New Statesman Scotland

The decision by the Dutch airline KLM to stop running flights between Scotland and London has prompted this diary into a bout of strategic transport planning. KLM is only the latest big-time carrier to drop or downgrade Scotland from its schedules. It is now almost (but not quite) impossible to hop on a plane at Glasgow and get off somewhere in the USA. And when Scottish business and industry whimpers about this they are firmly told by the airline industry that the "catchment" areas of the Scottish airports are too small and that there are just not enough Scottish bums to justify laying on the high-flying seats. Which is a hard argument to rebut.

But this diary has a suggestion. Why not dust off the 1960s plan for one big, world-class Central Scotland Airport (CSA) to serve Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling and all their satellites? Two sites were pinpointed at the time, both of them about halfway between Edinburgh and Glasgow. One was at Slamannan on the moorland north of the M8; the other was on the flat lands at Airth on the south side of the Firth of Forth, just west of the Kincardine Bridge.

There is no doubt that Airth is a choice site for the CSA. It is almost equidistant from Glasgow and Edinburgh, is near the thriving city of Stirling and is at the junction of the M9 and M876 motorways. No great feats of road-building would be required. It is also within a few miles of the Glasgow-Edinburgh rail line so a spur would not cost Railtrack the earth.

Access to the 300,000 folk who live in and around Perth and Dundee via the Kincardine Bridge could be hugely improved by upgrading the A985 to motorway, to join the M90 at Rosyth. It would be improved even more by upgrading the A977 between Kincardine and Kinross. Overhead power lines that run across the Firth of Forth from Longannet Power Station would have to be buried, but that would be no bad thing. And, given the proximity of Stirling, it would not be too much of a stretch to give the CSA a resoundingly Scottish title: Bannockburn.

Not a lot of people seem to know this, but the Scottish Parliament has its own house magazine. Unsurprisingly, it is entitled Holyrood. Most of it consists of worthy articles by MSPs and members of the Scottish executive explaining how they are grappling with the great issues of the day. The classified ads, however, are much more interesting. Despite the Beattie Media rumpus, it is plain that lobbyism continues to flourish. A whole raft of businesses, trade associations and lobby companies advertise in Holyrood. This diary was intrigued to notice that Scottish Power's "parliamentary liaison" officer in Scotland is one Jamie Maxton. Now there's a surname that should play well among the dewy-eyed members of the Sentimental Left.

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