Labour governments have always been good at promoting policies that seem on the surface to be a good idea, but in practice have the opposite effect to their intentions. Expanding Heathrow without, at the very least, promoting a railway link from SWR into the airport, is a recipe for more traffic pollution and noise pollution for those living in West London. It was after all a Labour government that went ahead with the conversion of a military airfield into a civil airport, without any proper consideration of whether Heathrow was in fact the best site for London's main airport, and the residents of West London have been suffering the consequences ever since. It was years before any rail connection to the airport was put in (perhaps a consequence of Labour nationalising the railways, as a commercial rail operator such as the old Great Western would have seen the advantages of building one) and we have so far been fortunate that, with all the aircraft flying low over built-up areas, we have had no worse accidents than the 1968 Staines disaster.If Chancellor Reeves really wants to promote growth, she should look again at the idea of an airport in the Thames estuary, downwind of London and allowing take-off and landings over water. Now that could be a real creator of economic growth, but it requires imagination and vision, something that Labour is sorely lacking.
Richard Greenhough ● 23d