That's got your attention, hasn't it?!?!!
Well, they don't call me Tricky Dicky for nothing. I'll have to come clean and say that the site isn't the airport, it's where an old sausage factory used to be, in Scotland. Apparently the Dutch owners pulled out their sausages (it also used to make the 'the UK's best-selling haggis') last year, after losing £79,000 a day, making 1700 people redundant.
According to the Scottish Herald, Airport Annie believes her new scheme could create 200 jobs. Naturally enough, the local council and the Scottish Government look set to bend over backwards, and forwards, to help her.
Thing is, the sausage site is only 18 acres. Just imagine what she could do with 700!
Meanwhile Norf Fannit Tory, Sir Roger Wind MP, has revealed that a letter offering to buy Manston will be sent to Annie Get Your Gloags today, from his mystery 'consortium'. That'll be the consortium about which even he admits 'I don't even know whether they have the resources to buy the airport'. Or, indeed, whether Annie Get Your Housing Estate wants to sell.
So, er, good luck with that, Rodge!
Click here to read the full story in the Scottish Herald.
Click here to smell more Wind in the Kent Messenger.
88 comments:
Hope she doesn't sell to another buyer. Airport has to close.
700 acres at 11 jobs per acre - that's 7700 jobs. Puts the measly 120 or so that are currently employed at Manston to shame. But then jobs claims are always bullsh*t. If Roger Gale, KCC and TDC were to be believed there would have already been 10,000 jobs at Manston by now.
Fracking surveys have been commissioned. Apparently they can do this without public consultation because the land is neither residential nor agricultural. Watch out for the drilling rigs.
I think we can see the beginnings of a pattern here... Gale is puffing away furiously, applying his bellows to the dying fire - but why have heard nothing (as far as I am aware) from the People's Commissar for Small Businesses - David Foley - who has been a doughty supporter of the doomed airport? Could he have been too busy assembling a "consortium" of sweetshop owners, B&B landladies, people traffickers, jewellers and other wealthy business magnates, to give his views to the public?
I wonder why the Rolling Stones Jet was Parked at the airport yesterday.
Oh, the Deadbeat Airport has gone right over the hill,
And Mrs Gloag's millions are gonna to sort out the bills
Plenty of land, she's fixing to stay,
So just frack away, just frack away, just frack away....
Comment of the year. Gotta be!
Yes ! Comment of the year well deserved Snoopy. Now consult with ECR on "Pleasurama"
Fracking song
"There is almost unanimous support from local business to back Manston Airport as a going concern. Sir Roger Gale MP offers a powerful voice at a national level and is of course our Chamber President. We are in contact with the main stakeholders. There is never a shortage of finance if the package available is appropriate. I was on the first KLM flight from Manston and can claim authorship of the phrase "Kent Loves Manston". The Chamber has supported the development of the airport at every opportunity. At the moment, there are commercial confidences to respect which means that we cannot be as forthcoming outside the Chamber membership as we might otherwise wish."
David Foley
Chief Executive
Thanet & East Kent Chamber
What's this?
Whip frack away
Whip frack away
David there is a lot of support for Manston airport as a going concern. Going going gone. Are you going going to write us a lyric though ?
Kent loves Manston
Yep that just about scans with You Raise Me Up
Keep you occupied whilst economic reality sends out a search party to locate you.
love the blog labels!
I think that David Foley quote has been lifted from the comments on the KM piece its not DF himself commenting heaven forbid he should engage with any real life Thanet people.
Here is a bit more fuel for the no hopers. KLM did not stop their programme because Manston was shutting--it was the other way round ie KLM decided enough was enough so they pulling out was the final nail. Also, do you really think that idiot Gale is looking after OUR intersts? No chance, he is looking for a nest egg when he loses his seat next year. I've told him not to canvass for my vote.
You can just imagine the conversations they're having in the Gale household at the moment, can't you?
