According to Thanet's 'Popular But Beseiged™' weblog, the council have passed the night flight extension. I can't quite see how it's 'one small step for Infratil perhaps but one giant leap for Manston', as Dr Moores puts it. Or that 'laying aside the inconvenience and noise of 'out-of-hours' flights, this may represent one of the biggest opportunities for Thanet in a long time' is either justification, or, indeed, an accurate prediction of the outcome. Click here to read on.What they have just done, in fact, is sign the death warrant for Ramsgate.
Any road, I expect I'll get the usual tirade of abuse for daring to speak the unspeakable. I'm off to bed to get some kip in while it's still possible! Tomorrow morning I'll be straight round the estate agents.
Click here for full report of council meeting on Cllr Nottingham's blog
Click here for full report on Stop Manston Expansion Group blog
Click here to read the selfish view from unaffected Margate
Click here for story on BBC News website
88 comments:
If you are the first to sell up and go then so be it. I'm sure your former residence will be ideal for a BA Captain on £100,000 a year :-)
I am overwhelmed by the ignorance and stupidity of the council and can find no reason to stay amongst people who are so hell bent on destroying their greatest assets. A place is defined by the people that live there. The positivity and ambition amongst so many people in Ramsgate has been crushed by an ignorant and recessive majority. Airports kill local areas, all the evidence demonstrates this. You will get what you deserve. I suggest anybody with any ambition of a good life relocates immediately.
There has not been a referendum on the subject, so claiming that Democracy has been served is a more glaring error than your grammatical delivery.
Peter, it might be good for Margit, but it will ruin Ramsgate.
I am on over 100000 a year live in ramsgate and employ many people.I will be moving elsewhere. You stupid self destructive fools.
I've published a live blog of the meeting giving details of how everybody voted and who said what.
http://marknottingham.blogspot.com/2009/02/manston-airport-expansion-goes-ahead.html
A BA captain on £100,000 living under the flight path ? Clown !
ECR's best bet is to put in DSS tenants. Unless he wants to sell at a buyers' market price in a recession.
I think a 2 bed end of terrace repo in Ramsgate went for £46000 at auction recently. The guy who paid that much must be kicking himself now ?
Don't mortgage surveyors make report comments about possible difficulties reselling ? So there may be greater difficulty getting a mortgage to buy Ramsgate property ?
This will be worth checking out every so often.
The only people who will win out of this will be the big corporates as always. Little politicans in small town awe of large company shock!
if this comes off and there is a 100 more Thanet people employed in five years time by the airport then I will be amazed. Of course there will be two hundred less employed in tourism.
Shame really that local policiticans over the years have not been able to encourage indunstries to Thanet especially with all that EU money.One car plant on Manston would have more than solved the unemployment problem but heyho, noise and polution with little benefit here we come!
You already got pollution. Sericol, Thor etc etc. Poor quality (Diluted contaminants) drinking water. A car plant to solve Thanet problems ? What car industry is that then.
Happily this Manston decision will provide Thanet an extra something to whinge and do nothing about.
Equity in property values will probably plummet whilst cash flow through the area will decrease. Thanet is going to get poorer.
Whoopy doo !
Peter, you have no idea how many are for it, same as we can say how many are against it.
This needs public debate. Some people listen and hear only what the council say - utter tosh.
They need to hear a balanced view. some for, some against. You are in it for margates unemployed. Good for you. We are in it for everyone who lives in Thanet. No-one is excluded.
We firmly believe other options, more palatable for all, are available. just because they have won this voote, it still means that a money losing company still has to decide to relocate people and business to Manston/kent at a cost of mutli-millions pounds. They have a schedule until Oct this year at Stansted. They ain't going anywhere until then. What if they say no? Whats the plan B?
Our beloved council don't have one. Any piss-pot business has a fall back plan. Any medium size business has a contingency plan. Thanet District council have nothing.
Support these tired old men at your peril, they have backed three legged horses for a generation. Time for change.
Exactly how will this decision kick -start Margate out of its current predicament? Are the resulting mountain of jobs only available to those living within your town boundry?
Time for real change.
