In message , at 10:34:25 on Mon, 26 Sep
2016, tim... remarked:
The issue with LHR being London's main airport in the wrong place is
"should it have been moved before T4 was given permission"

IMHO the answer to that is "Absolutely"

Where would you have put it?

You just have to find somewhere

I'm sure that there are (were) lots of viable options

That's what the Roskill Commission had a rather hard time with. They
suggested Cublington.

Bear in mind that Maplin Sands, and several other sites had been rules
out already, so you might have only Stansted on offer. And that
already had an active set of pressure groups opposed to even any
extension of its status as the third airport.

Of course there are going to be pressure groups. But that's what
politics has to cope with that makes it hard

you have to overrule the pressure groups to do what's best for the country.

It's what happened in all other places that have moved their major airport

Almost always to reclaimed land off the coast, or virtually uninhabited
tracts of farmland. Boris wanted to pursue the former (to much derision
from onlookers) and there isn't any of the latter in the Southeast.

This would have been in 1980, all arguments would all be forgotten by
now and London's airport provision would be in a better place than it
is now

SSE is sill going strong, as are the campaigns against a second runway
at Gtwick and a third at Heathrow.
--
Roland Perry