Sir Roger (for it is he): Who does this bloody jumped up Scottish trolley dolly think she is anyway? She comes here, taking our airport. It's been an airport almost as long as I've been an MP! Bloody foreigners!
Suzy: Calm down Roger, it's almost time for your Ovaltine.
4:33, as you live in Ramsgate you could not vote for him anyway. By the way, he has about as much chance of losing his job as you have of showing a grain of intelligence, Lone Ranger.
I have got news for David Foley. Kent does not love Manston otherwise it would have been very successful. Kent loves Gatwick, Heathrow, Stanstead and now Southend airport. A tiny part of East Kent may love Manston, but never in sufficient numbers to make it viable.
I find it very strange that a consortium can do all the sums needed to see if Manston could be viable within just a few days whereas a real evaluation could take a month. Maybe they are chancers that think the selling price will just be a pound.
As for MP Roger Gale being a powerful voice in the land, dream on he's just another MP to make up the numbers.
5.05pm, I find it even more strange that said consortium did not take things forward during the 18 month sale period managed by Infratil.
Maybe they just......don't exist?
I hope she does not sell for less than £35,000,000 that's what she could earn if she built houses good on her
If Manston is to close (and this seems likely unless someone with very deep pockets is allowed to buy it) I think it should be designated as common land. Thanet has few green spaces left and so 700 acres could be put to good use as an area where people can walk, cycle, run and exercise their dogs, horses and whatever else they keep. The economic benefits to the area could be significant because more space for exercise would improve health and reduce obesity, alleviating pressure on our hard-pressed hospital.
But they might urinate over the aquifer and poor old Tim would have epilepsy - come to think of it, may be he has.
Sorry guys, there's no shale rock under Manston or anywhere else in Thanet , so no fracking for us here. As for the aquifer, I'm afraid its shot. The last figures from Southern Water suggested they only extract about 4 to12 % from Thanet to mix with water from other parts of Kent.
Shows how desperate the Save Manston Campaign are if they're trying to drag fracking into it.
Manston will earn more money when the first boot fair is held there
or perhaps operation stack not frack
Stargazer.
the facts i have, are very different rocdoc? We are all going over to water meters as the area is a water stress area, so even if its at the lower end of 4%, its a bloody useful 4%. That two areas of the aquifer recharging lie in and very close to the Airport limit its capability as a development in its entirety.
Old roger is a drink and perhaps old Roger should take some to get a reality check?
After the closure of manston airport i will be nominating Anne Gloag for a knighthood roll on the asset stripping yeah!!!!!!!!!
Rockdoc
You are a bit of a spoilsport introducing fracking facts to the thread.
You are of course correct on aquifer abstraction too but our Simes had been assuring everyone for years how good the water is. How we can safely ignore the FOI truths about Thor and Sericol.
It is also a fact that Manston was surveyed, for suitability as an oil refinery, in 1975. Whether those plans have been dusted off re shale gas storage who knows ?
But it is more fun to make up transparent rumours.
"Dear Anne Cloag I hope I am not too late with by offer to take your airport off of your hands. I would run the airport 24 hours a day and offer continuing employment to all the employees that live in Thanet so I guess your MD will have to go and a good few others.
Since you are loosing £10,000 a day and would loose £18 millions over the next 5 years if you pay me £10 millions I will gladly take Manston over and you may visit any time.
Look forward to your earliest response,
The Carpet Bagger"
Here we go, the same old anonymouse who spells "losing" as "loosing"... you "looser"!
Good riddance to Manston: Saudi flights stop on Monday and KLM flights the following Monday.
It's finished. Only twits like Foley and Gale are still desperate to talk it up to avoid looking completely foolish.
Worrying that Clive in the Gazette says he's been meeting with Buchanan every month for two years. Did he not mention the pollution of his voters and neighbours?
We need a clearout of these corrupt fools and a Police inquiry.
