Friday 21 July 2017

Ramsgate Festival starts tomorrow I sort of finish the Manston consultation, some old Ramsgate pictures, possible ramble.

Here is the link to the Ramsgate Festival http://ramsgatefestival.org/events/

Next some old pictures of Ramsgate these will probably expand if you click on them a bit, I think all but the last three are before 1900














A busy day in my bookshop today with a large local history factor as you can see from the books that we put out today if you click on this link

I am reminding people that you have to get your responses to the Manston airfreight hub DCO in by Sunday for them to count.

This is very difficult mainly because the consultation website doesn't work properly, so regardless of how you feel about the project a few helpful pointers.

This from rsp:-

"Thank you for your email. There are two immediate solutions that may work;

  1. When the file opens, there is an icon that you can select to download it as a regular pdf. I’ve circled the icon in the image below. If downloaded this way the files are easily searchable as standard PDFs.


  1. Alternatively, if you select “Submit feedback” from the page http://rsp.co.uk/statutory-consultation/ that will take you to a page which also includes all of the documents available for download as PDFs. The files are listed at the bottom of the page.

Please let me know if this helps.

Kind regards,

Ross

RiverOak Strategic Partners"

Now I guess if you have some understanding about computers you will realise just by looking at the size of the pdf files they probably won’t run on your computer.

Publishing nearly 200 local history books I have a very big computer which is called “Deep Thought” when I tried to run that lot on it all at the same time it eventually said something like can’t divide by zero, which is its way of swearing, I think.

The workaround I used involve a much bigger computer, which I couldn’t afford, what I did was to upload them all to Google Drive and opened them each in a different tab in Google Chrome.

In terms of help with my response to the consultation I have put the various sections of it on the Manston related Facebook pages, for and against and although I have had some useful feedback, what I haven’t had is any counter argument, saying I have got my information or figures wrong.

anyway here is my response:-

-----Original Message-----
From: michaelchild
To: manston
CC: customer.services ; county.hall ; richard.styles ; Richard.Price ; iain.livingstone ; manstonairport
Sent: Fri, 21 Jul 2017 16:46
Subject: Manston Consultation response



