Heathrow and airports and aviation policy - Past top of decent

Last month Giovanni Bisignani, outgoing IATA Chief Executive sounded the UK a wakeup call about the decline into which its policies,- or lack of policies,- was causing to the future of Heathrow and indeed of London as a business centre. He went on soon afterwards to warn Hong Kong of the perils of ending up like London if a third runway is not soon built at Chep Lap Kok. In a message calculated to instill deepest fear for the future he warned that they could end up like London. That's enough to jerk any Hong Konger's ears and eyes wide open. To most of them London and the UK in general is a model of complacency, lack of energy, foresight, future planning and determination, this leading to an inexcusable waste of opportunities and under performance.

Today he is followed by 72 UK business leaders writing to the Times urging a rethink about the Government's abandonment of the proposed reintroduction of a third Heathrow runway and , to make it even worse,abandonment of plans for any additional runways at all in southern England."All options must be considered, short and long term, to address growing demand" runs the letter. Absolutely right .It is many months since the Conservative led government, influenced by a new found greeness and a string of constituencies beneath the flight paths, overturned Labour's support for the third runway at the airport. At the same time Labour's new leadership is showing signs of shaking its head,tutting, and withdrawing from what was previously its remarkably enlightened view on this and other major transport initiatives.

The reality is dire. In 1948 there was a visionary plan for the airport to have nine runways, six in a star of David pattern south of the A4 ,and a triangle of three between the A4 and what was then the planned South Wales Motorway, the M4. Indeed the alignment of the M4 was moved northwards to form its northern perimiter. The star of David briefly happened but was quickly eroded by the misplaced development of the terminal complex in the central area .Abandonment of the northern triangle came in 1953 and the threat to the two villages, Harmondsworth and Sipson, was removed. Wartime imagination about future infrastructure developments was already being ground to death by the dead hand of Whitehall. Aviation would never grow that much and anyway financially exhausted Britain couldn't afford it. A preview of now maybe. The vision has gone and what was the world's most prolific international airport is condemned to function with just two runways, severely restricted night operations and virtually no new slots left to be had,-ever.Its rivals meanwhile grow and plan to keep doing so. The outcome is inevitable even if gradual.Top of descent.

As if the lack of runways were not a big enough problem, the UK has deliberately embarked on suppressing demand by the imposition of the world's highest airport charges/taxes.Originally intended to fund airport services such as security ,these are now just another general tax and the revenue from them is not red ringed for recycling back into airports or other areas of transport. The recent budget delayed a further increase for a year but even without that the levels are high enough to deter foreign tourists particularly from finishing their European holidays,- and therefore their shopping,- in the UK even if they bother to include it at all. The requirement for a separate UK visa is already adding £65 a head to the cost of entering the country and the lowest medium haul departure level is £60 against £15 in Paris and zero in Amsterdam. Move up a class to Premium Economy and the level jumps to £120, rising to £170 for Australasia. Self strangulation? Aviation contributes 2% to UK pollution levels so even if that were halved in the name of environmentalism its effect would be negligable.It contributes an much more to Britain and London's economic activity and prosperity.

The UK has a remarkable tendancy to develop an industry and then kill it off by loading it with taxes, restrictions, beaurocracy and other impediments. Education for foreigners is another current example. The UK's private schools and universities have developed a huge foreign currency earning industry in importing people from across the world for education.The money they bring to pay for it is an export for UK Plc. Now, thanks to concerns about permanent immigration levels, mostly an entirely separate issue as most students return home at the end of their courses, visa restrictions are set to choke this off too. With that will go long term assosciations with the UK of many of the individuals concerned together with the future business and tourism that may bring. Joined up thinking? The lack of it is dismal. The position of Heathrow and of Britain itself as a major player in the airline and world and as an international business centre generating wealth, jobs and energy looks severely threatened. This is not by accident or misfortune but myopic short termist political design. We can be sure that with this horrifying prospect set out before it, Hong Kong will be calling in the dredgers, landfill teams and runway builders before UK could say "Policy Review"

Postscript: Talking of policy Reviews,the UK Government will be this week be announcing one. The Times advises that the Minister, Philip Hammond, who is doing well in championing HS2 and other transport projects will be publishing a "scoping document for a sustainable framework for UK aviation", balancing arguments for economic growth nd the impact on the environment. A review will take until 2013. Any by now remedial action would take until...........? Do we hear a rubbing of hands in Paris ,Amsterdam and the Gulf?