Quite right 10:42. I really am amazed quite how gullible some people are here. One geezer on the council who is apparently in charge of some airport committee, quotes the jobs that will become avialable....... among them (his words not mine):
Pilots
Air traffic Controllers
Fireman.
Can you now imagine the jobs pages in the KM:
"Wanted; Ten JumboJet pilots, no previous experience necessary. British Airways is an equal opportunites employer and positively welcomes applications from the blind and the unemployed of Margate"
"Wanted 30 Fireman- previous experience in setting light to historic scenic railways will be preferred"
"Wanted 15 Air traffic controllers" no more please matron!
Pete
Your idea is marvelous. But seeing as Margate, your town, which you love, had a perfectly good one which the council helped destroy, we wouldn't want to endangour its return.
Why don't you support the revival of Dreamland? Just a thought......
someone might want to check this out. Forget who it was, but a councilor talked about an Aberdeen recruitment agency being signed by infratil to get jobs for the airport.
Can anyone elaborate?
Cheers Peter - you, and your once in a lifetime trip reminded me.
THIS IS NOT A JOKE.
We already sold our Thanet properties. Do I think we did the right thing ?
Yes.
Thanet property prices will fall by more than national recession trends.
Peter,
Now you are making sense. I am convinced that a Disney-sized Theme park there would bring huge interest to Thanet. All the ones around the M25 are a murder to get to and the real biguns are up in Staffordshire. An Alton Towers sizedtheme park by the sea would bring prosperity to all parts of Thanet expecially with the fast-rail link and readliy available accomodation.
I still do not understand where you misunderstand the difference between vague generalization and hard facts. This decision will not bring the regeneration spoken of, no matter how many times you say it.
Peter - stay with me on this.
there is an airport there.
it is owned by an airport operator
They want to expand the airport
they want everyone to love the airport
We don't want that. Its quite simple.
Stop Manston Expansion Group.
30 all.
40-30
Because no viable alternative plan for Manston can possibly be considered while it limps along in its current usage. That is why some people are opposed to it: in order to broaden the perspective and discuss anything other than the maintenance of the current predicament. The airport has always been a promise that has not delivered, whilst it's possible success is quite obviously a matter for objective concern in a number of very real ways.
Look - I am against more flights over Ramsgate. Everyone I know who lives in Ramsgate is against them.
If the current agreement was enforced, it might be just about OK. But it's not enforced, the noise and pollution monitors have been removed and the stipulation that planes should not overfly Ramsgate (weather permitting) is neither monitored or enforced.
Fines for night flights and other infringements are not being collected and the airport has effectively been handed carte blanche by a supine council that would suck Richard Branson's cock if he said there'd be a couple of cleaning jobs in it for them.
It really is time to sweep away the rotten, corrupt and incompetent old duffers who lead us. I don't know about 'positive action', but I'd be more than up for direct action. Anyone else?
Direct action is most definitely positive action in this case!
Peter
Residents all over East Kent. Resident associations all over Thanet.
Define you? No, don't....
The legal beagles are working on it as we speak, Peter!
Just let me know how I can help. A loaded ex Londoner.
Any one up for a riot? we should arrange one. I'l be there for sure. First place to start would be outside the councillors houses - selfish, stupid, dum idoits.
Eh! Whats the point of writing to self-serving, busybodies who think they know best. For chrissakes, the twots, who choose to become local councillors use democracy to get into power for their own benefit; not to represent their stupid no-nothing electorate!
That is not just Thanet although rife here!
Peter, I think it's time you canned it about anonymity. You're beginning to sound like Dr Moores a year ago.
I may not be known to you personally but I was more than willing to help you out when you had that spot of bother with something that was on my blog. As I would anyone who came to me with a reasonable request.
People can comment on my blog anonymously because:
1. It encourages freedom of speech
2. It has always been so
3. That's the way, aha aha, I like it, aha aha.
Just because people choose for whatever reason to comment anonymously does not invalidate their comments. End of.
Do enough people vote for our Representatives to be truly representative. Secret ballot. Anon.
We are not all SMUG self-publicists.
Seriously. Shall we mount a legal challenge?
Please take this seriously. You are a knob.
Ladies, please! Put those handbags away!