Michael Child
Michael’s Bookshop
72 King Street
Ramsgate
CT11 8NY
1 Consultation issues
This is my feedback to the RSP/RiverOak 2017 statutory consultation relating to their DCO application summarised on the National Infrastructure Planning part of the Department for Planning website as: - “The upgrade and reopening of Manston Airport primarily as a cargo airport, with some passenger services, with a capacity of at least 12,000 air cargo movements per year.”
My understanding is that there is a strong probability that the DCO would include a CA and that this means there would also need to be proof of legitimate and transparently sourced compensation funding for the DCO to be accepted.
Completing the consultation there is a sense that somehow communication and outreach to local communities isn’t and hasn’t been in proportion to the size of the project and that community engagement has been at the level one would expect for a new road junction at Manston, affecting people within a mile or so.
I attended two of the public sessions one at Canterbury and one at Ramsgate and the overall impression I formed wasn’t that of a company working towards building a major airfreight hub. It was much more that of a group of about four people who had brought along PR reps from some other companies and that their main objective was to trigger a DCO and then see what they could do once the had acquired the site, assuming that the possession of the DCO and associated cpo could attract investors.
I have since both spoken to and used the internet in various ways to communicate with other people who attended the consultations. The overall impression being that they were given conflicting information about the project and like me found that there wasn’t anyone available to answer many of the most basic questions.
In a similar way since the previous consultation held by RSP/RiverOak a year ago there has been an overall lack of response to basic and related questions sent to RSP/RiverOak directors and their advisors.
As a local retailer and resident I am aware that local awareness of the project existing is low and awareness of the magnitude and the implications the project would have to the local area are almost non-existent among the wider local community. Those aware seem to be mostly people who supported some sort of saving of the airport starting from when closed and those who opposed nightflights
There is an element of cry wolf to this as over the last ten years various airport operators have proposed large aviation expansion at Manston, which has failed to happen.
There is an element of economic musical chairs to Manston with the site having changed hands as an airport over the last 20 years for figures of around £1, £5m, £22m and so on. With airports having been designated brownfield and the potential for the site’s value as residential building land being in the region of £1bn the potential for the site owner to receive a windfall can’t really be discounted.
The issues with the consultation continue here to the point of competing it, having notified RSP/RiverOak 3rd July, about three weeks ago that their consultation website didn’t function properly and having eventually had emails from them acknowledging this and promising to try and put it right, nothing has actually been done to make work properly.
The most important issue here being that only the left half of the webpages are displayed meaning that only even numbered pages of major documents, show on most computers. With filling in the consultation the downloadable feedback form is a fixed document that I can’t write on with an IT device and send to you and in view of the existing website issues I don’t have confidence in the online form or ITC competence within RSP/RiverOak I am responding by email.
2 Business case.
I think for Manston to work as an airport it would need to be primarily operated as a heritage aviation tourist attraction perhaps based on a HFL grant and funding from aviation enthusiasts and focused around the expansion of the two existing museums.  It is possible that at times this could work in parallel with the limited local aviation demands.
As was the case with many previous business cases for aviation activity at Manston, the main issue is a misunderstanding of the words “hub” and “southeast” hub in this instance should be close to the centre of the area it serves and southeast in the context Southeast England is a roughly triangular area the three corners, which are northwest Oxfordshire, southwest Hampshire and northeast Kent. In terms of forming a hub for the southeast these corners are the worst locations.
I think the main issue here may be thinking of a hub airport as planes flying along the spokes of an imaginary wheel, when in reality it is passengers and freight moving along the spokes to and from the airport by rail and road.
The best, most central location, to the southeast is the Greater London Surrey border, which has the two existing major airports, one at either end of it. As very little of the commercial or industrial activity in the southeast is located in the southeast corner of the southeast this means that virtually none this activity is closer to Manston than the two existing major and competitive airports.
Because of a combination of road layout (particularly the UK motorway layout) and geography of the southeast regions of: - Oxfordshire, Bucks. Berkshire, Hampshire, IOW, Greater London, Surry, Sussex and Kent, travelling to Manston from almost any significant location outside Kent would involve passing close to one or both of the existing major airports. So for example a journey from Brighton to Manston isn’t done by travelling northeast towards Manston, but either by road or rail, it is done by travelling north past Gatwick and then east.
I think part of the most recent problem, which was the failure of Infratil, a major NZ company to succeed with an airport at Manston, was the tendency to think in distances considered negligible in NZ, without properly understanding actual travel habits and infrastructure in the UK.
A further major disadvantage Manston has with its main potential competitors, Gatwick and Heathrow, is that it isn’t, and isn’t likely to be connected to the jet fuel pipeline. This would add both economic and environmental costs of fuel there.
The first attempts to operate commercial flights from Manston started in the late 1950s Silver City (Britavia) which moved to Gatwick in 1962, Air Ferries the first proper airline started flying from Manston in 1963 this went bankrupt in 1968, this was followed by a 60 year history airport operator failure on the Manston site.
This business case appears have been written by some members of the same team that put together the last Manston business case for the Infratil when the airport was still operational and appears to based on similar very optimistic assertions. I think it has to be appreciated that Infratil are a large experienced and profitable company which run Wellington Airport (5.5m passengers a year) at a profit and not only did they reject this case but sold the Manston site suffering a considerable financial loss, because they thought it unviable, both in terms of the real business they were able to attract and the potential business which was forecast.
