[IanFromHKG]

stevescoots – 28/08/2012 13:13 GMT : HKIA was rushed through, succesfully as it was the perfect model for legally expatriating coffers from the HK goverment back to the UK before china took over 🙂 amazing waht [sic] we can do when motivated!

VintageKrug – 28/08/2012 13:13 GMT : Spot on re: the motivation for driving through HKIA asap, stevescoots

VintageKrug – 28/08/2012 12:11 GMT : …one should however remember that Hong Kong was in fact British when all this new airport/infrastructure was planned and that in large part the airport itself was designed and built by British contractors.

Sorry to disappoint you conspiracy theorists, but amazingly enough the mainlanders were alive to the possibility of the Brits bleeding the HK coffers dry and made very sure that it DIDN’T happen. Yes, Norman Foster designed the building and was no doubt paid a handsome fee. Yes, a FEW British contractors were involved. But believe me, the bulk of the money stayed with “Hong Kong” companies (I use inverted commas because of course so many of them used mainland labour that a huge portion of the benefits ended up on the mainland)

Cedric Statherby rightly says that the interests that drove the airport forward were much more HK-oriented than UK-oriented – and quite right, too. He also rightly mentions (although not using this phraseology) the advantage that HK had in those days of having the world’s best form of government, and in this respect Winston Churchill was – unusually for him – quite wrong. WC said (and I am paraphrasing here*) that democracy is the worst form of government except for every other kind. He missed out, however, the best form of all which is a TRULY benevolent dictatorship such as the one HK enjoyed during most of its last years under British rule. Just one of the reasons I am so glad that House of Lords reform in the UK has been (temporarily) abandoned – there is so much to be said for giving power to people who don’t need it, who exercise it purely to do what they believe is right, and who are beholden to no-one.

* The full quotation, from Hansard, 11 November 1947, reads “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

[LuganoPirate]

Becky, 50bn is not such a lot relatively speaking. Let’s give VK his 6 yr build time and that’s just over 8bn a year.

A project that size in that time frame would create about 100,000 jobs direct and indirect if not more. That’s worth about 750 mln in income tax etc + 100,000 being taken out the unemployed pool saving about 1.5bn.

The overall boost it would give the economy would be massive, probably 3 times the investment and that’s money better spent than £300 bn of QE!

[VintageKrug]

As I said several months ago, I believe the Transport Review will recommend

1. A new runway at Gatwick (possibly overriding the Council ban, or at the very least ensuring it is operational the year the ban ends). Possibly a new terminal as well, which could presage a relocation of the runways to limit the need to impinge on extra land.

2. A new runway at Stansted.

3. An “independent” committee to discuss (yet a again) the opportunities for a Thames (or other located) integrated Hub – this will be stacked to be either pro or against it, and with either kick the issue into the long grass of the next election, or actually do something imminently to start breaking ground next summer.

4. There will be no short Third Runway at Heathrow.

£50bn really isn’t all that much over a decade or so of construction, when you consider all the tax such a spend would generate, as well as the regeneration of a long abandoned part of the country which itself (along with the new airport and associated industries) would generate billions in tax take every year for decades.

And I don’t believe for a moment you could build a short Third Runway, new terminal and taxiways as well as widening the surrounding motorways/building new tube/train and transit lines for £8bn.

Whereas £50bn sounds realistic for Thames Hub.

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