Anyone attend the Ramsgate Town Council meeting? I'm hearing reports of minutes produced from last year's meeting for approval(!), no mention of Manston or the Port or Pleasurama by the councillors, the usual blame of TDC despite all of them being on TDC(!), and calls for resignations of the Mayor and councillors. Was it filmed?
Foley doesn't represent Thanet business, he's just one of several Chambers of Commerce. And on his track record with Manston etc probably the worst. He should stick to bigging up the local chipshop or plumber or whatever each month and leave it at that. Although why would anyone pay for that?
Only 4% of the aquifer can be used at the moment?!
I do feel sorry for the pro-Manston twits. They have spent so many years ranting about its great potential that the economic reality must come as a terrible shock.
What is particularly sad is the petition they have launched and their whineing diatribes dutifully published by the pro-airport Gazette. Do they not realise that the only thing which can save the airport is money, and lots of it?
If you stand back and take an overview you realise that there has been little investment in the years since it was privatised and it's all looking a bit dated and shabby. Potential is one thing but reality dictates that tens of millions would need to be pumped in. Unfortunately, we now have fifteen years of evidence that it can't make money and so nobody in their right minds would commit these sums, even if they were given permission for 24 hours night-flights.
There is a big question for everybody. The great and the good have spent years telling us that Manston presented the best chance of economic prosperity for Thanet. The likes of Foley and Gale have always tried to talk it up. Now that they have been shown to be wrong, can you really trust them to be right on anything else?
No, we cannot. Next time I'm voting for Tim Garbutt instead... ONLY JOKING! ! !
Not just foley and gale. Sandys. Ezekiel. Moores. Hart. Bayford. Latchford.
5.34 where have you been ? Tell the anon about Sericol and cyclohexanone Richard. Thor and mixed solvents and mercury.
Are you telling us 5.34 you have never heard that well known phrase or saying "Don't nosh a Thanet cauliflower ?" The farms may have direct water abstraction licences and use Thanet ground water on their crops. Sod eating Thanet grown veggies.
That is why we need immigrants to live on a new housing estate at Manston. So that they can act as a control group to compare against the health of Thanet population who lived in the area 1963 et seq.
Plus we need immigrants to do the National Minimum Wage work. The work Thanet home growns won't touch.
You know I'm right. Thanet grows a lot of idle people perhaps it's something in the water. Thank goodness for DFLs I say.
Agree with 6:04 and the comments around that. We have been badly failed by Gale and Hart etc. They're idiots who've destroyed the area, even now waffling about the potential of Manston or how TDC is not corrupt or incompetent.
How do we get rid of them? So few people vote they keep standing and being elected on minority votes. A council tax strike? Delisted by central party? More years of failure?
Nice big estate at Manston. Current planning says that until 2016 developers don't even need to include any social housing. So get the plans in pronto. People from outside of Thanet may even be attracted to buy and will have to work hard to pay their mortgages. Some of them may even set up local businesses rather than commute, at last Manston may create some sustainable jobs.
Gloag cannot sell the land for housing without TDC approval. Unlikely that will happen although worrying that Carter is still farting on about a Parkway even when there is no airport. Tarmac white elephant schemes again.
I was at the RTC meeting: about 12 councillors and 20 members of the public - and many of the latter funded by the council eg the Town Team etc. The usual empty statements: my favourite was Harrison showing they'd brought no revenue in either from TDC or elsewhere, and Campbell declaring they had new Xmas lights although they're not, and the Mayor cut a few ribbons at various events. Cringe-making to listen to them.
Why an estate 7:13? There is no infrastructure and the towns have collapsed so plenty of empty houses? Look at the mess at WC in terms of roads.
Why do The Duffers cling on? It's clear they've failed and they're so elderly they are not the future.
Can we pay them double not to stand?
Even Macgonigal's up for corruption now with the Driver complaint to the Police over EKO basically rigging the planning permissions with TDC.