To all you people going on about property prices plummeting I know from my own experience of living around Gatwick for 14 years and spending time at Manchester Airport that property prices increase.
I take comments seriously based upon the credibility of their content and intent. I respect your right to flaunt your identity as you choose. Anon.
12.02am Inflation.
No 12:06, what I'm saying is that property prices are higher around airports than if the airport was not there.
A SMEG meeting? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CsK4mN-0JI
Not under the flightpath. Anyway, who wants to live in a dump like Manchester?
12.17am, laughable. Show mus the proof of an airport close to the sea which approaches over a seaside town (and others) and house prices have increased solely because of the airport. There isn't one, but look for one anyway. It will keep you amused for a few hours, and out of our hair.
See our blog for the council chairmans interesting view on house prices and airports.
You must have both been off sick when they did economics at your play school.
12.36am, you will never have the pleasure of one of our meetings, but if you attended the council meeting last night, you might have seen some Python-esque scenes. My favourite was Mr Creosote, sorry Councilor Wells breaking his chair. Unlike certain councilors (Ken Gregory) we have no splitters, but a united front against airport expansion for the good of the affected towns, residents, businesses and Thanet as a whole.
What about this legal challenge? We must do it. Smeg do you know how to go about it?
What was said about the number of flights and about the flights landing and taking off in the other direction?
legal challenge - yes its being looked at. If anyone is more intersted in getting involved, please email us.
direction of take off/landing - westerly winds prevail for 70% of the time , so landings will predominantly be over Ramsgate, takes offs over St Nicholas. As much as they like to think they are God, the airport operators and TDC have no power over nature. For Ramsgate residents, to coin an Anchorman line " for 30% of the time it works, all the time".
Thanet property prices will fall. They will fall faster because of the Manston decision. Surrounding non flight path catchment prices would only rise upon actual evidence of job creation and viable expansion of the airport.
The sort of people an airport would attract as employees are not going to buy houses in Thanet. Westwood Chaos, scummy locals, contaminated aquifer? Grow up and face facts. One of which is that Manston will not succeed as a civil airport.
Manchester is not a dump any more - it has new tourist attractions, super museums, an efficient tram service and lots of good shops, at least three theatres, a university and a thriving airport. The town centre has been completely transformed and I enjoyed my visit there very much.
None of which can be attributed to the airport.
On the number of flights coming in over Ramsgate I heard that, because the s109 agreement is neither monitored nor enforced, the airlines routinely bust it to save a minute or two of jet fuel. A straight on approach rather than a circuitous one saves them a few bob and if it's one thing airlines like it's saving a bob or two on fuel. A decade or so ago BA saved something like £30,000 a year on fuel just by popping half a tomato on their rubber meals rather than a whole one.
NO Surprise here your usual over the top B******* Eastcliff,
Had you attended the meeting you would realise that those present were acting in the best interest of Thanet
Still nice to see a balanced view
Whats the asking price?
Wanna quote for your removals ECR ? And to manage yer DSS tenants when you find you can't sell ? We have some Thanet tenants waiting. Sharon, aged 17, a single mother of seven children can get maximum local housing allowances. She has one well house trained pitbull always kept on a tugging lead. She wants some kickback from the housing benefits to top up her benefits entitlements to living standards because of living under the flightpath (when even her shouts of "Ashlee" cannot be heard by her offspring)
After consultation with localized marketing expert Tom Gobbled , we would advise that your chances of selling to a hundred grand a year BA Capn lay somewhere between zero and nil.
Sharon says she could take your blog over. She would rename it "Sharon's blog".
The legal challenge is under way..
Righto
BAWC contact is
Steve Gunning (who will not take phone calls)
He is the Business Manager at BAWC so send him a line via the BA contact us home page, care of good old Steve.
He only deals with written submission evidently...how extraordinary.
Alternatively ask for Steve by phoning 0845 7222777.
Tony get a life as you have no real understanding of the background and the 10 years of information, have you.
And your blog is, what, balanced, unbiased, a model of integrity?
Do stick a sausage in it Tony. Or I'll have to do some, er, training circuits past your house first thing Sunday morning on my unsilenced, 110db old throbber. Once every nine minutes should be about right!
