Confidential Manston cpo documents appear on the internet and a possible further ramble.

 These have appeared on various FaceBook pages including Manston Pickle which I think is an open site, see https://www.facebook.com/manstonpickle  

I am reluctant to link to the actual posts. See the end of this post if you don’t follow what I am talking about http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/plane-tales-from-bookshop-manston.html

 For me the interesting part is the peculiar game being played by RiverOak by sending the documents to all TDC councillors without putting them on one of their various websites, so they are in that strange position of being partly in the public domain.

 What the documents don’t answer is what appears to be the council’s main reasons why they didn’t select RiverOak as an indemnity partner: failure to be compliant with UK council’s money laundering requirements, failure to provide indemnity against compensation claims from the owners in the event of the cpo failing and not really seeming to get anywhere near the sort of valuation ballpark that a 600 acre brownfield site that’s last use was an airport that hadn’t obtained an EP in order to get planning consent would be in.  

 To me the distribution of these documents followed by the inevitable leakage into the public domain combined with RiverOak stating publicly that the had relinquished confidentiality requirements relating to the documents seems a very strange move.

 I would think it would be difficult for any level of government to deal with an organisation that acted in this way and as far as I can see leaves the council in a difficult position.  

 RiverOak distributing documents directly to councillors who obviously have no confidentiality agreement with RiverOak sees to fall in to the “Dear Honourable Councillor” bracket of one of RiverOak’s previous emails.

 All of the pictures in this post are from a book I publish about the first civil aviation activates at Manston in the 1960’s, click on the link for more http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/catalogue/1997_twilight_of_pistons.htm the sample pages should of interest to some people.

 

Manston airport, last nights extraordinary council meeting webcast and a possible ramble about what it may all mean.

First here is the council’s webcast of the meeting    

I should point out here that this is the official council produced webcast  

Anyway I thought I had better put it up on the blog as soon as I saw it was available and will endeavour to add to this post and try to make some sense of what it all means and where we are with Manston if I get the time.  

First my own position on Manston, this can be summarised as being when the airport closed I was for efforts to get it reopened as a regional airport with a greater leaning towards the museums on the site. My hope was that the councils TDC and KCC could pursue this with heritage and regional economic funding.

I am and always have been against Manston becoming a freight hub that we can’t fly from, it has always appeared to me and no one has come up with any convincing argument against this, that for a freight hub to be economically viable the noise and air pollution would exceed the levels that the environment agency would allow.

For this reason I have always seen the freight hub as a ruse which has an alternate goal.  

My contention is that it only by there being some element of publicly funded investment in Manston that continued aviation use can be ensured. 

Although I think much of last night’s antics at the council were predetermined and staged for political reasons relating to the forthcoming elections, what underlies this and allows these antics is the secrecy under which the council operates.

My own feelings are that when companies whish to business with the council they should either sign an agreement allowing all of the documentation to be published on the council’s website as it is generated, or pay a fee to cover the expense of keeping it secret.

In simple terms the council have decided that they have no indemnity partner that fulfils the criteria for them to engage in a cpo.

To arrive at this the council used their own legal team and took advice from Guy Williams of Landmark Chambers, a leading barrister specialising in Planning, Environmental, Transport and Infrastructure, Compulsory Purchase and Rating Law.  

Now the walkout last night seems to centre on the council wishing to discuss whether the cabinet had made the right decision, when they decided that the only contender to be indemnity partner RiverOak didn’t fulfil the criteria.

The problem here is that the council officers made this decision and it was endorsed the cabinet who had all seen the secret documents showing why RiverOak were deemed unacceptable. However RiverOak are in the position where they can keep there documents secret, and the leader of the council has stated that RiverOak will not allow the documents to be made public so all the members of the council can see them and discuss them in an open council meeting.

Theoretically one option the council had was to hold yesterdays council meeting as a closed session, excluding the public and the press, theoretically this would have meant that all of the councillors there could have seen the secret documents.

In practice however, with the Manston issue the council has got itself into the position where it appears to be acting as I direct result of public opinion, this is quantified by the around 100 protestors who turn up to Manston related meetings and protest and around 3,000 UK residents who signed the online petition to keep Manston open http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/62738

As the prayer for this petition wasn’t for an airfreight hub, it is very difficult to say how many people in the whole of the UK support what RiverOak say they want to do.

It has been my contention for a considerable time now that if the council are going to act as a direct result of perceived public opinion then the first stage is for the council to hold some sort of public consultation.

I would say a major concern for the council at the moment would be if they hand out the confidential information that RiverOak want them to keep secret and that information leaks out then RiverOak may sue the council.     

There is a sense in which the support for any aviation activity, regardless of it’s nature, at Manston is becoming self defeating. Some activities of the various pro Manston groups would seem to have reached the point where they have become counter productive.

This is a quote from the leader of the council on one of the pro Manston FaceBook pages.