I suppose the bottom line here is that local residents, like myself are only aware of the applicants website, there doesn’t seem to be a physical RiverOak or RSP company employing non executive staff at normal business premises producing something tangible or some tangible service. When RiverOak first appeared on the scene their website claimed they were experienced airport operators and as their company has evolved during the DCO pre-application stage, moving the Manston project from http://www.riveroakic.com/ where it featured as the main project of an experienced aviation company to www.riveroakinvestments.co.uk where it appeared to be the UK branch of an experienced company to http://rsp.co.uk/ which appears to have no physical address and no history.
Obviously a project of this magnitude whether it succeeds or fails would have a significant impact on this area and commenting on the business case related to a business and related businesses without any defined history, similar business assets is very difficult and quite different from a case where I was commenting on say a business case produced by an existing airport operator.
There is also a sense in which this is a choice between RSP and the site owners Stonehill Park where the business owners have a good track record of running a successful business locally that has resulted in a substantial amount of jobs and economic regeneration in this area.
3 Noise Pollution and Compensation
My understanding from the PIER assumed flight paths, aircraft, engine types and so on, is that:-
1 The flight path over Ramsgate has to remain the same and changes to flight paths which may happen during later stages after the DCO submission will have no significant affect on overflying Ramsgate.
2 The noise impact on homes and businesses within Ramsgate will be significant and that plans to mitigate them should be at a fairly advanced stage prior to DCO submission as the DCO process is front-loaded.
3 Aircraft noise mitigation in airport expansion is mostly a matter of compensation and as an application for a DCO that would authorise CA must be accompanied by a Funding Statement which should demonstrate that adequate funding is likely to be available to enable the CA within the statutory period following the DCO being made, and that the resource implications of a possible acquisition resulting from a blight notices should have been taken account of, I am therefore assuming that the whole compensation issue has to be presented in one consultation response.
4 The issues related to the Ramsgate conservation zone and the number of listed buildings likely to be affected by noise should by this stage have been at least partially addressed in order to approximately assess sound insulation and cost with a view to determining compensation levels related to the resource implications.
5 Negotiation related to sound insulation within the conservation area between rsp, English Heritage and TDC conservation officers is already occurring.
Due to issues with accessing the PEIR documents and consultation website, see my emails, ref (Ross RiverOak Strategic Partners Manston Airport consultation team) I am uncertain that I have managed to view all of the consultation documents. So please accept my apologies for saying that documents that should be there are missing are actually there, if this is the case.
Obviously, I am no expert in airport expansion DCOs and have only been able to find examples of two which are expected to be submitted in the UK one being this Manston one and the other being for the third runway at Heathrow.
In terms of percentage expansion and therefore the difference to historic noise disruption the Manston project would the by far the greater civil aviation expansion based on previous activity at Manston.
In view of the front loaded nature of the DCO process and the expectation that there would only be small and unavoidable change after the application stage I had expected the PIER to be more compete in terms of already addressing solutions to known and fundamentally unalterable environmental problems.
Previous submissions for Manston expansion have included noise contour maps for unavoidable parts of the fightpaths, most especially related to the necessity to overfly the densely populated town of Ramsgate because of the location of the runway. I have been unable to find these within the PEIR.
A comprehensive noise pollution plan would seem to be particularly important as the possibility of night time flying appears to be envisaged as part of the application. 
Although the Heathrow expansion is at an earlier stage in progressing towards the DCO I am assuming that their noise mitigation and compensation package would be broadly similar to the Manston one. Although I suppose that as Thanet is an economically depressed area and therefore has higher levels of poverty some less comprehensive scheme may be envisaged related to the population being poorer with lower levels of employment and home ownership.
I also asked about the funding and compensation issue at the previous non statutory consultation and followed this up by email to pins 5.8.2016, the pins advice encouraged me to write to RiverOak which resulted in an email correspondence between me and rsp director George Yerrall who said, email 32.8.2016:-
“Dear Michael,
Thank you for your patience in awaiting my response.  I was away on vacation with my family and I try to “unplug” when I am away.
Your list of questions is hard for me to process as it contains numerous requests to respond to something said to you by a “RiverOak rep” as well as a number of assumptions you have made that seem factually difficult to understand such as your assumption that the airport would be “classified brownfield and that the cpo land compensation will be based on an open market valuation for brownfield land in southeast England., plus blight compensation.”
However, as you know, the PINS consultation process is very transparent and all of your issues will be addressed and published in due time.  I understand that waiting for answers can be frustrating and that is not my intent.
Thank you again for your patience and I look forward to addressing all of your concerns in the near future.
Best regards,
George”
From this I inferred that the statutory consultation document pack and website would contain, a site compensation plan, blight compensation plan, noise compensation or draft noise compensation plan. Having failed to find anything and having had no response from rsp about the issues with the consultation website and documents, I am providing the link to the Heathrow noise compensation plan for your information https://your.heathrow.com/takingbritainfurther/local-community/property-compensation/
Added to this would be the airport site value compensation I understand this is 283 hectares, designated brownfield. Independent valuation https://www.kent.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/53882/Land-prices.pdf puts southeast non agricultural land prices, residential in the av £4m per hectare ballpark with the lowest in Dover at about £1.75m and industrial in the £1.1m ballpark. My assumption from your airfreight hub job forecasts is that your own assessment of the potential site value would be seen as profitable commercial, so that you would see the minimum site value as nearest equating to industrial. This would put your assessment of the minimum site value in the area of £300m, with the worst-case scenario rising to cover those parts of the site that the current owners intend for residential use being considerably higher. There is also the of course the situation where the airport was available as a failing business with no alternative viable commercial plans and could probably have been bought in the £10m ballpark so I assume this could be taken as a quasi-best-case scenario