Saturday 26th March: A Troll in the Park,- Ed Luther King bids for historical celeb status.

There I was sat in a bus, kettled on the Oxford Tube while trying to escape from Victoria to Oxford early on Saturday afternoon while the whole place (Central and western London) was gummed up by a procession of inbound coaches bearing legions of mainly state sector workers plus assorted others bearing a number of local complaints about life under "the cuts" to join young Ed plus old Brendan and other kings of the rustbucket union industry cluttering up the streets before having their jamboree in Hyde Park. Oh, and of course there were various groups of supporting, and I mean supporting, Beeb reporters and film crews bringing it all to our screens at home if only we could get there.

Following in the footsteps of Unite's BA cabin crew who claim to be up there with the heros of Iwo Jima in their struggle to avoid "Imposition" "More work" etc, Ed attempted to rally the non attending nation by comparing this parkland picnic to "the struggle" (The Left have to struggle from birth to death. No wonder they tend to look so dismal) of the suffragettes,the civil rights movement, the anti-apartheid campaign etc upon whose shoulders the ralliers were,he said,standing.
"Wow, what a hero, what a charasmatic leader I am" must have been running through his head. For the unbelievers we may have wished that the weight he could feel upon his shoulders was the hand of the Metropolitan Police requesting him to move along as he was creating a public disturbance to the much larger number of people trying to exercise their democratic rights to move around , do their normal business or pleasure and put money into the London's coffers that afternoon. Doubtless his absent mate the other Ed,- the Balls one- was also secretly mouthing "Move along,- but not quite yet." There's no point in making an actual takeover bid yet with probably four more years of opposition to go is there?

Talking of the Met, the Beeb which was democratically giving pretty much equal air time to the few hundred intent on having tea at Fortnums, showed the boys in blue standing benignly by for quite a time while hooded youths and youthesses hoisted themselves up the front of the building from literally inches away. One almost expected to hear them say "Can I give you a hand up?". They certainly weren't saying "One more move sonny/lassie and you're in the back of the black van". We in our bus a couple of miles away were much more effectively kettled than they were.

Such is democracy. At least Mr Gaddafi took the trouble to have it all shown on Libyan TV (did he pay?) even if erroneously labelled as riots against Britain's imperialist intervention in Libya. He missed a trick there. He might have done much better taking the line: "Fellow Libyans fighting for democracy. This is what having it looks like on a Saturday afternoon in London. Is that what you really want?".

The UK Budget,- and much Balls.

Yesterday's UK Budget statement by Chancellor George Osborne was about as good as it could get bearing in mind that,since Gordon Browns's abandonment of "Prudence" in 2000 in favour of "borrow and spend" there is no money in the kitty. There is simply nothing in the safe and worse, the interest we pay on the substantially increased,-and still increasing,-national debt every day pours £120 million in national debt interest down the drain. Think of what that could buy,- EVERY DAY. The "global banking crisis" happened seven years after the binge borrowing got under way so it's so use attributing our situation to that. Yes, it made things worse, but we were in trouble and disguising it by more borrowing and more artificial creation of public sector jobs way before that.

The nonsensical bleatings and noisy scorn emanating from Gordon Brown's two closest minions, Eds Miliband and Balls, enthusiastic proponents of "borrow and spend and pay-it-off-way-after-we've left power" offend the intelligence. Again and again the phrases of "Too much, too soon" and "We were going to cut the defecit by 50% by the end of 5 years " are bullishly repeated on TV and radio as if the first was some new irrefutable fact and the second even true without the missing word "annual" in front of defecit. Labour had no plan to even begin tackling the accumulated pile which bleeds the economy so severely every single day.