SMEG, re property prices again....despite your fairly abrupt reply not only have I well over a decade of living and working in and around airports I also worked in the property business and property is much more valuable close to and by transport links whether it is within a two minute drive of a motorway or a 5-10 minute drive of an airport. I know my business. I will so you a favour regarding SMEG's image and you as its frontman. You are rather abrupt, even verging on aggresive in some of your replies and use of words like 'shit' as in 'I shit you not' in an earlier comment and mention about hangovers prior to major TV appearances. Your group lacks credibility and professionalism. Please call an image consultant and you will do a lot better.
LandMan - an estate agent giving advice on image consultancy? I'm sure if SMEG had the funds of Infratil and the bullying powers of a local council they wouldn't have to rely on sharing board-space with you and your fellow travellers. Are you Infratil or 'friend' of the Council?
STOP PRESS: Plane crashes into house five minutes from landing in NY state. Could this be Ramsgate in a few years?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7887555.stm
Peter Checksfield must be some kind of renaissance man - not only does he do portraits of large naked ladies but he is also an expert on air safety and a media adviser. Ant there was me thinking he was just a part time doorman at the Winter Gardens!
Pretty much all the residents' associations in Ramsgate is what I heard.
One I think
It's not SMEG that matter - the residents associations, DFL's, Head Teachers, businesses etc etc are about to come together. This is when it's going to get interesting.
Do me a favour, Residents associations, they are a joke, 20 or 30 busibodies who need to feel important. Ther real people are out working or looking for work.
Are you describing our local councillors or the dole-scum from Margate posting on this board from their local libraries?
I think anonimous comments is valid and always troo. By the way I earm 500,oooK and will be leavin Fanet becaus of this i'm outraged so long suckrs
Would it be fair, "Land Man", to conclude that your evidence, concerning airport locale property prices, is basically mmmm quotes from your own anonymous CV ?
Who lives in a house like this ?
The owner seems to have worked in and around airports for a decade and to have worked in property. He might be the sort of chap who knows stuff eh ?
Would it be safe to infer that his airport and property claims to knowledge cannot be based on knowledge of
(1) Thanet
(2) Unadapted Military runways lending themselves to civil use
(3) Airport operations in a depression
(4) Airport operations over an already long term contaminated aquifer.
(5) Airport operations in areas where the Planning Cttee still have not cottoned on that water runs downhill.
Increased property prices around successful civil airports describe an annulus.
Access to main roads etc reflecting in house prices. How stupid was I then to buy property in the 70s along the main road from Felixstowe Dock towards the industrial heartlands of England which existed pre Maggie.
If LandMan is right then I am mystified at how I made such a profit when the bypasses went in.
Folks, the clues are all there: getting drunk, swearing at strangers, shaking his fists as planes fly over...SMEG is the bloke with the matted beard who smells of piss & has about 10 carier bags tied round his waist! Eccentric but harmless if you ignore him.
Leave my Father out of this.
Nah, he means Sandy Ezekiel. Swearing, drunk, shaking his fists at people, it all adds up.
That's Checksfield
Take a map. And a compass. Set compass to represent a radius of seven miles. Draw a circle centred on Manston Airfield. Set compass to represent a radius of twelve miles. Draw a concenric circle and note that you now have an annulus.
Take out your colouring crayons.
Colour in any part of the annulus whose water supply is subject of long term contamination and ongoing remediation projects plus further hazard from Manston operations. Colour in any part which falls under jurisdiction of TDC. Colour in any part within ten miles of Pfizer where Environment Agency have a team looking at possible sub standard process pipe and vessel welding.
Righto now any uncoloured part of the annulus is where a drop of property investment might pay off.
Oh dear.
Now let us have a look at the area workforce history. Contact bloggers who have published on the subject and seek evidence. Don't waste money investing in employment of locals until a lot of resolution by police and other authorities occurs including compliance with requests to investigate already made to Thanet branches of trades unions like the Boilermakers.
Fact is that the council puports to be looking forward. That way all Thanet will get is more of the same. The authorities need to look back and put right what went wrong. Until they do they have no chance of attracting any sort of sustainable inward investment.
