Manston, Discovery Park, Stone Hill Park, consultation at The Pegwell Bay Hotel Today & Margate Football Club tomorrow.

I arrived early as I though I could have difficulty parking because of all the Save Manston Airport protesters, this doesn’t seem to be an issue as there were only four protesters there when I when I left at 3.30 two of them had drifted off to look at the consultation.

Here is the link to the website http://www.stonehillpark.co.uk/ the consultation goes on until 7.30 this evening, and as Discovery Park are one of our main local employers you may wish to go.

The venue overlooking the sea is a present and cool place to be today, it has a large sundeck overlooking Pegwell Bay,

here is the sketch of Pegwell Bay Hotel that I did from the sundeck while I was waiting for the consultation to start.

and here a photo inside, the consultation.

 I will endeavour to say something about it next but I thought I had better put this post up for anyone who needed reminding that it is on now.

 OK I had a chat to the people there, the plans more ideas really are at the flexible stage, so if we get this, input from locals with local knowledge could make for a more positive outcome.

Obviously as a local businessman many of whose better spending customers work at Discovery Park I have a vested interest in this particular outcome, so this is something you need to take into account when reading what I have to say about it.   

Discovery Parks have a good truck record for creating employment, for attracting grant funding that would otherwise be spent in some other part of: Europe, the UK or Kent.

I did try to get out of them what they thought about the people who want to build an airfreight hub on the site, this is very difficult as everywhere else in the world people are trying to stop airports being built or expanded near where they live, if only because the associated pollution reduces their life expectancy, as for people who want to live near an airfreight hub they can't fly from, well it’s very difficult for other people to understand.

I did go and talk to the two remaining Save Manston Airport supporters outside, who were charming and courteous but didn’t seem to have a case that I could understand, but I am working on this one, so it may get through to me eventually.  

I had a long chat with Ray Mallon, mainly because he is an interesting character, I asked him, obviously, why he had got involved and his answer was because of his long term friendship with Trevor Cartner and Chris Musgrave who run Discovery Park.

I had a chat with the overall planner who is conversant with the site’s environment constraints and I guess I had some useful input as I had previously had a long chat with the airport’s site engineer about these issues.