I’m confused.

How big is London? I thought that it was a city astride the River Thames. When London Airport used to be at Croydon, it was easy; there was one airport.

I seem to be wrong. Someone, maybe the Mayor of London, has a massive power struggle going on to capture half of southern England and call it London. It must be so because London now stretches in the south from London Gatwick (borders of Surrey/West Sussex) to London Heathrow (just inside the M25 western edge) to London Oxford (6 miles north of Oxford) to London Luton (Bedfordshire and north of the M25) to London Stansted (half way up the M11) to London Southend (nearly in the English Channel) to London Ashford ( the old Lydd aerodrome in Kent) not forgetting London City in Docklands.

This takeover expanded yesterday when the Oxford Mail reported that Oxford Airport has become London Oxford Airport in an attempt to attract more usage. It was the most read story in the newspaper yesterday and attracted all sorts of comments from the daft to the thoughtful. One such comment was along the lines of the fact that Oxford had such a low awareness across the rest of the world that by allying itself with London, it would improve its tourism possibilities.

What rubbish.

Oxford can stand on its own. This current daftness for renaming everything London will only cause confusion just as it does with passengers flying to Germany and going to Frankfurt am Hahn in Germany instead of Frankfurt (50 plus miles from the true Frankfurt.) Still who will be the first to suggest London Southampton (only about an hour away from the outskirts and on a main line fast train route) or even London Dublin.

Or let’s turn it round and trade on some other airport’s success and how to get industrial growth that way. Let’s rename London Heathrow, Dubai Heathrow!