Pitchforks and a baying mob seem the only way to get them out. So many wasted months and years with these fools.
Manston will not close
Yeah right 8:38. The flights have already stopped and both transport experts Infratil and Gloag have failed.
You and Gale say it's viable so fields it is or derelict fir years like the Hoverport or Pleasurama or Dreamland.
Gale and Hart and Bayford should resign over this failure. useless pensioners stuck in the past.
It's just a game.
Good riddance to Manston and The Duffers.
Considering anon (who isn't really anon) maintains that life expectancy in Thanet is only 63, yet he seems to think the place is full of pensioners. Something does not add up.
How many of you will attend the Manston Airport meeting in Acol at 11:30 today? Or do you prefer to stay anonymous behind your keyboard?
9:06, I'm reliably informed that Tim Garbutt will be speaking there to put across the anti-Manston view. Should be worth attending!
Next you'll be telling us that Steve Higgins will be there 9:12... they're all "loosers"!
I'm there now and the place is PACKED!
What's got 300 legs and hasn't used its local airport enough in the last 15 years?
The contents of Acol Village hall.
Who's a cowardly little cunt? YOU!
Acol meeting was packed out with airport employees. Standing room only for the handful of anoraks who turned up to voice their support.
Interesting demographic - the airport supporters are mainly older people who would struggle to do any kind of job other than punching a ticket. I didn't see any youngsters there and, when I counted, there were no more than two hundred including all of the airport workers. Looks like only a tiny fraction of those signing online petitions and the like live in Thanet.
My impression was that reality is dawning and there was an air of resignation at the meeting. Ann Gloag may only have paid £1 for the airport, but she has ploughed a few million into running it since then and will be expecting to make a profit on her investment. Anybody planning to try to buy it will have to offer more than she thinks she's going to make. Then, they will need to pay the running costs for several years until it breaks even (or not). I estimate that you are looking at a total investment in excess of £20 million with no guarantee that you'll get it back.
As evidenced by the Iceland debacle, the only people who would be prepared to gamble with this amount are KCC, and that's because it isn't their money; it's ours.
As ever the jaundiced twisted view from 1:27. The BBC lunch time news showed the meeting and the hall was packed, like standing room only. Wide age spectrum, not just pensioners, and anger rather than resignation.
Just because you don't want an airport, 1:27, there is no need to simply insult those who do. Also you should stick to facts not your own make believe.
From what you have said it was obvious you were not at the meeting so why pretend you were.
Not even a fifth of the people that there were at the no night flights meeting cant believe people want a busy airport near them. Go and ask the people living near Gatwick or Heathrow it wont only affect Ramsgate. Fools all of them hope when its closed and Thanet council starts promoting the leisure side of Thanet then we will see all sort of posterity
Not even a fifth of the people that there were at the no night flights meeting cant believe people want a busy airport near them. Go and ask the people living near Gatwick or Heathrow it wont only affect Ramsgate. Fools all of them hope when its closed and Thanet council starts promoting the leisure side of Thanet then we will see all sort of posterity
Did any of the anti-Manston mob voice their concerns there, or did they stay quiet?
Don't know did not go but at the no night flights meeting there were no pro Manston airport there. I will be so glad to see the back of the airport and there nasty supports
There were no TV crews at the no night-flights meeting either, and no politicians (unless you include Tim!). Proves how seriously anyone takes you "loosers"!
See so foolish and thick you attack people for telling you the truth
Tim Garbutt wasn't at the no night flights meeting, and neither was Steve Higgins... and they're the groups two biggest "supporters"!
i was at this meeting and i spoke to the BBC against the wilful misleading way the financial parasites and the so called elected members had been dealing with Manston. 15 years ago TDC were told to get a plan B for the Airport which they and the MP's failed to get into their thick heads. Whilst on the subject of heads i was reminded of the Father Ted sketch where he was on about Dougal not understanding a situation and you saw an empty head of dreams and reality circling around same which summed up the MP's speeches.
