One man’s progress is another’s loss

IN response to the three pro third runway letters you published in last week’s Gazette. I feel the letters published last week about the councils’ spending on legal action against a third runway need to be put into prospective, for one the council must represent all of its residents and those of us in the south of the borough which suffer far more due to its “neighbour” Heathrow airport are grateful of the support from the council. The £204,219 spent in the last 20 months would equate to £2.55 per month per household if it was just divided by the 4,000 homes in the Heathrow villages that face demolition or rendering uninhabitable alone. If divided by all the homes in Hillingdon the amount would be less than a penny, considering the south of the borough has been neglected of service investment due to years of blight it’s a small price to pay.

We are often told to accept our fate in the villages as it is ‘progress’. Heathrow announced at a staff event last week that 2.4million seats were unsold in 2016, if an average aircraft held 300 passengers that’s 8,000 flights a year. If the airlines organised schedules more efficiently they could sell back slots they do not need and Heathrow could open up new slots to emerging countries that require routes, thus producing the new jobs mentioned without the need for a new runway and the destruction of communities – now that would be progress!

J CLARK

Sipson Resident

via email