Manston Airport and other Thanet stuff a ramble from the bookshop.

 Here in the bookshop we have been busier than usual which makes it much more difficult to write blog posts. There have been several articles roughly along the lines that reading from some sort of electronic device makes you more stupid while reading from a book makes you cleverer, so this could be part of the reason. As I spend a large proportion of my life either reading from an electronic device or from a book, I am hoping to hang in there and come out at least evens. Loads of links relating to this and a may add some if I get the urge http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/19/readers-absorb-less-kindles-paper-study-plot-ereader-digitisation

I have been having a bit of a go FaceBook and Twitter, don’t worry I am not wrapping up the blog and going off to one of the other social media sites, I guess I am to old a dog to learn new tricks that well. The overwhelming problems with both of these sites is that the more people you interact with, the harder it is to see the wood for the trees. As something of an explanation here, the more friends you have the more information you have to sift through to find anything until you are pretty much left with what you would get if you put Thanet into Google.

 I did try commenting on the Save Manston Airport Facebook group, mainly to try and find out what they are trying to achieve and how they are trying to achieve it. This mainly related to the post I did the other day http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/the-day-starts-with-fire-in-ramsgate.html where I had encountered the chap with the megaphone getting signatures for saving the airport in the middle of Ramsgate.

My point being that The Save Manston Airport groups don’t really seem to have got one really valid petition together to influence any level of government, they put one petition into the UK parliament but the number of signatures fell short of the amount needed to have any effect, and the submitted one to TDC asking them to discuss the Manston cpo when TDC were already going to do so and most of this petition TDC appear to have rejected anyway. 

 After Cllr David Green  put up his comment see http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/pleasurama-here-we-go-again.html#comment-form the Manston bit being “My personal opinion only: to take your points in order. Airport- TDC will not agree to any "solution" to the airport that is detrimental to Ramsgate's environment. However, there is considerable emotional support for retaining aviation related activities on the site so TDC has laid down a procedure that in my opinion will show that an airport CPO is not economically viable. We are waiting for the owners alternative proposals.”

I put up a comment on the SMA Facebook group to the effect of “when a politician tell you something you want to hear check out his expenses, but when an experienced local politician tells you something you don’t want to hear, take careful note and act accordingly. This was soon deleted, which surprised me as it seems like reasonable general advice. 

 So anyway yesterday someone else put up a post there asking just what the petition being put together by the man with the megaphone was all about. In the end I got the answer to this one, which is, it isn’t a petition but a statement of support.

Now I am told that as a result of the man with the megaphone yelling sign the petition to save the airport while surrounded by posters saying Save Manston Airport petition thousands of people have signed something.

 SMA say that the statement of support isn’t to do with them but TSMA Think Support Manston Airport and the only website I can find for this is http://www.jackieraines.co.uk/tsma/

Anyway there is this post on the SMA Facebook page: On Friday the 22nd, of August, THINK SUPPORT MANSTON AIRPORT (TSMA), launched a new public awareness campaign on the streets of East Kent. This has been in close liaison with Beau Webber & John Buckley with whom I have been working since 1st of August. We, (TSMA) now have a total of 7449 members, of which 7151 are paper signatures. These member signatures have been collected over the last 15 days while campaigning on the streets and talking to the public face-to-face….

 Now the SMA Facebook group have about 8,500 members internet wise they have supported two verified petitions http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/62738 with 2,260 signatures and http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/58429 with 556 signatures.

Non internet wise there was the Manston Music Festival http://www.kentonline.co.uk/thanet/news/supporters-of-manston-airport-held-23146/ where hardly anyone turned up and the SMA Annual General meeting where local politicians turned up but it seems only 20 of the 8,500 SMA members turned up. 

 When the numbers don’t stack up I wonder just what is going on.

Now my take here is that this is of interest whether you support the airport or you don’t. On the one hand TDC are already spending local council taxpayers money on investigating the cpo and this whole cpo business does seem to involve telephone number amounts of money and complex issues over liability that would make the few million in losses TDC have incurred recently look very small fry. On the other hand if over 7,000 people did really think they were signing a petition to support the airport, then this number of signatures could well have been enough to influence KCC into serious involvement in a way the could realistically have saved the airport.   

I will ramble on here as and when I get more time and will also endeavour to read through what I have already written and correct any errors.