I hate this airport. 

It used to be an airport, now it’s a shopping mall. 

It takes me an extra 5 minutes to get to the gates now, all because we all have to walk through duty free since the modifications took place. 

I never agreed to this, I wasn’t asked if I wanted to walk past the alcoholic businessman sampling whiskey at 5.25am. What if I was that alcoholic businessman trying like hell to avoid free samples of whiskey? Thanks for that! 

I vote with my feet when I can, if I’m at the airport I buy nothing. When I need to travel, which is often, I try to use the train. There is no free whiskey tasting on the train. There are plenty of alcoholic businessmen. 

I read that there is almost £1m spent each week at this airport on car parking and retail. Goodness knows what they charge each business for rental. Only a few cats getting fatter on the back of extorting more and more money from the consuming traveller. 

The CEO of this place receives over £500,000 in salary and the owners (who are mostly pension investment companies looking for an ever increasing monthly return) lapped up £22.8m in pre tax profits last year. 

The irony of the pension companies creating an environment that gets us to spend money that we don’t have to make a number of them richer instead of saving and paying a specific pension contribution. The later being the better investment for the individual and for society.