The wailings should be ignored by the listeners who should most appropriately outraged by the fact that those who brought UK Plc. to the edge of this economic precipice have never said a word of apology or recognition of what they have done, continue to be defecit deniers and worse still claim that they should be given another go at the helm.

Fortunately, as George Osborne is well aware, the next General Election is probably four years away and he is right to heap on all the pain up front thereby moving on to at least the beginnings of a genuine recovery ahead of that. He is also aware of Blair's lament that he wasted opportunities , especially for public sector reform, by not getting on with it as soon as he came to power in 1997. Brown, Balls and Miliband junior were of course not helping by lying across the tracks but Blair should never have allowed that either.Weakness and lack of resolve doesn't pay especially when up against time .Five years, although better than the American four, gives very little time for things to be done and results to begin showing through by at least the end of year four. The Con/Lib alliance hit the ground running in May last year, didn't stop after a heroic 100 days and have kept running up the mountain they have to climb. The clock is ticking loudly. There are just four years and really only three left to achieve the turnaround .They know therefore that calls for "Slow down" from the two Eds are nothing short of self interest to try to ensure failure at the 2015 General Election. They are therefore unlikely to pay much attention to the whinging (Ed Miliband) and snarling ( Ed Balls) or from the unions , who themselves have thrown away the opportunity to be part of and influence a massive change process/ structural revolution. These good folk have again chosen the old fashioned negativity, marches and demonstrations.What these activities did for motor manufacturing, the docks, coal mining, shipbuilding, printing and the rest is just as much forgotten/denied as the recent borrow and spend root causes of the UK's current financial crisis.

No amount of scathing Newsnight presenters or other ill-wishers should deflect the coalition from its course.The current offering from the opposition and unions is certain financial disaster via a deeper spiral into debt .At the very worst the outcome of yesterday's budget has to be better than that,

Midsomer Madness

The news that Brian True-May ,the producer of Midsomer Murders is to leave the programme at the end of the present series,-the first with the "new John Nettles" is depressing. He has does an excellent job with a programme which may not line up with obsession for political correctness seen at the top of most of the UK's TV companies but is liked by many. The long running seriew is totally harmless other than to the Midsomer residents who get fewer by the week. It has no political or racial edge and sells well throughout the world to very diverse audiences.

The fact that True-May has had to apologise for his remarks about its lack of racial diversity is dismal as is the fact that he has left, presumably either becaue he has been pushed or he is so fed up with the storm in a teacup which has been blown out of all proportion that he has just decided "To hell with it" and can't be bothered to put up with further nonsense. He is clearly not a racist and was just expressing an honest opinion that the programme, being set in the location and era it is, doesn't require artificial tampering with.

The media made a big play of the statement that the programme was "one of the most disliked by ethnic communities." That seems to be a misrepresentation of the fact that it is "one of the least liked" . This is a very different thing, being passive rather than active. One would have hoped that the media understood the nuances of the English language better. In fact, even more dismally, they probably do but have chosen to portray the statistics in this less than neutral way. So much for fair play and so long for Brian True-May's career.

And off we go again.........to war.

We woke up on Friday to find ourselves about to go to war.During the day about sixty MPs managed to find their way to Westminster to hear the Prime Minister tell us this was going to happen but there would be an overnight delay until the leaders of the various "coalition" countries could get together in Paris to agree a modus operandi. Inevitably the outraged Gadaffi used the cover of darkness to swiftly move his troops up the road to Benghazi. How inconsiderate of him. Hasn't he heard of work/life balance , unsocial hours and the need for eight hours sleep for EU leaders in particular? The action began immediately after that Paris meeting. Amongst other things, UK submarines fired off some of their stock of Tomahawk cruise missiles at Libyan targets. When the store was last replenished, an additional 30 cost $100 million, so each sent on its way cost the Treasury the equivalent a good few local libraries, rural buses etc in the current round of austerity. Whether all this was a good idea or not and whether Parliament actually agrees will be democratically debated( for it is democracy, not governments deciding on their own what's good for their citizens for which we are fighting)on Monday.Strange. Hasn't the horse already bolted? Will we take our missiles back if "The Noes have it"?