In trying to comprehend how the CA and potential blight acquisition compensation could be covered by provably legitimately sourced investment that would be acceptable to the DFT and enable the publication of a transparent funding statement, which is an integral part of a DCO requiring CA, I have drawn some conclusions.  My understanding is that rsp isn’t an aviation company but an investment conduit and I find it difficult to see major investors attracted to a project with uncosted and potentially open-ended compensation liabilities. I am therefore assuming that potential investment, in the event of the airfreight hub scheme failing, would be covered by the potential residential site value of what I understand to be a brownfield site. I am also assuming that any blight acquisitions would increase in value considerably were this to happen.
4 Air pollution
The main issue with construction of an airfreight hub at Manston would appear to be the recent life expectancy reduction issues related to particulate pollution, this is the problem that has led to the national government considering a diesel car scrappage scheme.
In a general sense, the fuel used in jet engines produces similar particulate emissions to the fuel burnt in diesel road vehicles and the particulates produced from tyres landing on and running along runways similar problems to road vehicles.
Where particulate fuels are burnt in commercial transport mitigation in terms of emission, filtration becomes more economically viable with the larger engines in lorries and shipping. For smaller vehicles, cars and vans the shorter-term solution looks likely to be moving to petrol with the prospect that in about ten years we will have moved away from fossil fuels in private transport. 
In environmental terms this is a different but related problem to global warming, in simplistic terms the focus has moved from rising sea levels drowning people in a hundred years time, to particulates killing people in significant numbers now.
With jet engine planes, as detailed in the PEIR, there has been some progress very recently the most encouraging being recent work by NASA. See: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-study-confirms-biofuels-reduce-jet-engine-pollution the underlying problem being that filtration isn’t an option.
Most of the available studies showing levels of particulates produced at airports have been made at Los Angeles airport LAX, when using them for comparison it is as well to remember that LAX is a very busy airport and that Los Angeles is already a very polluted city, so everything is as it were scaled up. In terms of visualising the issue Los Angels has approximately the same prevailing wind direction as Manston.
Current mitigation in the UK is mostly focused on a reduction in ground movement fuel burnt.
Expectations in the shorter 3 to 7 year period will probably include the use of bio fuels and the relocation of some activity from airports upwind of densely populated areas.
Expectations in the longer 8 to 15 year period may be focused on alternative fuels and fuel storage such as hydrogen and electric motors.
My efforts to discuss this problem with the RiverOak environmental team have been unsatisfactory so far. I tried at the previous non statutory consultation and was given a contact at Amec Foster Wheeler but have had no reply from him to my first email 10.7.7017 also sent to pins.
I attended the statutory consultation at Canterbury where the environmental team members I spoke to appeared to have no concept of the volume of fuel burnt at an airfreight hub and seemed to equate it to that burnt at a busy road junction.   
Obviously, the expected fuel burn figures at Manston are contained in the PIER in great detail, but for anyone trying to understand the problem and who isn’t conversant with large engines I have added the following paragraph to help with approximation.
The metric tonne and the imperial ton are almost the same weight, there are 250 gallons of fuel to a ton or tonne. A 747 type plane burns approximately 5 litres or 1 gallon of fuel per second so cargo plane allowances are usually measured in tonnes. The takeoff allowance for a 747 is 2.5 tonnes and the ground movement (landing or takeoff) allowance around 1 tonne.
The proposed Manston site has been designed to minimise the ground movement time, but with the on the ground part of takeoff and landing I think it reasonable to assume that in excess of a tonne of fuel will be burnt on the ground for each movement.
To put this in some sort of proportion a large diesel car does about 40 miles to a gallon and a large lorry about 10 so when thinking in terms of government concerns over road junctions, a car would have to travel 10,000 miles to burn a tonne of fuel.
The minimum number of freight plane movements at Manston, for the Manston project to qualify for a DCO is 10,000 per year so it would follow that the intention is to burn more than 10,000 tons of jet engine fuel per year at the Manston site.
The complexities of increasing flying activity dovetailing with aircraft emissions reducing over future years makes calculating figures for reduced life expectancy from projected activity difficult. 
The most significant aspect is probably the greater than expected distance drift of the smaller and most harmful particles from LAX, the only airport where the measurements have been made and published in a fairly comprehensible way.
This combined with the increased mortality rates related to particulates described in the PEIR and on reputable websites such as wikipedia means the freight hub would result in the premature deaths of a significant number of local, people i.e. kill them.
Discounting all of the other factors but burning 10,000 tonnes of fuel on the ground between when landing aircraft’s wheels touch the runway and leave it on takeoff, which would seem to be a very modest assessment based on 10,000 movements. Taking Thanet’s population as around 125,000 mostly located to the north and east of Manston. Taking the prevailing wind direction to be between south-westerly and westerly. Considering that there really is no lower safe limit for airborne particulate pollution, however significant mortality levels like those found near road junctions are being taken in the 10 to 20% ballpark when considerably reduced life expectancy and diesel car scrappage is being discussed, so this looks like a significant issue.
Expectations are that the government will produce incentives to ensure that flights are more environmentally cost effective in terms of more use of passenger belly space and empty return flights which may impact on the economic case.
Obviously, in situations where the problem already exists and mitigation efforts have already started then those involved can be seen as applying duty of care and so on.
In terms of embarking on a major project in the face of current scientific information appearing to say that the project would kill a significant number of people, there may be matters related to, duty of care, precautionary principle, liability to litigation and so on that would apply.
I have avoided a long list of citations and links to online documents but for search and reference assistance, the first LAX particulates pollution results were gathered by and the main work was by USC Assistant Professor Scott Fruin 2014, the most recent publicly available results of corroboratory testing and research, which also has links to the important sources is now available on line, here is the link to it https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311395120_Emission_rates_of_particle_number_mass_and_black_carbon_by_the_Los_Angeles_International_Airport_LAX_and_its_impact_on_air_quality_in_Los_Angeles ;
    