“Iris Johnston People who have been involved in SMA from the outset will know there were was a time when I had to convene a meeting so that all supporters of the airport really worked together for their common aim to get the airport reopened.

I also spoke to and met Mrs Gloag who was adamant she could not reopen and had already had conversations with RiverOak and rejected working with them.

My hope that the new owners even with the shared ownership with Mrs Gloag might revisit.

This was a possibility but the very serious attacks on their integrity has completely alienated them.

RiverOak did not get through the soft market testing and are very clear that they do not want TDC to allow their paperwork with us in the public domain. Commercial sensitivity was always going to be an issue.

The dossier they say they are sending to Government is a step in the right direction but as yet TDC have not had their formal release from our confidentiality agreement.

Sent from my iPad”  

I guess there is always the possibility that supporting a freight hub instead of a passenger airport may eventually be seen as a major reason why Manston wasn’t rejuvenated with some aviation aspect.

Whatever the situation this is much more about rejecting the indemnity partner than supporting the airport.

The basic questions are something like:

Do they have a good three year track record in business?

Have they made a concerted effort to buy the site from the current owners for a reasonable price?

Can the prove they have the money to see through the whole cpo?

Does their business plan produce an overriding public interest, above the existing owners business plan, to such an extent that government would override the current owners human rights and deprive them of their property?

Do their finances comply with UK money laundering legislation?

back to the video:

I think the first real breaking news in video of the council meeting comes at about 23.07 when Iris says the new owners have put in some planning applications. Or at least I guess that is what she means by “move forward with some planning applications”.  

As I have been saying since the TDC cpo was first mooted the council pursuing a cpo also being the planning authority for the site will present some difficulties when or if it comes to determining the compensation paid to the current owners. 

Anyway as far as I can see any decision now is in the hands of the UK government perhaps the results will be like this one http://www.crewechronicle.co.uk/news/local-news/battle-over-festival-site-5661427

Wynard Park email TDC councillors about The Manston Airport Site and some sort of ramble

Well first here is the email:

The office of Trevor Cartner and Chris Musgrave Wynyard Park House Wynyard Avenue Wynyard, Billingham Tees Valley TS22 5TB Tel: 01740 661000 www.wynyardpark.com