Even Blackpool business people visit Thanet to get a take on how not to do it.
Typical of your lot of people SMEG. offend people, then realise you have gone too far. Well sorry, you are worse than Freemasons, 'not able to tell us how may members', at least they do. Just go away, lick your justified wounds, and GET LOST
Job losses at Stansted
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Great news for you but think about us down here losing our jobs. You will find that the promise of quiet nights to be false. These aircraft land all times of night."
The above quote is from a lady on the Aviation Forum whose husband will lose his job ay Stansted if BAWC relocate to Manston.
Worrying eh?
'SMEG are worse than Freemasons'. Surely the trouble is the people who make these hamfisted decisions for Thanet ARE Freemasons?
In fact some of them are even arsonists. That's got to be worse than SMEG or Freemasons surely?
Good point Agnostic. Do British Airways World Cargo know they are relocating to the arson capital of Europe? A few hundred pounds and a box of matches to the nearest crackhead chav is all it takes I hear. As far as I can recall which is a long way back nobody has ever been done for it either.
Erm, there is a consultative committee whose job it is advise in a balanced and knowledgeable way, so that busy councilors can vote with all the evidence at their disposal.
This just didn't happen. Spectacularly.
I'd like to think councilors have woken up realising their mistake, feeling a tad embarrassed and resolute to reinstate democracy.
But that's a long shot.
Sadly if the airport does expand, it will blight much of the area of Ramsgate with noise and pollution.
Margate is a lost cause either way and only a bulldozer and a rename would entice me and most people back.
When it comes to safety the only good news for people living under the flight path is when a plane tends to crash it seems to veer left or right of the flight path, as does the fumes and dumping of fuel which mostly disperses in the same way, although noise sadly does not...LOL
Changing the runway a few degrees out over the fields of Cliffsend would solve most of the noise problem as the plan was to build a giant island anyway at cliffe!
sad day for the whole of Ramsgate and surrounding area if expansion goes ahead.
I don’t have a problem with aircraft using the airport, providing they comply with the safety and environmental regulations and provided that the CAA, EA Southern Water and TDCs contaminated land officer, consider that operating with lots large planes, without an interceptor on the main runway and the contingency plans for a fuel spillage are within the parameters of reasonable risk.
The problem I do have is that expansion decisions are being made before these factors have been properly considered.
umm...
Infratil have just announced that they are going to cut a quarter of the workforce at Glasgow Prestwick airport. This airport handles in excess of 2.3 million passengers a year. The total employed at the moment at Prestwick is 452 but reducing to 330. So much for all these thousands of jobs at Manston. Taking Prestwick as a model then it could take a decade before another 100 jobs are created.
The trouble is that this type of information is so easily available on the internet but you just need how to use google, how many councillors do their own research!
Thank you 3.32. Everybody please take note. Don't tell me that the new life from the train link won't create hundreds of jobs.
The new train link has already created 200 jobs - fact.
And using the aviation industry's dodgy forecasting model that equates to something like 400 jobs in the wider Thanet community. And nobody had a word to say against it. Take note Thanet Council.
using Tonys figures though, if 11 turnaround planes use Manston each week, that will be 14,000,000,000,000,000,000 jobs in Margate. And Ramsgate will get none.
I see the plane spotters are creaming their joysticks over this decision.
Cargo will produce virtually no jobs. The goods are all palletized. The plane arrives, pulls up on the taxiway. They keep the engine running. One guy with a forklift truck unloads the pallets onto a waiting lorry. And a second guy loads the plane with pallets from a second lorry. Bish, bash, bosh, one hour tops and they're away again.
Sandy is now steering Thanet in the pilots seat and we are doomed to travel with the course that was set last night,just like the flying dutchman.two things could happen there could be 100 happy workers with new jobs and 20,000 unhappy residents or if it goes bust 100 unhappy workers back on the dole where they came from,and 20,000 happy residents,if Kent was to have an enema Thanet is where the pipe would be inserted.
Stargazer.
Plane just gone over. Order for barrage balloon just submitted.
Plane went over at 11.18pm
Is Ali Baba going to fine them or just 'put it on the tab'?
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