   
5 The museums.
My understanding is that the current owners have gifted the museum freehold to the Spitfire and Hurricane Museum, theoretically ensuring its security in perpetuity and that negotiations to offer something similar to Manston History Museum.
I would think that there could issues with trying to integrate two museums into a busy freight hub where parking, road space and security would be expected to be a premier consideration.
As a further note, my response to this consultation is neither as exhaustive nor as comprehensive as it would have been had the consultation website worked reasonably well, and had been presented in a navigable and searchable form, rather than how it is, or as a series of massive, unlabeled and unmanageable pdf files.
In terms of the content of my response, I am happy to offer citations and or explanations.  



21 comments:

  1. Your comments should be compulsory reading for our MPs and councillors. Unfortunately, we are dealing with closed minds. I read only today that a councillor has quit the ruling party, because it has not reopened the airport. She does not mention the many wholly justifiable reasons why it did not rush headlong into supporting a project which could have catastrophic results for Ramsgate and Herne Bay. This is the calibre of person now representing us. I am worried that a decision could be based on who shouts loudest, not on the facts.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You are quite right to question the calibre of the people representing Ramsgate. The aforementioned councillor had already left UKIP, shortly after being elected, to form an independent party along with two other councillors one of whom turned out to be a bigamist and both of whom eventually had to resign after it emerged that they were due in court on charges of theft. She then rejoined UKIP and has now jumped ship to the Tories. At no point has she considered whether the electorate ought to have a say over whether they want her to continue representing them. UKIP have made their bed and they must now lie in it. They made a stupid promise during the election and it is one they cannot keep. At the point where the airport was sold to the private sector, way back in 1999, the council's scope for influencing what happened there was limited. You can't force people to keep running an airport at a loss and, if they own the land, you can't force them to sell to someone else at anything less than the market rate. As it stands, the site has lain fallow for three years and unless the never-ending, but futile, campaign to reopen it is halted the site will lie dormant and unused for the foreseeable future. We are looking at another Pleasurama in the making but, this time, it is the pro-Manston campaign groups who are directly responsible for preventing the legal owners from creating much-needed jobs for this corner of Kent. Are there enough sensible UKIP councillors to see the damage that is being caused and to do the sensible thing? I don't know. It seems unlikely as they now seem to have got themselves involved in negotiating some kind of back-door deal with a mysterious character from Germany, who claims to have well endowed clients. As with RSP, the actual source of funds, if they exist at all, is being kept a closely guarded secret. Meanwhile,Carter and Musgrave, who own Stone Hill Park are being frustrated in their attempts to get planning permission for a mixed development which will create 2000 jobs. Let's be absolutely clear about this. That's ten times more jobs than the airport ever created. Cartner and Musgrave have a well-established track-record of redevelopment and job creation. Most recently they were responsible for rescuing the site vacated by Pfizer. That site is now thriving and is rapidly filling the economic void which was left when Pfizer departed. Why would you not trust people who have demonstrated that they can do the job to get on with it? They are British. The source of their finance is transparent. They have well-defined plans. They own the site, lock-stock and barrel. Sensible councillors would see that they have no choice. They have to work with the legal owners rather than constantly trying to frustrate them. The other way stagnation lies.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Michael,