12th December 2014 Dear Councillors, FORMER MANSTON AIRPORT We have noted that yesterday evening TDC's Cabinet reached the conclusion that no suitable partner has been identified who can clearly demonstrate an ability to fund the compulsory purchase and subsequent commercial operation of an airport at Manston. This decision is commendable, particularly in light of the appalling bullying and abusive behaviour of many of the supporters of the intended operator. The Cabinet's decision also accords with legal advice received by ourselves which is that the chances of TDC achieving a successful CPO outcome were remarkably slim and that the financial losses to the council would have been huge. We also note that an Extraordinary Meeting of the Council is taking place on Tuesday, 16 December "to consider and debate its position on Manston Airport taking into account all possible proposals". No papers have been posted on the council's website so we are unaware of the course this discussion will take. We would, however, like to briefly restate our intended approach to this site. Overall Vision We anticipate that the site will be redeveloped for a number of different uses. Without being prescriptive, and fully accepting that any change of use requires planning permission, we see the mix including employment space complemented by appropriate housing, education, sports, community and other facilities. We are confident of creating some 4,000 jobs over a 20 year period. Overall, we wish the site to become an engine for the transformation of Thanet's economy, lifting it to become a major player on a national and potentially international scale. We believe Thanet deserves nothing less. We have actually run out of space at Discovery Park for large new buildings and in trying to preserve its character as a science and office park we require somewhere to create a manufacturing park to meet current and future requirements. Opportunities to acquire sites of 800 acres are few and far between and we decided that the Manston site was ideal for our needs, being close to our existing base, superbly well-connected by road and with the promise of a new Parkway station linking it to London via HS1. We are already in talks with two new companies who, if we succeed in securing them, will bring an initial 300 jobs. This is about twice the number of jobs lost when the airport closed. Research into "best in class" developments Work is currently underway to identify the best mixed-used developments around the world. We hope to conclude this research by the end of January, the results of which will be discussed with TDC. From this, we will start to devise the outline of our proposals and once again these will be discussed with TDC and your views reflected. Public Consultation We have already published our provisional timetable for consulting the people of Thanet, the majority of whom we believe support our approach. Two main events are proposed, one in the spring when our initial plans will be revealed and another in the summer when revised proposals that reflect feedback from the spring event will be published for further consultation. Throughout this process there will be regular dialogue with TDC at Member and appropriate Officer level.Does aviation form any part of our proposals? The former airport, like many small regional airports, suffered from a high cost base with too few passenger flights and a freight operation which was hampered by a ban on night-time flights. The fact is that without significant subsidy the airport doesn’t function as a business. The airport had already closed before we bought the site and there is no credible business case to reopen it. Set against these facts, we recognise there is a lot of local feeling and a rich history attached to the site, which we respect. Indeed, we have already gifted the freehold of the site on which the Spitfire and Hurricane Museum stands to that body and we have offered to look at options for building a new facility for the RAF Museum. Do we have a track record of success? Wynyard Park started off as a derelict manufacturing site after Samsung transferred its operations to the Czech Republic. It is now home to more than 2,000 workers, is growing at a steady and sustainable pace and has around 60 tenants of all shapes and sizes. This has been achieved without a single penny of public subsidy. Discovery Park is the site of the former Pfizer operation. Pfizer removed most (but not all) of their people before we acquired the site in July 2012 with around 650 employees remaining, but at a significant risk of being lost in the following months. We announced a target of 3,000 jobs within 5 years and, whilst we knew that was ambitious, we now have around 2,200 jobs in 28 months, all working for the 102 companies already on site and with several more poised to sign. We expect to reach 3,000 ahead of target and our long-term strategy works towards achieving 5,000. Recent research has shown that 86% of employees at Discovery Park live in East Kent, so these truly are local jobs for local people. Conclusion We have been open and honest with everyone we have met in Kent. Whilst it would have been very easy to pretend that we were looking at the site as an airport, only to announce within a couple of years that there was no business case, we prefer to be transparent with our intentions. We genuinely believe we can bring jobs and prosperity to East Kent by creating a good place to work both for employers and employees and by forging links with education providers and training organisations to close the "skills gap". Our way is not to bang drums, issue threatening letters or send abusive emails, but to work respectfully and courteously with a range of public, private and voluntary organisations to achieve lasting benefits for Thanet. We very much look forward to working positively with the Council for many years to come. Yours faithfully Chris Musgrave & Trevor Cartner Not sure how that will format in the blog post anyway here is the ramble. I have to say that I am becoming increasingly surprised by the lack of support for the new owners of The Manston Airport site from local politicians. Anyway here is their website http://www.wynyardpark.com/ it comes up when you put Wynyard Park into Google. I suppose most of my reservations about the cpo have always been based on what comes up when you put RiverOak Investments into Google particularly the two websites http://www.riveroakic.com/ and http://www.riveroakinvestments.co.uk/ the first and obvious question being why are they not linked together? I will ramble on here and come back to Manston in a bit, my bookshop hasn’t been as busy today, maybe due to the weather although I noticed that Ramsgate doesn’t seem to have been so busy during the last few days. Our internet orders seem to have peaked during the beginning of this week and I guess that internet orders for Christmas must be tailing off for everyone. I had assumed that people were doing their shopping out of town but when we went to Westwood Cross this evening it was very quiet too, no problem parking and getting a table next to the balcony with an armchair. Here is the sketch from there. Back to Manston Airport. As I say something strange here; I could understand the fringe of local politics perhaps not supporting an enterprise like this, but the antics of the last few weeks defies understanding. So an open question to all of our local politicians; do any of you actually support the new owners?

The big Manston Airport story, how it relates to 29,000 UK deaths and if the Manston Airport supporters get their way will it kill you or members of your family?

The problem here relates to building an airfreight hub at Manston, the prevailing airflow across the UK and diesel related fumes. This all puts the freight hub supporters in the position of trying to get turkeys to vote for Christmas and over the next couple of weeks it is going to be interesting to see if they do.

Anyway before I go down the road of trying to explain what I am talking here let me point out that I am not anti airport, wasn’t even against night flights provided they were linked to the number of day flights so there were economic benefits to Thanet that extended beyond giving half a dozen airport workers a couple of hours overtime.

I have a business in Thanet and passenger transport links, road, rail, sea and air are good for business, however other people’s freight just causes traffic congestion and pollution.

Anyway back to the problem which is called particulate air pollution, which are the little particles released when diesel fuel and jet engine fuel are burnt, too many of these in the air and people start dying.

I looked into this one a little while ago and what was really missing was the number of people in the UK dying, anyway this figure has now appeared in a fairly reliable news source, here is the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-30349398

Here in Thanet we have a high background level of particulate air pollution mainly because of being in the east and the prevailing airflow being from a bit south of west to a bit north of east. There really isn’t another part of the UK where you can get more of the UK to the west or upwind of you.

What this means is the background level of particulate air pollution in Thanet is already high to begin with, I have done a couple of blog posts about this in the past, here are links http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/manston-airport-closure-issues.html and http://thanetonline.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/manston-airport-air-pollution-admission.html

Anyway now I do have more of an answer, as I now have a reasonable idea of how many people are dying due particulate air pollution. Obviously a very big factor here is if you live near to a major road junction where perhaps a ton of fuel is burnt in a month, then the pollution from the diesel fumes it generates will tip you way over the safe limit when added to the already high background level.

