Saturday 19 March 2016

Manston Airport closure two-year anniversary and some thoughts

Here is the link to my post from two years ago http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/you-dont-have-to-be-mad-but-someone-has.html and my feelings are pretty much the same as they were then.

These pretty much summarise as:- What is and has been most damaging to the local economy wasn’t the airport, which since commercial flights started from there in the mid 1960s had very little effect on the local economy, but uncertainty over what the airport could become.

I am particularly annoyed by the local politicians waving the flag for saving the airport while actually promoting the building of an airfreight hub at Manston that we wouldn’t be able to fly from. 

As far as I can see the political wing of the, build an airfreight hub under the save the airport guise, DIG has pretty much collapsed with the integrity of their leader, who wore medals and made claims about military service which now appear to be false, see https://thewaltercumpershunterclub.wordpress.com/2016/03/19/internet-fibbers-and-friends/   

Interesting article from Mike Pearce in The Gazette about this issue http://www.thanetgazette.co.uk/Mike-Pearce-20-plenty/story-28943042-detail/story.html

Now at the moment I would say that the odds on favourite when predicting the future of the Manston Airport site is that the owners plans to turn it into a mixed use industrial and residential development will happen in some shape or form, here is the link to their website http://www.stonehillpark.co.uk/


But our local politicians have failed to engage with the owners or with the electorate on this one, no council run public consultation on the future of the site and many of our councillors failing to engage with the owners over planning issues there. This effectively means the council turn down legitimate pans instead of setting conditions beneficial to Thanet residents and then as the planning rejections were unreasonable the planning inspectorate pass all of the plans without conditions.

Loads more books went out on the shelves in the bookshop today, so if you are a local reader here is the link http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/loads-more-books-go-out-on-shelves-in.html  


How about this for street creditability while bookshopping  

Easier when you get the books into the car

5 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. About Manston Airport: presumably you have heard about River Oak's pursuit of a DCO yet you neglect to mention it. I find that curious. I should be grateful for your thoughts on this subject.

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  3. Well John if you click on the link that says Manston Airport just above the comments and below the post you will see I have been, but as there hasn’t been any new information since the 27th February when The DOT published the account of their first meeting with RiverOak there isn’t much new to say.

    I did use the comment form on the RiverOak news post, but as no comments have appeared there and I doubt I was the only person to comment, I can only conclude that RiverOak have decided not to engage with the public at this time.

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  4. Fair enough, Michael, but none the less the DCO is extant and it should be mentioned when you tell us of your plans for Manston Airport.

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  5. There’s a thought John, my plan for Manston, being in business and if I had any say in the matter, it would be stability and continuity. While Manston as a major aviation facility lurks in the background as a possibility, we get many of the disadvantages of thousands of flights a year, with none of the advantages in terms of money into the local economy. It doesn’t do an area good to have the threat of a major increase in air pollution with the associated reduction in life expectancy and the threat of a major increase in noise pollution hanging over it for years.

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Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.