Boris Island must never be able to get off the ground

Any new major airport near the Thames Estuary is impractical because of politics and birds

At first the idea of a new airport on, or even in, the Thames Estuary seemed to be just one of the Mayor of London's less amusing flights of fancy, but now the arrival of a proposal by the architect Norman Foster has given it some respectability. The idea of replacing Heathrow and moving east is not new. Forty years ago, Maplin Sands, off Essex, was held up as a possible site, but interest soon dwindled and the present proposals seem just as likely to fade when confronted by the real situation: that a new airport is both impractical and unnecessary.

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It's all kicking off at Lydd...

Activists prepare for battle to save countryside from the developers

The fight over Lydd airport's proposed expansion in Kent highlights the conflict awaiting the government's new planning policy framework.

Down in the marshlands of Kent, battle lines are being drawn. In Lydd, a historic gateway town near the headland of Dungeness – a desolate moonscape of gravel dunes, bungalows and tundra – the people are angry. They are angry at proposals to build more homes on the edge of town at a time when younger inhabitants are moving away. They are angry at plans to develop a series of quarries that will have conveyor belts running all night. And they are angry about the airport.

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