With Manston the problem is a bit different, obviously there is the fact that all the freight and the aviation fuel would have to be trucked up and down the motorway system which is upwind of us. Honestly though I don’t think this would make a huge difference to the existing problem. If Manston gets about 50 aircraft full of freight a day and say half of them needed refuelling that would be about 150 fuel tankers and then another 300 lorries to move the freight when you consider how many lorries are on the roads between Thanet and the M25 another 450 a day is just a drop in the ocean.  

No the big problem with a freight hub is the fuel used for one freight aircraft movement and the distance the resulting particulate pollution takes to disperse to the background level.

A 747 movement landing or takeoff uses about 1 ton of jet engine fuel which is dirtier that conventional diesel so generates more particulate air pollution. So for every 100 movements 22,000 gallons or 100 tons of fuel is burnt either on or near the runway.

As you can see this is a bit more serious than the fuel burnt at a major road junction, so it is an issue that has to be considered. This is a bit complex as the distance away from where the fuel is burnt to where the level of particulate pollution gets to around the normal background level depends on the wind, but I think five or six miles is about it.      

I don’t suppose I really have to draw a diagram here and I guess the new 29,000 per year UK deaths from particulate air pollution figures do have a very real impact on the future of Manston.

On to the relatively minor Manston story that RiverOak wish to become involved in TDC politics having spent over half a million pounds on solicitors and surveyors fees they now seem to be saying that TDC should have spent a comparable amount preparing their case.

I guess if you google the amount a to QC or surveyor earns you can see this would present some problems. for me I guess the £600,000 falls into the “Dear Honourable Councillor” bracket and makes me wonder about their credibility.

Anyway I had a bizarre press release from the Gales about this; here it is:

From: Suzy Gale

To: undisclosed-recipients:;

Sent: Mon, 8 Dec 2014 9:04

Subject: Manston - Press Release (1)

For information.   Please do NOT reply to this email.

For further information please go to http://www.riveroakic.com/news.html 

A copy of an Open Letter to Thanet District Council will follow

And my reply:

From: michaelchild
To: suzy
Sent: Mon, 8 Dec 2014 11:56
Subject: Press Release error

Hi Suzie, I think you will find that the link in your email http://www.riveroakic.com/news.html points to the wrong website and should point to the website that RiverOak set up presumably for their Delaware LLC http://www.riveroakinvestments.co.uk/news/

I believe that the confusion relates to there being two separate RiverOaks one the established property hedge fund company and the other the new Delaware LLC set up exclusively to deal with Manston.

Although the two companies appear to have the same management team there are no connecting links between the two websites.   

Best regards Michael

How one deals with this sort of thing where a local MP seems to be supporting a foreign company but hasn’t managed to sort out which company or which website I just don’t know, needless to say I haven’t had a reply I would guess they just don’t know what to say.

I may ramble on here.             

Anyway I would guess the falling out between the council and RiverOak has now pretty much reached the stage where they are unlikely to become partners in any venture.

We seem to be back where we were when RiverOak tried to do a deal with Ann Gloag, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-27411419

Coming back to the pollution issue, if Manston were a small regional passenger airport the particulate air pollution would be very different, the last passenger planes there the KLM ones burnt about 20 gallons of fuel per movement less than a tenth of the 747 type freight planes that were last using Manston.

I guess though this always comes back to the old Manston problem which is as soon as people start talking about a transport hub their credibility goes down the drain because we have all seen a wheel and appreciate that fish don’t make good customers.   

    

The Manston Airport cpo, little council and big Manston, little RiverOak and big Manston.

Trying to make something out of the whys and wherefores that have appeared on internet this week relating to the Manston cpo isn’t an easy task but I will have a go here.

The situation at the moment is that the Manston Airport site has gone from being an airport with very little commercial activity and no airport planning consent to a largely asset stripped site with a runway and a few airport buildings.

Civil airport activity at Manston dates back to 1963 when the first commercial operator Air Ferry Ltd tried and failed to run a profitable airport from the then MOD owned site.

Then followed fifty years of various operators trying to make an airport work on the site and failing to do so. 

In recent years the airport’s failure to get significant investment most particularly to do the work necessary to obtain an Environmental Permit meant that the airport never gained planning consent as an airport.

A very large part of this relates to land drainage, going back to MOD days the runways and hard standing drainage, which couldn’t be allowed to go into the ground there because the porous chalk under the site forms the local water reservoir was piped off to the sea at Pegwell Bay.

Over the years Pegwell Bay got turned into a nature reserve of international significance and the regulations about what you can pour into the sea tightened up but Manston just didn’t keep up with all this. Lots of promises were made, plans and consultations, but the millions of pounds of investment never occurred.  

The net result of this was that Manston’s status was a large brownfield site operating as an airport and theoretically moving towards obtaining planning consent as an airport. Obviously without the airport there the site would have been an agricultural site with greenfield status protecting it from development. 

Because of the size of the Manston site the cost of opening the doors to run it as an airport was around £2m per year and a large part of various operators problems have revolved around trying to get enough business to cover the £2m per year operating costs.

