Grombles

I've blogged before about this, but now Sir Howard Davis (appointed to oversee government analysis and recommendation)  is about to read my blog, I thought I'd better bring it up to date. So in case you missed it, here's the earlier post . My plan is simple. It can be actioned immediately (not in 20 years after countless enquiries and consultations). It needn't cost anything. And at a stroke it instantly starts boosting our sorely needed export drive. Why is this so urgent? Because the people we want to export to can't get here by direct flights (but they can get to most of our competitors in Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam and New York). And we can't quickly and cheaply get to them. Do you remember the brilliant British Airways ad where a British businessman is talking by phone to a prospect in New York who is flicking through a document and making positive noises. The call ends and the Brit excitedly announces to the team clustered around him "he liked ...

We can easily and very quickly solve our capacity problems at Gatwick and Heathrow in order to boost our economy. But it needs government intervention and imagination. We don't have enough runways for jumbos or immigration processing hubs to make it easy for the people we need to attract to do business here. For example, the UK has no direct flights to and from China's largest city, Guangzhou and its 40m people, let alone all the other places hoping to do business with us. Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris all have many direct flights there for the Chinese to choose from. I expect the same situation exists for most other fast growing cities in India, Vietnam, South Korea etc. The UK is stuck in the past with respect to where we make it easy to travel to and from - and look where this got Greece, Spain and Portugal (once great trading nations). If we are serious about encouraging trading relationships with the world's richest nation (China now has over $3 trillion in reserv...