Duncan Harley

On the day that Aberdeen International Airport saw a Trump plane land on the tarmac to disgorge some retinue along with a rumoured son called Eric, I finally realised that Air Force One is too large to land anywhere in Scotland. In fact, try as he might, the half-German half-Scottish golf-magnate will thankfully be prevented by his presidential status from stopping off unannounced at Aberdeen for a round of golf. The big bosses at Aberdeen Airport must have foreseen this. Calls for runway expansion at Heathrow have made headlines over the past decade and the, perhaps outdated notion of a UK air-hub, has in consequence made the southern counties once more vulnerable to conquest from overseas. Not so in the Shire however where anything bigger than an Airbus needs flaps down, brakes full-on and reverse thrust to avoid running out of tarmac and smacking right into Dyce caravan site. Of course, Gatwick should have been the landing-field of choice for the presidential minde...

One can almost imagine the frantic conversation as the Foreign Secretary advised his minions that he was not after all planning to put his head on the chopping block in a last-ditch effort to stop the Heathrow third runway extension: “Don’t be silly. Is my middle name Goering? Or Meyer? I mean come on, it’s not as though a single bulldozer has actually been dropped on the bloody place.” “But sir, you made a pledge to the electorate” “Well perhaps, but that was yesterday; or at the very least a long long time ago. And I can do whatever I want and you can’t stop me.” “Well, erm, what would you like us to do? You obviously can’t attend the Common’s vote on the matter. You would have to resign in protest after all.” “Just get me out of here for a bit for god’s sake. What about India, or maybe somewhere important like Borneo or Greenland. I’ve got it! Send me to Kabul, that should bloody well do it.” “But there’s nothing much happening in Kabul at the moment sir. Perhaps you...