Holy cartography! Preparing the old Priapus for a drive up the smoke yesterday, I thought I'd check the Highways Agency traffic info website for delays on the M2.However I was rather shocked, on closer inspection, to discover that our very own, super-duper A299 doesn't get a guernsey. After all, it can't be that long since they spent squillions on dualling the Thanet Way, in preparation for the hoards of tourists using our lovely port and marina here in the Millionaires' Playground. What's worse is the A249, which goes to the Isle of Sheppey and can therefore, I presume, only be used by people with two heads driving donkey carts full of turnips to their council estates, is there in glorious Technicolor!
I was so incensed at this outrage that I immediately emailed the Highways Agency to complain. This is their response:
Dear Mr Eastcliff.
Thank you for your email to the Highways Agency. The Highways Agency is responsible for the maintenance and stewardship of motorways and trunk roads in England. A trunk road is defined as a strategic link road between two centres of significant economic importance: such as cities, ports and airports.
It has been decided that the A299 does not meet the criteria above and for this reason the A299 does not fall into our area of responsibility.
Yours sincerely.
Iain Ross, HAIL Advisor, ID External Delivery Division.
Kuh! What a diabolical liberty. It's nothing short of highway robbery!
Click here to go to Highways Agency website
38 comments:
centres of significant economic importance: such as cities, ports and airports.
Ah.......
Sheppey trumps Thanet? Surely not...
another oddity of that map is the A259(T)between Brenzett and Hastings. If you know that road then you'll know that's fast from Ashford to Brenzett and then it become a Donkey track around Rye. An economic super-highway it is not.
So there you go: Thanet ranks lower than Sheppey and Romney Marsh. Aw, heck what do they know?
Well Fanit is obviously a local place for local people :s
Being an excellent place 'off the beaten track' and 'a great little find' will bring in the right sort hopefully
Or it's an economic backwater. You decide....
It will remain one if you make its key town into an extension of the runway
I think they should put a £5 toll charge on the A299 in readiness for the airport expansion and the opening of that gallery that will be saving Margate. All proceeds to the 'send Rick on a long holiday fund'!
Happy Xmas to all in Thanet
Ramsgate will soon be great. Just close the airport and all will be well.
This is all about Central Government not wanting to pay for the road. If they can shave their budget and get us county ratepayers to cough up, they will
They probably saw the total mess that KCC & TDC have made of the New Haine Road which is a waste of money on a scale that even puts TDC's past exploits to shame which is really saying something. Please can we have a mandatory IQ test for anyone in the Council who thought this would solve anything ? I'm surprised they can even make it out of the house in the morning let alone making important decisions involving multi-million pound projects
They probably saw the total mess that KCC & TDC have made of the New Haine Road which is a waste of money on a scale that even puts TDC's past exploits to shame which is really saying something. Please can we have a mandatory IQ test for anyone in the Council who thought this would solve anything ? I'm surprised they can even make it out of the house in the morning let alone making important decisions involving multi-million pound projects
Ken,
Is the extention of the dual carraigeway along Manston and through Cliffsend not going ahead now then?
I saw the plans with it linking up to the Ramsgate-Sandwich road and going on to Lord of the Manor.
Nige
Dear Mr Ken Wills,
I regret to have to inform you that as Thanet is not considered a centre of economic importance by The British Government we will be reviewing our Chinamex Gateway plans.
Chairman Mao.
I have just been checking Manstons flight totals for October.
36, including freight.
What an economic jewel in our crown.
Are the council mad? One of these 36 flights flew over my house yesterday. It was so loud I felt as if I was on the runway. Literally the sky went dark underneath it. How can they possibly think that this is a good idea for Thanet. It would be suicide for Ramsgate. Most councils are fighting like mad to not have an airport on their doorstep. Our council are inviting them in. Boris is now considering Manston as an option in a world where everybody is doing everything they can to keep airtraffic as far away as they can - KCC are inviting them in. It is totally insane.
It was always as set up (in Political terms) this Boris Island off of Sheppey.
It was very clear at some stage he (Boris) would change colours - after all Thanet is known as Bung Island and its flag is a Brown envelope flying rampant.
Road to nowhere is that not a song?
Its a song by Talking Heads. Not unlike our local politicians.