Now when the last operator Ann Gloag decided to close the airport the options were either a change of use for the site, getting a large company to buy the airport to run it as an airport or some level of government involvement. The Scottish government bought Prestwick but it soon became clear that the UK government were not going to buy Manston.

At the time of closure I would have guessed the value of the site as an airport would have been in £10m to £25m ball park, on top of this I would think that around £6m was needed to sort out the drainage, get the Environmental Permit and a proper planning consent, added to this would have been some investment to bring the airport up to the sort of standard that would attract business, say around £10m.

Always though lurking in the background is this brownfield status which combined with no airport planning consent seems to mean that Manston has very little to protect it from change of use.

In simple terms while the farmer has very little chance getting planning consent to build a house on one of his fields the factory owner could probably build pretty much anything he or she wanted to on the factory car park. Sure the council as a planning authority could turn the plans down but the planning inspectorate would probably override the decision at a planning appeal.

So really at the point of closure someone wanting to run the airport with funds in the £30m to £40m bracket would I think have had a reasonable chance.

I think when Infratil were trying to sell the airport as a going concern the price started around £22m and I think probably they would have sold the airport free of any debts and liabilities eventually for around the £9m mark.

My guess is that now the site value relates much more to that of any brownfield site of this size in this part of southeast England around the £300m mark and I guess it is this figure that would be the cpo compensation figure.

Added to this is the fact that the airport has been stripped of most of its aviation related equipment meaning that it would all have to be bought.

I would think that there is also a fair chance that for the airport to reopen as an airport it would need planning consent, certainly if it was to try to restart without there would probably be grounds for a challenge. Either way I would say that we would be looking at a public enquiry.

However I look at this my guess is that any cpo would most likely to need funds in the  £300m to £400m ball park and even if you take the compensation to the current owner out of the equation and have to pay what was the value of the site as an airport, around £10m to £20m I think you would probably need something in the order of £60m just to get off the ground.

Now there is no chance of TDC coming up with even £1m and RiverOak say on their website http://www.riveroakic.com/about.html “our operating asset investments can range anywhere in size from $1 to $50mm.” Which unscrambling the typos I take to mean the top end of their funds are in the £30m ballpark.

On the other side of the coin we have the new owners Discovery Parks talking in terms of £1,000m investment in the site over the next 20 years which does on the face of it seem a much more realistic figure for getting substantial economic beniftis from a site of that size.

TDC can’t tell us what it was that showed them that RiverOak didn’t have the funding to make them pass the indemnity partner test because they say that RiverOak won’t let them release the information, so all of this is just speculation on my part.

Of course it may be that there are people who can come up with a better idea in the comments and I look forward to that. 

Politically I think the Conservatives have played a much better game than Labour, if there was any public body that could have had a chance at acquiring Manston it was Conservative run Kent County Council.

From the beginning I have maintained that KCC could have been presented with a hostile petition forcing them to hold a public consultation with the people of Kent on the future of the airport and I think that focusing the attention on Labour run TDC that are frankly much too small to be involved in trying to buy an airport has been a smart political move up to this point.

It now looks as though this may be backfiring as the result of the investigation into the indemnity partner are now going to be put to full council which means that the financial risk to the council becomes a cross party affair.

All that said I don’t think that the councillors would be able to vote in a way that directly risked taking the council into insolvency over one issue, as far as I can see engaging in a cpo would need the compliance of the senior council officers and they seem to have already said that they won’t play ball.

On the political front I think the biggest mistake the Labour administration has made over the whole Manston issue was failing to hold a public consultation, this means that they are trying to act based on a supposed and unknown level of public support.

Certainly living and working in Thanet I am not really aware of much in the way of strong local feeling about the airport, the only two occasions I have been aware of strong local feeling was the no night flights campaign, which resulted in a public consultation and the Ramsgate town council campaign, which resulted in a referendum.

Anyway a moderate day in my bookshop today and a chance to write up my confused thoughts on Manston, which from my point of view boil down to; while on the one hand I am out of the door with a camera when a plane flies over on the other hand I don’t like the idea of not supporting an investor with a strong track record for creating jobs like Discovery Parks.  

Manston Airport and the councils

There has been some Manston activity both from KCC and TDC, my guess would be that most of those interested will have already seen most of it anyway here we go.

There is yet another TDC meeting where Manston seems to be on the agenda although like last time it says “report to follow” here is the link http://democracy.thanet.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=151&MId=3925

My understanding is that the council are once again hoping to put an officer report to cabinet showing that the either have or have not got an indemnity partner for a cpo.