    Your submission is far too long. The thrust of your argument is lost among all those words; many of them extraneous. You should have spent a few more hours to make your submission shorter.

    Your plug for SHP is overstated. This may lead your reader to conclude that you have an axe to grind. This can damage your credibility in their eyes.

    You should not have implied that RSP's finances are wrongly arcane. You are not an expert on international finance. Whereas your reader will be. Once again your credibility could be damaged.

    There is more but you will not want to hear it. In your favour you have done something about substantial according to your own beliefs.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Michael,

      It is clear that would never be guided by me and why should you be. In these circumstances I commend to you the following book.

      'The Complete Plain Words' by Sir Ernest Gowers revised by Sidney Greenbaum and Janet Whitcut.

      The book is available from all good bookshops. The Penguin edition retails at £9.99 from Amazon. It is worth every penny if you do a lot of writing.

      Delete
    2. Michael Here is a blurb from the book that explains it all far better than I can.

      "The Complete Plain Words is the essential guide for anyone who needs to express themselves, clearly, fluently and accurately in writing. Whether you are working on paper or on a computer, this invaluable reference work will lead you through the intricacies, problems and pleasures of the English language with wit, common sense and authority.

      It goes on to say that it:

      Deals with the dangers of jargon, cliché and superfluous words
      Lays out the ground rules of grammar and punctuation and shows how to avoid the pitfalls
      Discusses the influence of science and technology and other cultures
      Gives suggestions for drafting letters
      Provides a checklist of words to use with care. "

      Delete
    3. Mr Holyer, does it include anything about pompous, patronising responses?

      Delete
    4. No Jimmy Beaumont it does not mention you at all.

      Delete
    5. No, Jimmy Beaumont, it does not mention it does not mention you at all.