Show Boris the map - the trunk road via Sheppey to Boris Island is already there. No such road exists to Manston. Case closed.
Unfortunately there is no airport in Sheppey there is one in Manston.
There will be an airport in the Thames Estuary though and Boris is going to build it. Should bring Sheppey out of the stone age at least.
Oooh, nice to see little councillor ken (gregory) popping in to fire a shot at central government. always keen to pass the buck and blame others while being silent on, or being an apologist for, his council's cock-ups.
The estuary airport will actually not be that environmentally damaging.There are no towns under the flight path for example!
Hi Guys.
Yes the last part of the thanet way/sandwich access will be going ahead. Surveyors are already out.
The new Haine road is now working, and the old haine road is open for cars.
I do not blame central government, I blame blinkered civil servants and the local Mp.
Ps Boris now supports Manston as a site for airport developement
Boris is a fucking idiot
As an alternative to the estuary or just development in order to service Thanet?
Ken where you getting that from re boris the blonde?
Ken Gregory. Please substantiate your claim that Boris Johnson supports the development of Manston, or withdraw it. There's quite enough cr*p on this site without you joining in.
Boris can support my balls if he want. There is at least a one in a billion chance of something developing from there
Good one. Supporting your balls would be a better way of spending my money.
So the Mayor of London supports developing Manston?
What the **** has it got to do with him: and why should we care?
It's our problem to sort out; not his!
There is no way Boris is supporting Manston. By the time anyone gets there they will have already used up half their holiday allowance.
Anyway I've heard from an insider that he thinks Paul Carter is a 'snide c*nt who couldn't tie his shoelaces without help'. And you can quote me on that.
That doesn't surprise me. Boris is actually a decent fella who actually cares about people.
Ken
I suggest you read up on CPRE's response to the Manston Master Plan - and then post your opinion and TDC's response to the Master Plan.
I would post on your site but we know what would happen to that, do we not!!
Malcolm
1.08am, I hope you are right, and Ken is quoting Boris from the telegraph which was obvious bollocks coming straight from Carters mouth.
boris is wrong thinking carter is snide - that suggests he is devious which would need some sort of intelligence.
i apologise for calling him an idiot, but I have some hope his telegraph comment was a way of getting kents leader off his back.
Carter's legacy, if he gets his way, will be killing Ramsgate. Sits nicely with £50mm of taxpayers money down the icelandic plughole, and dozens of kids/elderly/blind people run over on the new ashford ring road. Our leader.....
I'm reliably informed by several of the voices in my head that Manston airport is, in fact, a manifestation of the Devil and that the planes are His little demons!
I'm also told that on a full Moon, several of the baggage handlers go on a rampage in town, raping our grandmothers, stealing childrens' toys and tossing babies into burning pits.
There's also a very good chance that one of these planes will crash into Pfizer, causing an explosion powerful enough to blow Thanet into the Pacific!
And that's the 'best case scenario'!
Go on then anonymous of...
12:11
5:30
9:44
10:57
...out-melodrama that!
The noise from the aircraft will shatter little children's teeth. Not a lot of people know that.
Ken.
I think we may disagree with the meaning of the word "working". The "improvements" to the Haine Road area are not working. By this I mean there are exactly the same length of queues Ithere have always been. At least now there are two slightly shorter queues - one from the old Haine Road and one from the new Haine Road. At least witnessing the daily road rage at that new hot spot is a welcome relief from pondering the lack of complete common sense and intelligence from all associated with this project.
We have yet to witness the full scale of the recession which will go on for the next three years (at least). I predict that many, many shops will be closing in the next year and that the tumbleweed will blow through Westwood. In light of this, I predict that attitudes towards economic development will change. I think people will see that shopping does not constitute economic development and that shops and restaurants which open one day can close just as easily, the next. I think people will be demanding more sustainable and resilient economic development with a return to manufacturing things in the area they are to be sold. History will record Westwood as a folly and a monument toi the vanity of Councillors who failed to understand what was needed to sustain an area.
P.S. I have heard about some very unsavoury (and illegal) employment tactics being used up at Westwood. I've heard about people being paid less than the minimum wage, a restaurant that tells male applicants that they only employ women and another establishment that insists their staff remain on the premises (unpaid) until they are needed. So much for the "quality" jobs we were told Westwood would provide.
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