The council has also been active on FaceBook having posted twice on their FaceBook page in 2013, here is the link https://www.facebook.com/pages/Thanet-District-Council/83700846372

They have posted 6 times in the last fortnight and as nearly all the comment has been about Manston they have now done a Manston post https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10152429572516373&id=83700846372

Theoretically this covers the most frequently asked questions that TDC has to deal with about Manston http://thanet.gov.uk/the-thanet-magazine/campaigns/manston-airport/manston-airport-frequently-asked-questions/

KCC have today released details of 17th October 2014, Sir Roger Gale MP and two representatives of the Save Manston Campaign, see https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/meeting_minutes_171014#incoming-591206

KCC have also had a meeting part of which relates to Manston, this link should take you to the video footage http://www.kent.public-i.tv/core/portal/webcast_interactive/153561 you can get the video in the right place with the links on the right.       

Meanwhile the actual site owners are getting on with the investment and redevelopment of the site that should eventually provide thousands of local jobs, see http://www.thanetgazette.co.uk/Manston-airport-owners-distracted-CPO-talks/story-25020611-detail/story.html  

By way of explanation here this is not so much a post as me trying to collect some up to date information on Manston, which I may continue to do this evening. 

Manston decision another delay, book buying in Margate and a ramble.

First Manston and this is what the council leader has to say:

"I know a lot of people will be very disappointed that Manston back to back investor follow up is not in the agenda. A decision had to be made yesterday.

Following meetings between RiverOak and our 151 officer Mr Cook last Thursday I understand further information has been submitted which must be thoroughly sifted through.

This must be done properly hence the acting Chief Executives decision to remove Manston from the 13th November agenda.

This is essential so that we can ensure every effort is given to RiverOak to answer the questions we originally put to them last summer.

We will probably need an extraordinary Cabinet once all the new information is examined and the 151 officer makes his report."

I am afraid my patience is wearing a bit thin over the council’s attitude to the former Manston site and their hostility towards the new owners £1bn investment, with the aim of providing 4,000 jobs.

Anyway in the real world here is how the new owners are progressing the site http://www.thanetgazette.co.uk/Urban-planners-hired-regenerate-Manston-airport/story-24316991-detail/story.html here is the link to the firm that is planning the regeneration of the Manston Airport site http://www.planit-ie.com/

The picture of the concrete arrow was taken looking out of the window by the loos at Turner Contemporary, I think it’s a sort of inadvertent art exhibit.

The gallery also has an “Interesting Thing Tree” possibly something to with Adrian Mole, I didn’t measure it but it seemed quite big to me.

It was pretty cold walking from the car to the Turner today, and I though the “Pole of Cold” exhibition fitted with my frame of mind.

What the gallery lacks at the moment is a major work of art of international significance.

Here are the books I bought in Margate today, I was particularly pleased to get some jewellery books and a decent motoring book, the mistake was probably the Mentmore as they probably won’t sell but I am fascinated by large country house auctions so will enjoy looking at them and probably afterwards sell them at a loss.

A few more books for the part of the shop I am expanding at the moment which falls under the category of art and crafts, although actually includes, architecture industrial archaeology, anyway books on woodturning and marquetry along with the jewellery.   

The council have published the agenda for next weeks cabinet meeting as mentioned with respect to Manston, see http://democracy.thanet.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=151&MId=3451 one interesting document relates to closing Pier Yard car park in Ramsgate, see http://democracy.thanet.gov.uk/documents/s39562/Pier%20Yard%20Ramsgate.html?CT=2 I guess we are all aware of the two problems with cars in the vicinity of Thanet’s two main piers. Roughly the majority of traffic entering Harbour Parade in Ramsgate or Turner Contemporary vehicle entrance fails to park and comes out again 

Manston CPO decision on the 13th November and some other stuff on the airport + Flat fails to talk about sweets and sweetshops and I ramble on about collecting Shire Publications.

Frankly when Discovery Parks bought the Manston Airport site it was a major game changer, up to this point TDC were pursuing a cpo based on perceived public opinion as the result of a petition that hadn’t been properly validated and was signed before Discovery Parks announced that they had plans for the site, which would provide thousands of jobs for local people.

A very important factor here is that Thanet taxpayers money is being spent by Thanet council to investigate whether the council can remove a major brownfield site owner with a proven track record for producing UK jobs, in favour of a foreign company with no track record of having produced any UK jobs, of for that matter any aviation jobs. That they are doing this without any sort of public consultation seems ludicrous.

Make no mistake here I am not anti airport, when a plane flies over I am first out the door with a camera, but much more important than this is local jobs and when the council is engaged in hostile action towards a company with a good track record of investing in the UK and providing jobs, that says it intends to invest £1bn in a site it has just purchased in Thanet, with the intention of providing local jobs, then I become concerned.

A good parallel to this on a very small scale is, I think, the council buying up town centre shops in active and fully let parts of the local towns, with the intention of turning them into social housing.

Anyway here is the Isle of Thanet Gazette article about how much the council are spending on the cpo http://www.thanetgazette.co.uk/pound-70k-earmarked-CPO-studies/story-23003354-detail/story.html

Part of the problem is that TDC are not really spending this money on a cpo, not even on discovering if a cpo is viable, they haven’t even really reached the point of considering whether an airport would have economically beneficial, environmentally viable, or socially beneficial. This doesn’t come until the draft local plan is published around Christmas, once they have this they can consider these things.