In days gone by the outbreak of wars could be seen a long way off. Certainly years and sometimes decades in advance. The build up of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s gave plenty of warning as to what might become inevitable.

Now is different. Only a couple of months ago the Libyan Government was our friend and one which we assiduously courted.There were big deals to be had and by and large we did well. Only a month ago, David Cameron led the British mission to the Gulf arms fair and toured some of the region's countries. They and their governments were seen as friends and certainly people to do business with. Apart from that, they were,- and still are,- all recognised as legitimate governments.

What's changed? If there had been no uprisings, demonstrations, occupations etc, -all different,- around the Middle East then nothing would have altered and we would have continued to deal with all the governments involved. Suddenly though there were demonstrations. Some, as in Egypt, succeeded in their aims of achieving constitutional and even regime change. Some did not. Again, all the situations were different as were the ways in which the protests and their leaders were dealt with.

In most of these disputes we have sensibly stood well clear other than almost certainly giving advice on possible peaceful resolutions. In Libya however we have not. There the real fear of genocide and the wholesale slaughter of those who have not shown unswerving loyalty to the regime has persuaded us differently even though the end game is not clear .Bosnia and Rwanda have made us very nervous about being seen to stand aside while such things happened.

Our propensity for being drawn into other people's conflicts and to suddenly find ourselves involved in wars most people really don't want is though worrying. The lack of prior public debate raises questions about our own less than perfect democracy in action,- a democracy which we are telling the world they should be adopting. It also raises questions about other nations' possible rights to intervene in our internal affairs. What if next Saturday's anti-cuts demonstration in London got ugly, there were clamours for regime change at Number 10 and the leaders were bundled into police vans and detained awaiting trial. Using our own precedent, could Libya send in its troops to ensure what they saw as fair play?

On this occasion we can justify our action and will probably get away with it since a real massacre was on the cards if Gaddafi's troops had run amok in opposition areas. On others though we stand on the edge of a serious precipice and at high risk of over involvement. Encouraging regimes to change though contact, trade, and the establishment of mutual self interest,which is what we had been doing in Libya with some success,- diplomacy in other words,- may take a long time but its effects are likely to be more robust and longer lasting as well as a lot less expensive for an already broke economy. Libya had though become an emergency, so suspension of normal logic and judgment is understandable.

Spending Cuts don't mean Activity Cuts- Discuss.

Perhaps mislead by years of Blair and Brown announcing new "initiatives" , not by saying what was to be done but simply declaring "... and we will spend £xx billion on...........", current statements from Government departments about "the cuts" seem to assume that the reverse equation that less income/subsidy = less output/activity is true. Not so.

The private sector has for years known that this is a false belief.There each year managements have been pressed to do more with less .Their survival at the next performance review has depended on achieving it. Proceedures and processes have been simplified and steamlined, and obstacles removed .Often the clearing away of a layer or two of management and a reduction in the number of people tripping over or creating work for each other has been stunningly succesful. It may be a novel concept in some areas of the hitherto very secure public sector but it has to happen .Current levels of expenditure and often lower than commercial productivity are unsustainable. This is indeed a revolution.

Government departments,Qangos and local authorities have so far been reacting to spending cuts by simply hacking out activities while preserving central and administrative costs and notably some very highly paid management roles. It's easy to do and some of course don't want "the cuts" to work anyway.

There is need for short,sharp notice from the top. "You are expected to run all, or as many existing services as possible with no diminution in quality. Your task is to say how you will do it, not how much you won't do. If this is too much for you kindly step aside and we will have others with a more open minds and energy do it." This should receive applause from the taxpayer.

"There was an air of enthusiasm..........."

"There was an air of enthusiasm with every man and woman prepared to do their own and any other job 24 hours a day if need be".

So said Sir Keith Granville,ultimately Chairman of BOAC about his life on joining Imperial Airways as a ten shillings a week trainee. (Source, reasearched by John Williams is the April 1974 edition of British Airways Overseas Divisions staff magazine "Speedbird" which celebrated the 50th anniversary of the creation of Imperial Airways).