After 30 minutes of listing to much crowing and wringing of hands for the more afflicted workers who i have some sympathy for, it was a case of Father Ted and the Near and FAR issue.
Financially this is going to cost the Tax payer and of course old Rogers parkway station without of course the reality. The issue of blight for Ramsgate residents do not feature in any of this. So in essence Old Roger and Sandy's have abandoned Ramsgate and thats why its become a shithole of failed developments and run down seedy areas.
As for East Kent chamber of commerce they are a joke and if they want Manston and are supporting the financial parasites then they should dig deep in their own pockets and not sponge financial benefits
"Ramsgate has become a shithole of failed developments and run down seedy areas"? I guess you haven't been to Cliftonville lately! Hardly unique for Thanet.
I know you may think of ramsgate like that but its just not like that its full of people doing things for the area just look them up on the internet its has the most potential of all the seaside towns in Thanet
Ramsgate's biggest problem is that it is home to Tim Garbutt for, all the time he peddles his nonsensical ideas, serious debate is stifled. Just getting rid of Manston will achieve nothing. Ramsgate need to be shot of Garbutt.
That may well be, but behind the waterfront its seedy. Born in Ramsgate seen it go down hill with inappropriate and foolish development at public expense, so why do we continually support the financial parasites that infest this island and of course the politicians who continually support them?
As you seem to have all the answers 6:41, can you tell us which politician(s) we should support instead?
I thought not.
UKIP of course! They're the only party that will give Ramsgate a real future.
7 10/11 not one of the wasters. as for the UKIP are they not the Thanet effluent?
12,000 signatures to save the 700 acre airport site.
3,000 signatures to save the 1/4 acre skatepark site.
People really care about one of these closed thanet attractions.
No-one cares about you though 7:47.
I see the quality of debate here has degenerated to the usual levels! I guess the only person who is capable of answering any of the questions about the airport's future is the owner, Ann Gloag. She appears to be playing her cards very close to her chest, so I guess all we have to go on currently is her public statement that she wants to close it. And because she hasn't made any further comment, no end of petitions, political guff, or mystery buyers would appear to be persuading her otherwise.
Roger Gale is behaving like a dumped boyfriend, and making all the same mistakes. Ann Gloag doesn't need 10,000 of his mates telling her he's a great bloke, or big bunches of flowers from mystery florists. He isn't going to convince her by behaving like a mummy's boy, but he might, just might, if he can persuade her that he (i.e. the airport) can change. And only then if the sex was fantastic, and that's not something I'm prepared to speculate on.
A truly pathetic attempt at "humour". Keep taking the pills!
Gale doesn't care about the airport but he does care about his beloved plan for Manston Parkway. It's always been a mystery to me why he's been so wedded to this plan but he's devoted a lot of time and energy to promoting it over the years. The only reason he's throwing his toys out of the pram is that he can see his dream disappearing along with the airport.
Help us campaign for an independent Ramsgate mayor. No more Gale. Time for change.
http://lovekentloveramsgate.blogspot.co.uk/
Actually I found 3.54's analogy quite enlightening 4.13. If you read it not as an attempt at humour it makes a lot of sense. Perhaps your medication needs adjusting.
I don't need any medication 6:51, I'm supporting change and voting for Tim Garbutt! How about you?
Ah just like the Parliamentary Political Posturing at the Acol meeting....in shed.
12,000? 90% or more have nothing to do with the area and don't give a fig if we live or die? My vote goes to the genuine 3,000 - go get TDC the 3,000 Spartans.
I have a cunning plan vomit, to make the Airport succeed at any cost and of course help Lauras plan A,A,A. Cameron declares war on Russia and the sheep killing nation of Holland. Manston Airport then becomes a successful forward operating base as it was in the cold war past...simples just like our MP's.
I mentioned the war last week and i think i got away with it.
by e-mail from Monty the Python
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