Andrew Gardner, gardner@gardner.keme.co.uk

It’s your backyard too

THERE are people, who do not live near an airport and are not nagged by a social or environmental conscience, who wonder what all the fuss is about.

They will not notice the change from rolling hills to concrete, from hedgerow to wire boundary fence, from character houses to prefabricated units and blocks of glass, from country lane to dual carriageway. Neither will they notice when the sound of birdsong and the countryside waking up each morning is replaced by the roar of jets and the thunder of traffic, or when the scent of the earth and the greenery is replaced by the smell of jet fuel and exhaust fumes.

Bring it on, they’ll say. We all want to travel. One thing is clear, though. When this small island of ours is one enormous car park and landing strip, not many sane people will want to travel here. And yet they call us Nimbys!

Chris & Kate Eastwood,Great Easton, Essex

Cruel and unusual

TO THOSE of us living close to Stansted airport, the compensation being offered by BAA is even more bizarre than some of your correspondents have suggested.

BAA is offering compensation to those whose homes lie in a notional noise “footprint” drawn around a hypothetical runway which has not yet been built. It has not yet even been planned — a planning application is not expected until 2006 and, given the enormous amount of local opposition, there is no guarantee that permission will ever be granted.

Roger Clark, Broxted, Essex

IF BOEING and Airbus are developing aircraft that can carry more than 500 people on every trip and fly on the very edge of space — so completing a transatlantic flight in a fraction of the time — would this not suggest that the same aircraft could make more trips per day, carrying many more passengers, therefore meaning we need fewer aircraft and so fewer huge airports? If Mr Darling must have his bigger Stansted, why doesn’t he put the new runway closer to the present one, making unnecessary the wanton, legalised destruction of homes and some of the most beautiful ancient sites and countryside in Essex? It seems that Millennium Dome fever is still as infectious as ever.

David Levy, davidj.levy@virgin.net