      Delete
  4. I am the reader that is an expert in international finance.
    The only issue i have withg you repsonse in that on of your dates has been miss typed|
    "my first email 10.7.7017 also sent to pins."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. cranforduk, Then I imagine that PINS will study your email with the care and attention you hope for.

      Delete
  5. Michael, Are you going to publish my response to Jimmy Beaumont or not?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry John I was busy publishing a few hundred pictures of Ramsgate Carnival and my phone seems to have stopped beeping for blogger notifications.

      Delete
    2. Michael,

      My sincere apologies for being over hasty. I shall go now to have a look at your carnival pictures, but I may have to restrict myself to the first hundred. I did not realise that the carnival was on and that is my fault and no one else's. I must rely on your pictures.

      Delete
  6. Sorry about the delay replying with this one, busy weekend, I think the big problem here is that during the period of time that has elapsed between the airport closing and this consultation the whole way in which we view engine emissions has changed.

    Moving from the most fuel efficient, which is sort of a long-term objective still, to this situation over particulates. I have stuck with public domain information but current research is suggesting that it is particulates produced by internal combustion engines that is primarily responsible for the various memory loss diseases, alzheimer's disease topping the list with about a million people in the uk suffering from it.

    What is pretty much cast iron is that the proposed airfreight hub at Manston would kill several thousand local people and the argument that there are other major airports with concentration of population upwind from them can only be reasonably countered by. The people are already dead and dying, personally I find this very difficult to even think about and as I went to Lord Mayor Treloar College where the NHS decided that chimpanzees were too expensive to experiment on, so experimented on my fellow pupils killing them in the process so I am pretty hardened to economic expediency resulting in genocide.

    Economically speaking I don’t think the government could or would do anything drastic in the short term, but the build up of scientific evidence means that it is unlikely that anything avoidable will be done to add to the problem, if only because of the fear of future litigation.

    The IARC and WHO designate airborne particulates a Group 1 carcinogen. Particulates are the deadliest form of air pollution due to their ability to penetrate deep into the lungs and blood streams unfiltered, causing permanent DNA mutations, heart attacks, and premature death. In 2013, a study involving 312,944 people in nine European countries revealed that there was no safe level of particulates and that for every increase of 10 ÎĽg/m3 in PM10, the lung cancer rate rose 22%. The smaller PM2.5 were particularly deadly, with a 36% increase in lung cancer per 10 ÎĽg/m3 as it can penetrate deeper into the lungs.

    I fully understand that this leaves people who have been supporting the freight hub in something of a difficult position, also that it takes some time for the information to sink in and for individuals to realign their views.

    So all I can really say is I expect there to be some rather peculiar comment associated with this one.

    Sorry about being years out with the date, I wonder what pins and rsp will make of that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Michael,

      I found your latest comment interesting and easy to read.

      You have highlighted the danger of pollution. I do not have the necessary scientific knowledge that would allow me reach a definitive conclusion one way or the other. However, I accept that the danger is serious and present. It lies everywhere, especially in the developed world.

      Life is a balance. I know you would agree that we cannot overnight ban cars, planes and the like. We need them. I am confident that science will come to our rescue. Cars, planes indeed all machines are becoming cleaner year upon year.

      You have made a strong case and I accept that you are sincere in your objections to a cargo hub. Life is a balance. Thanet needs the jobs that RSP Manston will bring. I cannot see any other way that our town can be raised from the depressed state in which it has languished for decades.

      No Council of any political persuasion has been able to rescue us. Some would say that TDC cannot solve the problem because TDC is the problem. Whatever the truth may be, RSP is the only game in town. Importantly, RSP are not asking for public funding in the form of grants as housebuilders would do. They will use private capital. This suits me.

      I have long believed that the solution to all our energy problems is Nuclear Fusion. Scientists are getting there but the end remains decades away.

      Delete
    2. I think I see where you are coming from John, jobs at the expense of the lives of people living upwind of the runway, a bit harsh, particularly on the older people in Cliftonville and Broadstairs, I don't think that sort of thing knowingly is really viable unless you have some sort of dictatorship.

