Perhaps we should do this, yes

A demand so shameless in its self interest:

Eurostar chief demands airline tax to help save rail link to France

Sorry, what?

Damas does not support the idea of a similar ban on airlines flying to destinations served by Eurostar. “If you do not want to ban, but give an incentive, it is very easy,” he says “If you just work with the taxation system. If you take just £1. Take £1 more in taxing fuel for aircraft, and take that £1 as a reduction in access charges on the railway.”

That is, you must tax my competition in order to subsidise me.

It is not because this is a French company that the correct answer is that Anglo Saxon Wave. It’s because this is a demand that is entirely shameless in the effrontery of its naked self interest.

Sadly international business relationships rarely do use that two word phrase that so commonly follows the “Yer what?” question.

At which point perhaps we should in fact give in. That £1 tax on all flights between Folkestone and Calais. And much good may it do them.