The photos are of King Street in Ramsgate at 10.30 am on
Friday which is market day and the busiest shopping day of the week.
As you see the council decided about six months ago to move
the rubbish collection from abut 6.30 am on Wednesday morning about the
quietest time in what is a fairly busy shopping street.
Their next plan of attack was to buy the only empty shop in
this fully let shopping parade and give themselves planning permission so they
could turn the shop into social housing. I am not sure whether this was
designed most to punish Ramsgate shopkeepers or the unfortunate individuals who
will have to live with their bedrooms next to the pavement opposite the
takeaways the council have licensed to be open until 4 am.
And yes of course the airport, now many people including
myself are supportive of a regional airport however the council’s only plan has
been to try to support a cpo to turn the airport in to a freight hub that we
can’t fly from.
As far as I can see this one has fallen through and there is
no council plan B so discovery parks will probably be allowed to invest
millions of pounds on the airport site to create thousands of jobs.
Well the latest mad idea seems to be for: Aggregate Import
by vessel and cleaning.
Cleaning of port dredging material. Use of material to make
concrete blocks for construction for despatch by road and vessel. Waste Wood
Importation by road for processing for despatch by vessel.
The rumour is that this plan has been put together by two ex
TDC planning officers, so no doubt it will go sailing through all the hoops at
TDC.
My assumption here is slag heaps and outfall pipe, noise,
dust and bathing water pollution.
I have no doubt that this will involve a Save Our Port
campaign while carefully omitting the information that the council will be
supporting saving a port that you can’t get a passenger ferry from.
Now my take is that Ramsgate is doing quite nicely without
council help, the shopping centre is reviving, mainly because it is adjacent to
an open air car park that shoppers feel comfortable about parking in. The café culture
is expanding nicely too.
Not sure if the PowerPoint presentation on the waste and
slag processing will work but here is the link https://powerpoint.office.live.com/p/PowerPointView.aspx?FBsrc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fattachments%2Ffile_preview.php%3Fid%3D1555566864657705%26time%3D1419341231%26metadata&access_token=100001536321768%3AAVJZW2qUb16RcXZmnAMxuoTLrEkm1eX3XWArN8TipTeWPA&title=Port+Presentation.ppt
Another attempt to screw the town now their efforts using Manston seem to have failed....
ReplyDeleteJunk yard ramsgate and libdems with an aircraft scrapheap for Manston
ReplyDeleteMichael, Why are you obsessed with passenger traffic above all? Anyway, the River Oak plan includes passenger traffic, eventually. Maybe a thriving port will do the same.
ReplyDeleteBrings people to the area who spend money and is fairly labour intensive anon, my take when anyone says transport hub here in Thanet is you are either dealing with someone who has no concept of a wheel, no concept of the geography of Thanet or another local scam of some sort.
ReplyDelete8:32 we#ve heard passenger traffic eventually before at manston and it's a figleaf for freight and nightflights. Manston is finished.
ReplyDeleteWhile a slagheap and brick factory at the port is hardly a thriving port...in fact it would be a factory not a port.
We need a passenger ferry bringing tourists into the port and town. Anything else is pointless.
What are the port costs now?
Anon 13.01 you want a passenger ferry. This appeared last month in the Gazette :
ReplyDelete"Euroferries plan new coach terminal at Posted: November 07, 2014
SHIPPING firm Euroferries has announced plans to build a new coach terminal at the Port of Ramsgate, providing passengers with a connection to London.
The company has hired consultants Rees Mellish to design and construct the coach station, which is hoped will complement its proposed ferry route between Ramsgate and Boulogne."
Not seen any more about this although the EF web site says new service coming in 2014.
they've been saying that for years. Go ask Gale if he believes them anymore
ReplyDeleteMichael, Your 1226,
ReplyDeleteI beg you to consider that some may know as much about the air travel business as you, no doubt even more, and that their opinion differs from yours. Personally I will back their judgement against yours as to what is best for Thanet. And please give up your fish don't buy air tickets joke cum jibe.
Anon 23.27 it wasn't just the fish that don't buy air tickets but when given the chance of services very few people in Thanet or Manston's catchment area failed to buy tickets either.
ReplyDelete23:27 Can you specify which people who know about the air travel business believe that Manston is viable? You can't be talking about Riveroak or Tony Freudmann because they know diddly squat.
