My anger at Department for Transport Spin on Heathrow

This story in the Independent on Saturday contains an example of the sort of thing that makes my blood boil.

Apparently there was a "consultation" about the third runway at Heathrow and 70,000 responses were sent back to the DfT. There was no question on it about whether the respondents actually wanted the runway, however of the almost 70,000 responses, 25,337 (36.1%) voluntarily noted that they opposed expansion. 8,128 (11.6%) volunteered that they supported it.

The DfT issued the following statement regarding this:

"The Heathrow consultation did not ask people whether they were in favour of a third runway or not. While more were opposed than in favour, the majority of people expressed no view either way on expansion."

There are a number of things that I think are worth looking at about this:

1) Why the hell in a so called consultation about a third runway at Heathrow was the question "Are you in favour of a third runway at Heathrow" not asked?

2) The DfT are now using the fact that the question was not asked to obfuscate the results of the "consultation". I am convinced (and I am sure they are too) that if the remaining 36,000 or so respondents who had not expressed a preference were asked, a majority would also have said no. It is a statistical certainty.

3) In the General Election of 2005, Labour got 35.3% of the votes cast. That was enough to elect them with a decent sized majority in the House of Commons for the next 5 years. Yet when, despite the DfT's best attempts to queer the pitch, 36% of respondents state that they do not want a third runway, that is not enough and the clear will is ignored.

4) The figures could be looked at another way too. Of those who expressed a preference, 76% stated they did not want a runway and only 24% said they did. That is a majority of over 3/4.

When this government is finally consigned to the grave of political history it will be buried under a pile of all the thousands of times it has used pathetic tricks like this to obscure, distort and mislead. We will not easily forget or forgive the way they have misused their supposed "skills" in this sort of area.

*Edited to tone it down a bit. I was pretty angry when I posted it!
** Edited agin to correct the figures in 4).