Just wanting to be irritatingly irritating here but...when British Airways plc was set up by the UK Treasury and was then privatised/sold to people like me, we actually paid a few £bns for that new company which had old planes, crappy LHR infrastructure and landing slots.

The money went to the tax payer.

technically therefore those slots were indirectly paid for by ME ME ME- as were the BAC 1-11's, 742's, Tristar's, ATR's 737' 757'sand Concorde's