The day starts with a fire in Ramsgate and I ramble on about bears chickens roundabouts, the summer squall and Manston Airport.

Not an auspicious start to the bank holiday weekend, however I don't believe anyone was hurt and the boys in brown soon had things under control.

The Lights were already back on on The Belgian Cafe when I left, so while guess things in there may a little on the damp side for a while I would guess it will soon be business as usual.

From the point of view of a showman the chickens and ostriches must be a right pain as the heads  and steps are separate and would all have to bolted on after the animal is hooked onto the ride.

I guess this all made perfect sense in the 1880s when squeals of “I want a pony daddy” were a bit pointless as any aspiring lass probably already a pony and so would have wanted something not found on other roundabouts. I wana go on a bear or an ostrich makes some sense to me, but a chicken, well I guess that needs some working out. 

Next comes The Great Wall of Ramsgate, Cllr Ian Driver once lambasted for inciting the vandalism – although as it was carried out using a paint roller – so how that worked exactly I don’t know, has done. What?

Well found the paintings although not the missing £3k according to the video below.  


Click on this link http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Great%20Wall%20of%20Ramsgate for more about The Great Wall of Ramsgate and contemplate the vandals out with their paint pot and paint roller, like so much relating to the Pleasurama site the surreal of even the outright bonkers takes over. 

On to Manston Airport and my rather strange encounter with The Save Manston Airport Group in the middle of Ramsgate town centre.

This involved a bloke with a tannoy getting his message across very loudly, which was “Jobs for your children, save Manston Airport, sign the new petition” anyway eventually he paused for breath and asked who the petition was aimed at and what was its objective? Aimed at TDC and KCC apparently. Anyway I said that I was interested in the objective before I considered signing it, as far as I know you can only petition the council to either make them discuss something or to make them hold a public consultation about something, this type of thinking seemed to cause some degree of confusion for chap with the megaphone. Then I said to him that while I was for saving the airport I was very much against turning it into a freight hub, rather in the same way that while I supported Ramsgate having a railway station I would be against Ramsgate having Clapham junction. This all proved too much for the tannoy man and he started yelling was “Jobs for your children, save Manston Airport, sign the new petition” into his megaphone.

This encounter set me thinking as to who it is that is doing most to damage any chances of saving the airport and just what it was that the locals wanted with respect to the airport.

I think we all know and understand what the local politicians want out of the airport closure and I don’t suppose I need to draw a diagram, I know what I want which is a reasonable balance between jobs, prosperity and environmental damage from the Manston site, preferably a strong aviation museum and historic aircraft facility combined with passenger flights that I can actually fly somewhere on, failing that any use for the site that produces some jobs and prosperity without too much environmental cost.

So anyway apart from this there is a real and substantial update on the Manston Airport front, RiverOak have finally put their intentions in writing and in the public domain with a new page on their website, see http://www.riveroakic.com/aviation.html

For me as ever the sceptic this raises some interesting questions, the key one being about their previous experience in aviation, obviously from their submission it is now apparent that they have no previous experience in aviation and haven’t funded or run any other airports. 

There has been a significant change in RiverOak’s position since august 6^th , see http://www.thanetgazette.co.uk/firm-pledge-stop-auction-airport-assets/story-22084937-detail/story.html which says:

“The company [RiverOak] says it believes Manston could be viable for air freight, aviation services including maintenance, recycling, private charter and commercial passenger services. It claims the experience of one of its senior team members in refinancing Alliance Fort Worth Airport in Texas had proved the case.”

To august 20^th see http://www.riveroakic.com/pdfs/DP6%20response%20-%20RiverOak%20-%207-31-14%20SENT%20COPY%20TO%20TF.pdf which says:

“Rather they are based broadly on the model developed at Alliance Fort Worth airport in Texas, with which we [RiverOak] are very familiar, but tailored to reflect Manston’s unique facets and its potential strategic role in the wider South East airport’s system.”

Now I don’t have much of a problem with RiverOak having no experience in aviation, but I do have a very big problem with either RiverOak claiming to local media to have experience in aviation that they just haven’t got or the local media suggesting that a potential airport operator has aviation experience when it hasn’t got it. 

I guess the problem I have here is that our council have got themselves into some deals with foreign companies, the ferry finances and Pleasurama being examples, and this wound up costing us the council taxpayers very dearly indeed.

Now when this particular foreign company appeared on the scene the BBC ran this article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-27411419 and I have been on my guard ever since.   

Tony Freudmann was the Senior Vice President of PlaneStation and in 2005 Infratil, the New Zealand-listed infrastructure fund agreed to take over London Manston airport for £17m from the administrator of the bankrupt Planestation group.

very busy today so will add to this as I can.