Sir: I suppose one should not look for any great
profundity in your 'Notebook' jottings, but your assertion (2 July) that a new Falklands airport will lead to depopulation of the islands strikes me as exceptionally silly. Evidently you think that because you would find the Falklands 'disagreeable' the Falklanders would be bound to feel the same way once they had sampled life in more civilised countries. By this reckoning Tristan da Cunha should long since have been left to the albatrosses. The people of the island, you will remember, were brought .to this country in 1961 because of the danger from a volcanic eruption. Surely two years' exposure to the delights of Britain in the Sixties should have cured them of any homesickness for their bleak and lonely island in the South Atlantic? It didn't. They insisted on returning as soon as it was safe, and there they still are. What makes you so sure Falklanders would not be of the same mind?
And, incidentally, if you believe that it was the railways which caused the depopulation of the Highlands you will believe anything.
David Caldwell
Low Ludderburn,
Cartmel Fell, Windermere, Westmorland
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