30-01-2025
The folly of fixating on Heathrow expansion when better options exist
SIR – The main problem with expanding Heathrow Airport (
Bigger problems include: moving many people into, and out of, the airport; doubling the number of trucks delivering and collecting cargo; and the fact that the area is already saturated with traffic, the public transport options are only useful for people coming from London, and there would need to be huge new parking areas designated.
Better use of regional airports could mitigate these problems, and people would not need to drive so far to catch a flight. It would also cost less.
Gillian Courage
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
SIR – Many alternatives have been suggested for handling an increase in air traffic bound for London.
However, it is not just about the numbers of travellers whose final destination is London. The fact is that Heathrow is a European and international hub, able to compete with the likes of Schiphol and Frankfurt. The other three 'London' airports cannot offer this functionality.
I lived for 27 years in Putney, directly under the long, final descent path to Heathrow, and quickly got used to the noise. True, others were constantly wound up about it – but aircraft are becoming quieter, as well as more fuel-efficient and less polluting.
Peter Rowley
Nafferton, East Yorkshire
SIR – Last time I flew from Heathrow, I had to travel there by road, which revealed the true extent of this concrete wasteland – more than 3,000 treeless acres. Then there is the endless trek to get to your plane. I avoid it whenever possible.
A third runway would just add to this bleak slog. I am a Conservative, not a Green, but enough is enough.
John Jones
London SW19
SIR – Jim Hardie (
Apart from the fact that this is an important wildlife site, there is the small matter of the sunken Second World War munitions ship, SS Richard Montgomery, with its still-intact cargo of several thousand tons of high-explosive ordnance. This wreck is considered so dangerously unstable that it has been left in place.
Christopher Devine
Farley, Wiltshire
SIR – Rachel Reeves told Robert Peston yesterday that the last British airport runway was built in 1948.
Manchester's second runway was built between 1997 and 2001. How could neither of them have remembered Swampy? Maybe because they are Southerners.
Tony Foulds
Wilmslow, Cheshire
An Oxbridge arc
SIR – Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, having done her utmost to destroy the green shoots of economic growth in her Budget, appears to have had a Damascene conversion.
Her enthusiasm for the Oxford-Cambridge Arc (
Private-sector success will come in the face of increasing headwinds, as Ms Reeves tries in vain to borrow, tax and regulate her way to growth.
Iain Duffin
Crudwell, Wiltshire
SIR – Rachel Reeves should be reminded that it was a Labour government that closed the Varsity Line between Oxford and Cambridge to passenger services on January 1 1968. Governments are much more skilled at destroying opportunities for enterprise than creating them.
Chris Gillibrand
Swainby, North Yorkshire
Covid Inquiry scope
SIR – I was disappointed to read your Leading Article (
You call for the inquiry to 'show some curiosity' and spend time investigating matters outside our scope, yet also suggest that the process is too slow. This year the inquiry will examine vital topics within our remit, including the pandemic's effect on our care sector, children and young people, and the estimated £376 billion cost to the British government.
The UK Covid-19 Inquiry will continue to conduct our investigations not as committees or panels but as public hearings – transparently, thoroughly and efficiently, helping the UK to learn lessons for next time.
Samantha Edwards
Director, Communications and Engagement, UK Covid-19 Inquiry
London W2
Driving unlicensed
SIR – I have just received copies of my late father's military records. As with Gordon Casely's father (
David Hemingway
Leicester
SIR – My mother, who was born in 1915, told me that on her 17th birthday she drove to Norwich, where she bought a driving licence, then drove home again.
Ruth de Grey
London SW16
SIR – I was somewhat surprised while deployed at sea to be informed that my wife, who was in our Land Rover with the children, had run out of petrol in the lion enclosure at Longleat.
None were eaten.
Admiral Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
London SW1
Backing Ukraine
SIR – Ukraine's allies held back aid when it would have been most effective. Now Russia is gnawing away at the country's borders – but we can still stop Vladimir Putin and uphold Ukraine's sovereignty.
A coalition of willing European states, possibly including the UK, could rapidly agree on: confiscating Russian frozen assets, of which £39 billion are in the UK; protecting Ukraine's sky; and rejecting any peace agreement that does not include the return of all Ukrainians held by Russia against their will, and an invitation to Ukraine to join Nato.
None of these measures involve going to war with Russia. It is time for the whole of Europe to stand up and not betray Ukraine.
Dr Denis MacShane
Former minister for Europe
Assistant Professor Dr Ian Garner
Pilecki Institute, Warsaw
Dr Benjamin Tallis
Director, Democratic Strategy Initiative, Berlin
Emeritus Professor Sylvie Rollet
Chairwoman, For Ukraine, for their freedom and ours
Professor Phillips O'Brien
Professor of Strategic Studies, St Andrews
W H Smith's demise
SIR – Ben Marlow tells us not to mourn the passing of W H Smith (
The splendid building on our high street that housed the original Post Office still stands empty, nearly 10 years after it transferred to W H Smith.
David Cockerham
Bearsted, Kent
SIR – For several summers in the 1990s, W H Smith held a week-long book sale, where huge quantities of good-quality books were reduced to £1 each: an amazing bargain for a book dealer like me. One year I managed to visit nine branches in two days, filling my car. I had to give up my plans for a third day of buying because of backache.
I wondered then how long the chain would survive.
Richard Frost
Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire
SIR – In 1960, aged 17, I worked at a bank in Coventry, just up the street from W H Smith. Most days I would peruse the magazines and books, and I bought
Autocar
every week. But my most vivid memory is of reading
Lady Chatterley's Lover
, 20 pages or so at a time during my lunch hour, as I wouldn't dare take a copy home.
Peter Bull
New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Wimbledon must expand if it is to survive
SIR – Simon Briggs (
The vital difference between Wimbledon and the other three grand slams is that they are all controlled by the national governing bodies for tennis, whereas Wimbledon is under the control of a private members' club, the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC). Our tennis governing body, the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), only has a minority role.
In Australia and America, the slams were moved from smaller club venues, Kooyong and Forest Hills, to allow for development of state-of-the-art tournaments. Of course, it wouldn't be in the interests of the AELTC to move Wimbledon to a different venue, so the championships will have to find extra adjacent space if the event is to survive as a grand slam.
Most people – including the players – admire and value the tradition of Wimbledon; but prioritising tradition can become a constraint. It may be that the long-term interests of British tennis are better served by a grand slam under the control of the LTA, rather than a private club.
Donald Macdonald
Weybridge, Surrey
The shameful failure of Britain's water industry
SIR – The Victorians planned. Their reservoirs were built in strategic locations, anticipating need as the great conurbations developed.
In our own era, however, there appears to have been little planning. One new reservoir may be finished in 2029, and others could be in use by the 2030s and 2040s (
Meanwhile, the past 15 years have seen incompetent governments and regulators display a cynical disinclination to enforce the law – or even demand that water companies act with any integrity.
Bills are due to rise again in April. They will come through letterboxes as wasted water swirls around doors, spouts from blocked drains and courses towards the sea. Yet building on flood plains continues.
The failure to preserve the gift of water is absurd. Ofwat seems to be completely toothless, unable or unwilling to instigate any serious change, while the country suffers grotesque sewage spills.
To top it off, as the costs to poor swimmers and consumers are allowed to rise, executives are still in receipt of vast bonuses.
James Bishop
Wincanton, Somerset
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