What they are doing is basically looking for a partner to fund them so the can chuck out the existing owners and their plans for local job, should the whim take them sometime in the future. 

Anyway as far as I can see we only have another couple of weeks of this nonsense.

This is a quote from TDC cabinet member David Green: “TDC at present are not considering the airport against economic, environmental and social criteria, that will come with the publication of the preferred options draft of the Local Plan, expected in Dec, and the subsequent consultation in the new year. They are not even considering the merits or otherwise of a CPO as that could only happen if TDC had a commercial partner willing to take all the financial risk and would depend upon the relative merits of the business case and many other factors. What we are doing is a soft market test under EU contract legislation as to whether such a partner exists. I have to tell you that at the moment none of the Councils prospective partners have forfilled the Councils requirements for such a partner. We have decided that this process must end with the Cabinet meeting on the 13th Nov. TDC Officers recommendations will be in the Cabinet papers for that meeting. It is possible that any decision we make could be called into Scrutiny Committee, who could ask Cabinet to think again. We will ensure that this process happens as rapidly as Councils procedures allow.”

Business wise I shall be pleased when the uncertainty about the airport is over, the airport itself has never done very much either way for business as there has never been enough activity there, but the uncertainty about its future has been very damaging.

On to Flat’s discussions about books, as you see he has chosen one today about sweets and sweetshops, he has gone off to look in the sweet jar and I can’t get any sort of comment from him, so will do my best.

The two Thanet sweetshops that stick in my mind are the one where Pete’s Fish Factory is now, where you could watch Ramsgate Rock being pulled and the one overlooking Margate beach that closed about seven years ago.

Anyway I suppose that one thing that all collectors of book series are on the lookout for is a series that is going to become collectable in terms of rare editions and so on, while all of the books in series are selling for pretty much one price an no one much knows what’s scarce. All the Shire books we have in stock are priced at £1.99 or less.

I think it is possible the Shire publications fall into this bracket, anyway I bought some more today, bottom left of the pile of books in the store waiting to be priced.

I have been gathering them up from around the shop with the view of putting them all together somewhere, viewed spine on our entire stock of Shire books doesn’t look very impressive and out in the various bookshop sections they pertain to, they vanish between larger books and get damaged.

Lay a few out and they look more interesting.

Anyway today I made a new bookcase in the bookshop to take them and a few other series.

The canal Shire book is a good example to explain what I am talking about, it was in the canal book section in the bookshop. To be honest our canal book section isn’t much use if you are planning a narrow boat holiday, you would need to look on the internet for that sort of information. My objective in the bookshop is to try to have books where the content either won’t be on the internet, or will only be available there more expensively than buying the book off the shelf.

Just a further point while I am on the subject of the internet, if you go to buy a secondhand book from a site like Amazon, you will find that a lot of the cheaper ones used to belong to public libraries. If you click on the picture of the books in the canal section to expand it you will see the tell tale signs of an ex-library book, top left with the accession number selotaped to the spine. 

The main thing to check if you buy an ex-library book is that it has the proper cancellation stamp on it, the Kent libraries one is the black round one, if not it is probably stolen.

The rule is something like this, a fine condition first edition of a specialist canal book about the history of an individual canal is going to cost about £10, with a reprint costing about £6. Take the fine first edition, write your name in it and it becomes worth about £6, clip the price off and it becomes worth about £7, lose the dust jacket and it becomes worth about £5, a cancelled ex-library copy with no jacket being worth about £2 to £3 and an uncancelled one being worth nothing at all.

So with the internet it is buyer beware. 

   Finally half term at the moment and my children are old enough to do their own cooking producing some unusual items in preparation.  

Plane Tales from the bookshop, the Manston Airport Endgame, The Throw-up or Hoosh and the blog problems.

I have been interested in crafts and engineering for as long as I can remember, I was – in that other country that goes under the name of “the past – the small boy who took the clock apart. Not as it were looking for the tick but to see how it worked.

This means that my bookshop has a fairly extensive craft section covering most aspects of most crafts from the social history through to “how to do it books” but. What does this mean? An example – if you want to know how our society developed through charcoal burning and early iron smelting, I will probably have a book on it. On the other hand if you want to make your own charcoal, smelt your own iron ore and learn to be a blacksmith then I can probably provide the literature. 

I am not obsessive about this in a bookshop with about a 1000 shelves perhaps 40 are devoted to craft.

Anyway I was put in mind of misunderstandings about planes and particularly Manston today by the customer who wanted to look at a book in my section of rarer books. He was under the misapprehension that various editions of British Planemakers from 1700 were aviation books.

As you can see from the pictures of the books surrounding the plane books, were. What? Stanley not Wright and I had to do some mental gear changing to deal with this one.

