Fly away, Boris!

I've just made it back home across the North Kent marshes, as seen in a Dickens adaptation on a television near you - part two of the very enjoyable "Great Expectations" is this evening.

As you might know, this area is where London mayor Boris Johnson would, if he got his way, site a massive new airport. Just today, a new article in the Independent gives an idea of what such a monstrous project would cost, but apparently architect Norman Foster having done this sort of thing before has ideas of how it could be done in North Kent.

Seeing the bleak landscape shown in Great Expectations - and it really hasn't changed much since, save you can now shoot right past it in minutes on High Speed 1 - you might imagine that the locals would be grateful to be rescued from mudflats as far as the eye can see and dragged into the 21st century with the addition to the area of a sparkling new international airport, but I understand most are opposed and I am with them.

I will be among the many chaining themselves to the bulrushes if Boris's vanity project ever seriously looks like getting off the drawing board. Good God, man, quite apart from saving the birds, that's where I learned to ride a horse!