[MovedGoalPosts]

The Thames Estuary provides a sort of reservoir into which all that tidal water being pushed around the English Channel and North Sea can be held without it all having to squeeze into the ever more restricted funnel of the Thames itself. Take away a large area of the estuary by building on or in it and that reduces the reservoir capacity potentially meaning the bottlenecked water will be more of a problem with a possible increase volume being pushed up towards London.

The real issue though is whether we, as a country, want to accept that we need communication and transport infrastructure to suit a modern economy. Air transport is here to stay whatever the environmentalists may say. Just as road transport has become more efficient, so has air transport. But it will never, in our lifetime, be green.

Our planning laws for major projects have become so convoluted and restrictive that doing anything takes forever. Inevitably these add a burdens significant costs through all the enquiries and other paraphanalia. We only have to look at HS2 which was talked about before the last parliament and still isn't close to construction starting.

So despite the need for more airport capacity, by the time that we manage to agree any new runway location, we'll already need a further runway. As a country we risk becoming so isolated that most of us will be doing short hops to Amsterdam, Paris or wherever has grown, before we can do the long haul stuff.