AS a registered postal voter in the Tatton constituency I would like to take this opportunity to comment on George Osborne’s “Northern Powerhouse”.

We hear an awful lot of words from George Osborne, our MP and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, about “The Northern Powerhouse”

- an area which contains the third largest airport in the UK at Manchester.

Yet if one wishes to travel to destinations other than the capital cities of other countries then one has to travel from a perfectly adequate regional airport to use one of the two primary UK hub airports - London Heathrow or Gatwick.

Both of those airports are at, or nearly at, full capacity, both are located in the South East corner of the UK, and both are earmarked for huge expansion at colossal, eye watering cost to the taxpayer, to accommodate the increase in traffic.

As far as services from Heathrow are concerned there are regular shuttle connections from Manchester so, although adding to one’s travel costs and not as convenient as flying directly, there is at least a viable option.

But if you are unfortunate enough to have to fly from Gatwick your only options are to take the car, use the train or travel by coach.

The Manchester to Gatwick shuttle that once existed is no more.

If one really insists on flying to Gatwick from Manchester then using a European hub (Amsterdam Schipol, Paris CDG, etc.) is the only way one can reach the UK’s second major hub airport.

Now I am no expert on these matters but it seems to me that regional airports such as Manchester funnelling passenger traffic through the two UK primary airport hubs in the south east corner of the country is adding to their capacity problems.

Surely one way of relieving the growth pressure on those hub airports is not to invest yet more in the already grossly over-favoured south east but to divert swathes of that investment to your “Northern Powerhouse” to encourage international air traffic growth away from the south east.

I see absolutely no evidence that such investment decisions in the country’s infrastructure are being directed away from the preference for the south east.

£15 billion for London’s Crossrail 1; £27 billion for London’s Crossrail 2; a comparatively miserly £7 billion for the “Northern Powerhouse” HS3 rail improvement plan.

“Northern Powerhouse”. Bah!

Humbug!

John McDonald Carini Italy