We do have a fairly substantial aviation section but there are surprisingly few aviation books that go in the rare book section, perhaps the print runs are about the same with most aviation books, but for the most part even early aviation books are not rare books.

Now to some people this may seem like, I am delving into anorak land, but you and I are. What? A long time dead. Perhaps. This may have something to do with the enthusiasm of the Manston supporters who are. What? Plane spotters perhaps.

I take the view that someone who has reached the third decade of life without developing any serious interests to the point of having a collection of books about their interest – apart from the universal interests of sex and death which to some extent don’t count – is going to be a person that I will find. What? Dull perhaps.

Anyway on the Manston front the following post has been doing the rounds on the SMA FaceBook page, I have published it here small and in red; assuming that everyone interested has already read it anyway:

A post from this morning from R. John Pritchard that I think needs reading.

I had a long chat with an experienced TDC Councillor this morning about Manston and RiverOak. This Councillor speaks with the benefit of having had years of experience in the City of London and feels sure that everything would have gone smoothly if RO had registered a company in the City of London and put it in funds. My informant believes that may have been a fatal mistake, and that it is what firms like Pfizers, Roche, etc., have always done when investing in the UK.

All of this, the Councillor feels, has taken far too long, Councillors are no longer reading stuff that comes in on Manston, and that the steam is just going to fizzle out of the campaign. On the doorstep, people are responding to questions on things like street lamps, bins collections, above all immigration issues and NHS services, job opportunities, but Manston is now regarded as yesterday's issue and people are fed up with it.

The Councillor suggests that only a miracle or perhaps central Government intervention or some dramatic development affecting the existing owners will save the situation now.

Point-scoring in relation to different pro-Manston groups, I am informed by every Councillor I speak to, is regarded as totally counter-productive and something to be resisted absolutely and with great determination. They tell me that the great schism was perhaps fatal to our campaign, but that at the very least we mustn't keep on sniping about each other's campaigns.

I do not share all of this assessment but there is much there to take to heart.

If the Councillor whom I spoke to this morning is right, RiverOak really need to listen, not dictate. If RiverOak are right, the converse is true. Both sides need to cite their authorities, and to go the extra mile to listen so that in their attempts to find common ground, policies and decisions taken jointly are evidence-based.

We know that RiverOak is prepared to put the Council in funds to secure INDEPENDENT legal advice of the highest calibre that RiverOak believes will convince Councillors and persuade Officers that in times of financial stringency, Councils up and down the country are successfully obtaining Compulsory Purchase Orders in partnership with private investors in the manner that RiverOak is convinced Thanet District Council should appreciate is now regarded as best practice. We know that ministers and officials in London are reported as having despaired at the advice Thanet District Council officers are giving to our Councillors in relation to that process.

We also believe that Thanet District Council officers really do need to share with RiverOak the advice that they've received from their own legal advisers (because there has been little or NO direct contact from the Council's legal team about what external advice they've received). Without sitting down at a conference table and working out an agreement, we are going to lose our struggle to preserve OUR airport.

God help those who fail to rise to that challenge. This campaign still has overwhelming public support. The negativity around is a product of despair, not a change in the outcome that the overwhelming majority of people who live and work in Thanet truly want.

I can perhaps add to this that talking to some of the people involved, two major factors in making the situation impossible to progress have been that the RiverOak site use has been too similar to the Discovery Parks site use for Manston to make a cpo in any sense viable and that RiverOak have set up a “Delaware LLC” to deal with TDC. I guess this is something like an American district administration starting dealing with a small British finance company that suddenly finds that they are dealing with a small British Virgin Islands finance company. I am not going to labour the point here, google “Delaware LLC”  if you don’t follow what I am talking about.

Back to Mill for me another confusion that occasionally occurs in the craft world of bookselling is the one between the mill and the mill.

Earlier today I was collating a 1930 first edition of D. W. Pinkney’s book “Rope Spinning” all 96 pages of it, which culminates in the reader developing the ability to launch a lasso with their foot, when I noticed it has a chapter entitled, The Throw-up or Hoosh.

So on to moving this blog. An interesting thing about paranoia is that occasionally someone may actually be following you. Coincidence? Perhaps.

Recently the council have bought the large shop opposite mine, which is in an otherwise fully let shopping parade, and have very recently granted themselves planning permission to turn it into social housing. Then in the last week I have had two letters from the council’s solicitor threatening me with prison if I didn’t remove items from thanetonline blog. It has dawned on me that the council may not like me very much and it further occurred to me that if the council backed by a high court judge were to ask Google to remove thanetonline blog then they probably would.

Personally it wouldn’t worry me much but over past few years it has over a million and a half visits and many of these relate to local history posts there, so I have moved my blog here.

I will endeavour to sort out links and so on here as I get the time, I will also try restoring anonymous comment, although I will leave comment moderation on.