In May 2103 a consortium of Turkish construction companies agreed to pay the Turkish government €22.1 billion over 25 years to build and operate the new airport. There is only one sensible place for London’s next airport – Stansted. Boris Island is absurdly expensive and knocking down houses to build another runway at Heathrow is wrong on so many levels. Stansted has everything you need for a hub – surrounded by miles of flat green countryside where you can lay out another four runways without fuss or bother, transport links already to central London and an airport layout modelled on Atlanta, the most effective hub in the world. Sell Heathrow, move London’s hub to Stansted and develop it as a BOT franchise – revenue would be more than £20 billion. On the subject of UK airports, well done to the owners of Gatwick. The gaffer-tape index I use to measure the degree of dilapidation of an airport terminal – the amount of times thick black tape is applied to walls, ceilings and carpet to keep the structures together – peaked at 23 in April 2009 in Gatwick. It’s down to four now.