And then there came the unions ostensibly to better the lot of the employee. Restrictive working practices, limited hours,sharp demarcation lines, meal breaks, rest periods,higher wages, all presumably to make the employee better paid and happier.

Or maybe not. Compare the happiness/smile factor of some highly unionised legacy airlines with their high pay,plethora of addtional allowances, generous rest periods, lengthy layovers and highly specific working practices with some of the more recent British and overseas lower paid, harder working and non or much less unionised and union minded ones. Which are less strike prone and the most pleasant to fly with? Which come over as the most human?

In any industry it's all about ethos,- and a realisation that hard work can be more interesting and satisfying than taking it easy and in extremis being bored out of one's skull all day. It can be argued that, far from making people's lives better and happier, the unions have disempowered them and turned interesting jobs into drudgery. Barriers between jobs and between employees and their managements have been artificially erected and exploited. Not surprising as unions need unhappy, not highly motivated, people. Where this demoralisation has happened it shows, be it in service businesses like airlines or in the Friday afternoon car. Sir Keith and his colleagues had it right, ten shillings a week and all.

Lib Dem Spring Conference,- Grateful for Media no Fly Zone?

Nick Clegg was probably grateful for the virtual news blackout of last weekend's Lib Dem SpringFest in Sheffield. The media's preoccupation with Japan and the Middle East ensured that most attention was elsewhere and coverage of the Yorkshire gathering was patchy. Although well contained the gathering could not conceal the reality that what masquerades as a single party is probably several.

With no chance of ever exercising real power on its own, the party has heitherto been able to range far and wide and be the political wing of assorted groups of banner wavers. It has encompassed almost Conservarive Liberal Tories, people pretty close to where David Cameron really is, through to others certainly to the left of New Labour and some probably to the left even of New Old Labour (the brand of the 2 Eds). It contains both liberal views about a free trading economy, less state control and the importance of individuals and their freedoms through to some very illiberal ones enthusisatic about collectivism, monopoly state suppliers and less choice in public services and life in general. No wonder the party presents a confused and often hostile to anything face.

To take one area of philosophical confusion, the protesters about student fees are saying that the costs of educating the fortunate people who progress to tertiary education should be shared by those who do not.Similarly, those protesting about the proposed reform of largely unfunded (ie they come out of current annual government expenditure, reducing the amount available for other purposes) public sector pensions are saying that those in the private sector whose schemes were in many cases seriously undermined by Gordon Brown's tax swoop should pay for these generally better and fully guaranteed schemes. In both cases , why should they? Does the ludicrousness of the propositions not appear to those who say they are wedded to equality, fairness in society and all those good things? Is it a one way street? Public sector good? Private sector bad? That doesn't sound very liberal.

One has to sympathise with the actually rather brave Nick Clegg for trying to explain simply to his party the benefits that being in the coalition government has brought in terms of being able to dispropotionately influence policy and get things they want. This has been far more efective than shouting into space and waving banners from the sidelines. In May 2010 the Lib Dems had a constitutional duty to ensure that Gordon Brown, clinging for several days to the possibility of not calling in the removal vans, was removed from office.They did that and by entering the coalition have secured probably more than they could have ever hoped. David Cameron has been far more accomodating than Brown and his comrades, indeed comrades, were ever likely to have been. Some of the party's supporters have abandoned them at least for the time being. Some would have liked to see an unholy alliance with Brown & Co and some would have simply liked to say "Neither of the above" and,apart from the occasional deal on which way to vote, have languished in sulky irrelevance.

The Lib Dems now have the opportunity to redefining their position towards the admittedly rather crowded centre and representing themselves as the real third way. They are making some progress and enjoying the taste of power but still don't seem grown up enough to seize the moment, shed their illiberal side and look like a real alternative to the Big Two (Parties, not Eds). Fortunately for them the unlikely pair, the natural disaster in Japan and the unnatural one in Libya have ridden to their rescue and ensured that few have paid much attention to what was going on in Sheffield.

No,- The Middle East isn't all the same.

