Dear Gatwick,
We thank you for your sponsorship, free Wifi* and delicious snacks served up at numerous fringes at Lib Dem Conference but there is something you should really have known before to went to all the bother.
So see us liberals see such major attention grabbing especially at a conference where you are an interested party as treating the electorate. Therefore you are part of the establishment trying to buy our affections. It is something that at times even the leaders of our party attempt and fail to achieve, not because we are a fickle lot, far from it we are a principled lot.
Now we will accept your kind gifts, spending ages tweeting, blogging or whatever with the free wifi. We will gorge on the sumptuous spreads you put out. But even sitting in the conference hall during the debate I heard many people expressing just what I had already worked out, you were trying to bribe us, blindside us and our green credentials and sneak it in.
There was also an amendment which of course had to be laid by our own members which upset the Southern representatives so much they accused the movers, at least in privet if not so overtly from the platform or being fooled that opening up more capacity in the South East would lead to more in the regions, rather than steal whatever non-internal flights looked good and therefore creating even more need for the regions to fly through a gridlocked London-centric hub.
So the lesson dear Gatwick is don't suddenly appear to be interested in us when you have something you want us to do for you. Court us and persuade us if you can, but don't expect us to bow to the might of big business, that is what you probably have managed with our coalition partners but it isn't going to cut the mustard with me and my fellow Lib Dems.
* Which several people have since told me was crap and they reverted to using their own data allowance.
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