ReplyDeleteWhereas you anon 20:28 know all there is to know about the airport business. Regretably, your modesty dictates that you remain anonymous.
ReplyDeleteBy the way your phrase 'diddly squat' is a passé teenage american expression that says much about you.
Fair Play 20.28. Good question.
ReplyDeleteIs it like Yeti (I don't mean a Skoda) in which various people claim to have spotted such an expert creature ?
Only to be debunked, "No that is in fact a Roger Gale"
"Oyez, Oyez, Oyez, Manston is not viable as an airfield. The council cannot afford the risk of seeking a CPO. They stand no chance of getting a CPO. They already got burned for getting into bed with a land banking outfit. They have actually learned their lesson."
Sorry it’s taken me so long to get to the comments here, Christmas is absorbing most of my time.
ReplyDeleteI will restate my position, I was for air travel business here which I don’t understand that well but do occasionally like to travel, I was always against an airfreight hub which I can’t fly from and as I do understand engineering I am pretty certain that an airfreight hub without a fuel pipeline is an unviable non starter, a freight plane needs about the same weight in fuel as it can carry freight from the places the freight would most likely come from.
Since Discovery Parks bought the site I can see that a cpo would be unlikely to work, proving the public interest between a freight hub and a mixed use light industrial development in order to take the site from its rightful owners is a non starter. The nearest I can see to an example of this is if you wanted to open a music shop selling cds and approached the council to get them to cpo my bookshop on the grounds that more people listen to music than read books, not going to work is it?
Michael, your 16:34,
ReplyDeleteThe analogy in your para 2 does not make sense.
anon 12:13,
ReplyDeleteI suggest you take more water with it.
Michael,
ReplyDeleteI admit that it could be a wild guess on my part but I suspect that the subject of fuel supply has been studied by others who have reached a different conclusion from you. Which means Michael that you could be wrong. You have been wrong before, have you not?
Just to be absolutely clear on this. The poster at 23:27 suggested that there were people who knew about aviation, who thought that Manston was viable. I asked who these people were and received a childish, facetious reply. At no point that the poster at 23:27 backed up the claim that he/she made. I think I am entitled to conclude that the claim was made up to bolster the poster's weak argument.
ReplyDelete18:30 is correct. Others have thought about the fuel supply issue and have realised that it is a major problem. Ever since the Environmental Agency stopped them from using the old fuel storage tanks because they were decaying they have been restricted to using the smaller tanks on the Northern Grass. These hold barely enough fuel for a couple of planes and so they have to be replenished by tanker. A tanker of fuel is enough for one large aircraft and so, you would need a convoy of tankers driving into Manston every day. The nearest refinery is Coryton in Essex which is close to Stansted and Southend but quite a trek from Manston. I remember Wiggins coming up with a plan to put a storage tank down at the harbour with a pipeline running up to the airfield. When councillors saw how much damage an exploding aviation tank would cause to the town I could see no way that such a proposal would get planning permission. Anon. 18:30 is suggesting that some clever people have looked at this issue and come up with some kind of solution. I disagree, I don't think that Riveroak has concerned itself with this level of detail There is certainly nothing in their proposal to indicate that they have. I worry that this is the kind of serious problem which would rear it's head after the CPO and everybody would say: "Why wasn't this considered before they rushed ahead with a CPO?" In essence, I think the council needs a far more detailed plan of how the airport would work before they even consider a CPO.
ReplyDeleteJust a thought: did the Environment Agency check all the fuel tanks were emptied after the airport closed in May? They are useless so probably not?
ReplyDelete18.30 A 747 holds 48,445 gallons while fuel tankers hold between about 3,000 and about 4,000 gallons depending on their size so it takes a lot more than one tanker to refuel a freight plane.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very good point Michael that SMA don't really take into account - the amount of flights that Riveroak think they will bring in will require huge amounts of lorry movements in fuel alone before you even think about what freight they are carrying
ReplyDeleteI thought it was a TDC responsibility to check fuel tanks are empty then filled with water.
ReplyDeleteThey were checking the old tanks at National Tyres Cliftonville in the 70s anyway.
Back in the 1970's and a tyre garage? Presumably then between TDC and Environment Agency and a large derelict airport now nothing has been done?
ReplyDelete