After a few weeks of seeing 24/7 news channels and printed media churn out item after item on the surge of disturbances and uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East and forecasting similar ends to all the regimes concerned , it is interesting to see if Libya will bring some of the pundits to a juddering halt.

It could just be that the Gaddafi regime will hang on in there,unhung, for quite some time. During that life extension it is likely that,as in Iraq where the West encouraged dissenters to show themselves in uprisings as the Kuwait relieving forces surged towards Baghdad before withdrawing and leaving them defenceless,the regime will study all those news broadcasts of rebels, round them up and deal with them mercilessly.Egypt looks as if it may sort itself out although time is short and it is totally new to what we see as normal parliamentary style democracy. Jordan, Oman and Bahrein all face very different sources of dissent, not all of them benign, and one can be sure that wherever Iran sees an opportunity to muddy the pool it will do so.

The uprisings and demonstrations have been a useful wakeup call to anyone who assumed that the current status quo could go on unaltered for ever and have underlined the importance of speeding up progress towards better and good governance if not full, one man/woman one vote democracy. In some states there may be a loosening of central controls and in others a loosening of purse strings but letting go will come hard in an area often kept together and away from destructive feuding by what we would see as authoritarian rule. The cancerous features of corruption and nepotism probably infuriate populations and particularly the aspirant middle classes more than the inability to occasionally tick a ballot paper.

To assume identical "democracy must win" outcomes across the region is unrealistic and in any case "good governance must win" would be a better goal. Here in the UK we have democracy but do we always have good governance? Is everyone equal before the law? Celebreties' personal lives are more shielded from the media than those of the rest of the population. The police will create a rolling roadblock on a motorway to protect a rock star or model from the press but will not attend a house burglary unless the occupant is rich or "influential". Objectors to a planning application which may have been discussed for many months and hours between councils and developers collectively have a total of five minutes to express their objections. Celebreties caught speeding are much more likely to be fined rather than banned than white van man or the sales rep because their ability to drive is seen as being of much higher value... and so it goes on in countless ways great and small. Let's not kid ourselves. Democracy is meant to be the best way of achieving good and fair governance but it doesn't guarantee it.

Much of the anger we are seeing across the world's undemocratic regimes,- or not in the case of North Korea,-is more about greedy self perpetuating regimes and their hangers on than democracy per se. Again democracy is seen as the best way of disposing of these and thereby achieving at least better governance and a fairer deal and equality of opportunity for all. Democracy is not in itelf the guarantee. Even in the UK where the monarchy is broadly accepted and even loved by some, it is the behaviour and remoteness of lesser royals and their assosciates which most threatens its continuation.

The North Africa, Middle East and Gulf states are all very different as is the real nature and performance of its many governments. It is time for the pundits and commentators standing against their preferred backdrops of riots (always look at what is going on in the background to see what is really happening and how life is in some of these scenes),roadblocks, destroyed buildings,chaotic hospitals or even the palm trees of Baghdad ,to back off. Instant wisdom is seldom that. Many of the correspondents and commentators have previously had little , if anything, to do with the Arab world and are a million miles from understanding it. The solutions will come from within, not from western intervention. So far William Hague has played a very measured and astute game for the UK by condemning atrocities but keeping well away from any rash and hasty actions. He knows we have no control over the outcomes which will differ from country to country and across the short, medium and long terms . He knows also that we will have to have relationships with whoever wins and leads in any time frame and be able to influence them as much as possible without appearing perfidious. Only a few weeks ago we were Gaddafi's friend, just as we had been Saddam Hussein's when he was fighting Iran. The Arabs are astute and will have a view on this and our reliabilty. They value old friends highly and are pretty good at sussing out who is for real and who is all facade. Sorry Tony if you haven't already grasped this. Just having a sun tan and motorcade won't do. It's what they say amongst themselves as you drive away that counts. The current situation is multi faceted, multi layered and extremely complex, the product of centuries. Setting a UK position other than championing good governance would not be helpful at this stage. Other than rescuing people in immediate danger, foreigners need to play it long and let the people of the region resolve the issues themselves.