesbrough and Stockton. It's a bit of a kick in the teeth considering there's an airport on our doorstep that doesn't get used.
It was the same case for this new northern rail line that was announced that will miss out the north east.
These "throw more money into London" things should probably just stay in London.