But what is your answer to the question of the Scottish ferries? They need to be a subsidised monopoly, or they couldn't serve the islands all year round. One could suggest the odd improvement, e.g. linear, Norwegian style routes, but on the whole they are an excellent institution with a very good workforce and ethic, (as the old BR might have been if it hadn't been for the unions.) Young men in a hurry say everyone should fly, but that would be a great loss. The ferries are a real asset, adding greatly to community life, and good for tourism. The EU is bent on spoiling them as it did our railways, saying the monopoly must be broken up and the subsidy removed.

The question shouldn't be how we modify the regulation to improve airports/hospitals/etc but how we remove this regulation to allow them to do it better themselves.

The main problem with airports isn't lack of competition although that doesn't help. Like the railways, they may be partially privately owned but in practice almost everything they do is, in shockingly minute detail, mandated by the state. The government is doing to air travel exactly what has done to the railways since 1946, ossifying them. That's the reason the train from Paddington to Slough still takes 20 minutes, no quicker than it was 150 years ago and less comfortable. (People in the Labour party call this progressive politics!)

There's no good reason why transport should be run by the state. They invariably do a worse job than businessmen.

More radically, the state (both here and in the U.S.) should stop telling private companies how to conduct security. Did the U.S. security services stop any flights hitting their targets on 9/11? No, but at the cost of their own lives the passengers of Flight 93 did. Did the extra security checks after 9/11 stop Richard Reid? No again, private citizens acting on their own initiative did. Are the 2 hour queues we all have to endure likely to stop the next terror attack? No again. But that doesn't stop the state charging us for the privilege.

As with that poor butcher in Scotland who caused the UK's worst recent food poisoning outbreak, the result of enquiry decided that more regulation was required. This was despite the fact that he had just been inspected and officially given top marks. Everytime the state fails to protect us, they propose more laws and more inspections. Nowhere is this persistent failure more visible than at Heathrow.

As Ronald Reagan said, get the government off our backs!

Anyway, everyone knows that Heathrow Two, has to be on Salisbury Plain. Low population density, fly in and out over West Dorset; again low population density; major roads not far away. [ I can hear Natural England quango screaming already].

The Competition Commission's report reads like a thesis and they need a sharp dose of reality. Many of the problems that exist are about capacity, government, planning and CAA regulations; all this is against a background of demand for air travel. While it's easy to talk about these things it's much harder to fix them and splitting up the airports is not a panacea, nor much of a solution. I remain unconvinced that it will help and once again I'm minded to think that none of this may have happened if BAA hand not been bought by a Spanish company.

To explain, Heathrow is in the worst possible position for an international airport, but because of the British states patronage it has been allowed to be developed, though a very compromised development due to the blight it brings to 100's of people living in SW London. The fact is if the British state had taken the position it takes with any other business, that you stand on your own two feet, they would have demanded that Heathrow came to financial arrangement with the people whose environment it blights, ( don't we believe in property rights?) with the result the management of Heathrow would have very quickly realised there are better places to develop a hub airport. This is the line I think the Conservatives should take on the third runway at Heathrow, saying the Heathrow that they can build their runway, but they have to come to a financial arrangement with the people whose lives and homes they are going to blight. What's the betting when Heathrow realises it doesn't have the state patronage, and has to pay compensation to people for blighting their living environment, that they will rapidly drop the idea, and realise there are much better and cheaper sites to develop.

A new Conservative government needs to create the atmosphere of enterprise again, be removing government from trying to run everything.

I would like to hear much more about this from the party.