IT is surely foolhardy to dismiss the proposal for a major hub airport on land between Marcham, East Hanney and Drayton as ‘laughable’.

From a commercial point of view it could make more sense than creating an artificial island in the Thames estuary in order to site an airport there. The LOX proposal has the ready-made advantage of existing road and rail links to London, the Midlands and the West Country. The Thames estuary proposal realistically serves only London and Kent.

Instead of dismissing the proposal, our political representatives should be gauging levels of support and opposition now so that the commission tasked with making a recommendation to Government can be made aware of what I believe will be very strong opposition.

There can be few residents in the Vale who would welcome such a huge, noisy, polluting piece of ‘infrastructure’ together with the vast increase in traffic congestion necessary to transport the 120 million passengers per year to and from a place very near to Marcham, East Hanney and Drayton and within a short distance of Abingdon, Grove, Wantage, Steventon and many other Vale villages.

This proposal threatens to change the nature of the Vale beyond all recognition, and our representatives should be preparing now to register the opposition of residents to it instead of dismissing it as crackpot and hoping.

Bob Dean, Locks Lane, Wantage