      I’ve just been surfing the web looking for and reading responses to the rsp DCO consultation, as the deadline for submission has now passed. What I haven’t been able to find is any submissions supporting the DCO. I assume this is down to my ITC skills and not because there aren’t any, so where are they?

      Delete
    3. Good Morning Michael

      No, Michael, you do not see where I am coming from.

      You are begging the question in your conclusion on pollution. In the light of this I cannot accept your premise that a Manston Cargo Hub would be the direct cause of countless future deaths.

      You speak as a harbinger of doom. I remain unconvinced.

      I do not know why you have been unable to find any submissions supporting the DCO. Nether can I say what your lack of success may signify, if anything.

      I do not understand your remark about a dictatorship.

      The DCO will run its course. The Inspector will consider the totality of the evidence in the round and reach a balanced decision.

      [Here we go: at the risk of my upsetting a couple of your fans, Michael, I offer the following anecdote].

      I once asked a Court Adjudicator for advice on writing my explanatory statements. She made several points but emphasised one. This was that if you believe you have a pivotal point to make then introduce it several times at various places in your statement. This to ensure that the adjudicator takes it into account, and does not skip over it. This proved sound advice in my experience. Michael, you will make of this what you will in your future submissions to the Inspector.

      Delete
  7. John, the volume and location of the fuel burn is taken from the information in rsp’s PEIR document, mechanics types use grid references and grams of fuel per second-kilonewton tupe of kidney, I turned this into amounts that I thought people could understand.

    The rsp website says 6.4.35 table 6.7

    “The health effects of particles are difficult to assess, and evidence is mainly based on epidemiological studies. Evidence suggests that there may be associations between increased PM10 concentrations and increased mortality and morbidity rates, changes in symptoms or lung function, episodes of hospitalisation or doctors consultations. Recent reviews by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP) have suggested exposure to a finer fraction of particles (PM2.5) give a stronger association with the observed health effects. PM2.5 typically makes up around two-thirds of PM10 emissions and concentrations.”

    rsp have old info on wiki before the results of the 1013 study were published, the new info is in my comment above.

    In laymen’s terms the rsp website says they have no idea how many people the PM2.5s will kill “concentrations and increased mortality and morbidity rates”, the updated info has figures which seem to suggest that the Thanet pollution for a cargo hub at Manston is in the thousand a year ballpark.

    So as rsp say on their website that a Manston Cargo Hub “would be the direct cause of countless future deaths” I rather think it’s them you are disagreeing with, to disagree with me into needs to be “would be the direct cause of counted future deaths”

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Michael, You say to me, "the volume and location of the fuel burn is taken from the information in rsp’s PEIR document, mechanics types use grid references and grams of fuel per second-kilonewton tupe of kidney, I turned this into amounts that I thought people could understand." What the hell does that mean?

      Once again I do not accept your conclusion.

      So if RSP are saying, as you claim they are, that their Cargo Hub would be the direct cause of countless future deaths. Should this be true than they will be caught out during the DCO process.

      As for me I refuse to cast as the baddie to your Theodore Honey.

      Delete
  8. John in layman’s terms it means that rsp have stated clearly on their website in scientific and technical terms that they intend to burn well over ten thousand tons of jet fuel on the ground at Manston every year and that doing so will kill an unspecified number of people who breath the fumes in.

    I have just expanded this by looking at:- The direction the fumes will go in. The distance the fumes will travel. The number of people likely to be killed per year.

    What I haven’t done is disagree with what they say in their consultation document.

    If you focus on them saying “increased mortality and morbidity rates” and try to think how this could mean anything other than killing people, you won’t go far wrong.

    They can’t be caught out because they have clearly stated both cause and effect.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Michael,

      You are free to focus on what so ever you selectively choose. Whatever you choose do please feel free to leave me out of it.

      I admire your tenacity. Even when the planes are once again flying from Manston I can imagine how you will be harping on about corporate manslaughter by pollution. Probably this time with the technology companies. Or maybe you will have moved your shop to, say Hatton Cross, from where you will have launched your attack on LHR.

      Delete

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.