Downed For A Pound (Again)

Or perhaps quite a few more pounds now, as the breaking news is that Annie Get Your Gloags has offloaded her 700 acres of prime development land at Manston, which she bought for a quid last year, to the people behind Discovery Park, the former Pfizer site. BBC News reports:

Trevor Cartner and Chris Musgrave, who are part of the consortium behind Discovery Park, Sandwich, have bought a majority stake for an undisclosed fee.

The partnership plans a 20-year, £1bn redevelopment of Manston, which it said would create more than 4,000 jobs.

I guess this won't stop Sir Roger Wind and his cohorts guffing on about a CPO to reinstate the airport, but to be honest I'm not sure it would come back to life now if you put 4m volts through it.

Personally I was always in favour of an airport on my doorstep from which I could be whisked off to Cannes at a moment's notice, but the sad truth is that it wouldn't have survived even with night flights, training flights, and knackered old cargo jumbos flying over 24/7, all of which were unacceptable to the majority of residents here in the old Millionaires' Playground. Anyway, I'm sure you'll have your own views, so do make them known by popping a comment in the suggestions box below. Pip pip!

Separated At Birth?

Reader Samantha writes:

Has anyone else noticed the striking similarity between Ann Gloag, the Scottish millionairess who bought Manston Airport for a pound then closed it down, and Grayson Perry, the internationally acclaimed, cross-dressing artist? Are they by any chance related?

Annie Get Your Gloags

It can't have escaped your attention, dear reader, that there was an article in The Observer at the weekend questioning Ann Gloag's intentions over our dearly beloved former RAF London Kent Manston Margate Tracey Emin Chas 'n' Dave Maggie Thatcher Schipol Skyport Poundland International Airport.

You can read the Observer piece by clicking here.

The story was written by The Observer's Jamie Doward, who, I can reveal, lives in Whitstable. It seemed to be based on a single source - Cllr Simon Moores, friend of Sir Roger Gale and one of the island's high profile pro-Manston campaigners. Doward had previously written a positive piece about Simes being questioned under caution concerning the ongoing social media kerfuffle here on the island, so you can imagine why Simes would view the Observer hack as his new best chum.

And indeed, the Manston article did seem very pro-Manston, despite an unnamed source at the end (clearly Cllr Biggles) admitting that Thanet Council wouldn't have the dosh to take Ann Gloag all the way through the CPO process. It also perpetuated a number of Wiki-myths about the airport, such as it 'was designated as an emergency landing strip for the space shuttle', 'building homes on a graveyard has appalled some local people', not to mention leaving out the fact that it was losing £10K a day.

Would it be too much of a, er, flight of fancy to suggest that Doward's poorly researched article was motivated more by a desire to keep planes from flying over Whitstable if Boris Island was built? Perhaps, like the Save Manston Campaign which, I understand, has been hijacked by Rochester-based anti-Boris Island protesters, he needs to stop letting personal nimbyism get in the way of the facts. Kuh!

Meanwhile here's some more baloney about Manston by a fag-puffing dipsomaniac from West Kent who's been in the news recently...

Cllr David Green, TDC Cabinet Member for Economic Development, said...

Just to set the record straight, neither Thanet District Council or the ruling Labour Group are in favour of a CPO of Manston Airport.

It has been suggested to us by a local MP, and therefore we feel obliged to examine it as a possibility. Until the airport closed, our position was one of support for the airport as a local employer but we were against environmentally damaging night flights. We note that of the three reasons given for closure - loss of BA freight contract, loss of Ryan Air contract and the Government review of south east airports - none of them involved night flights. We suggested extension of the enterprise zone to cover the airport as something Government could do to help stimulate activity. The airport is now closed, and in my opinion unlikely to open again. As the local planning authority we await notification of the owner's plans.

We have already received a suggestion for housing on the northern grass next to the airport. We received this long before talk of closure. This application will be judged along with many other suggestions for potential housing sites and may or may not form part of the next stage of the Local Plan Preferred Options draft that we will be consulting on shortly. That draft will suggest how best to meet our calculation that we will require sites for 11,500 houses over the next 20 years, only half of which can be found within the existing urban boundary.

Three In The Bed, And The Little One Said...

Unholy alliances! It seems that Thanet's two Tory MPs have now jumped into bed with our beloved council's new Labour leader to form a threesome aimed at compulsorily purchasing defunct Manston airport!

Quite how Sir Roger Wind managed to seduce lovely Laura and, er, Labour Iris into taking part in his fantasy, lord knows! Although as you can see from my montage, he was a bit of a charmer back in the day (1943). It's also beyond the wit of any ordinary person to imagine why a Thatchersaurus like Sir Rog is willing to pour oodles and squoodles of public money into what is not much more than a hole in the ground.

And as usual, poor old Windy has got his facts wrong. There is no planning permission for an airport at Manston. Never has been. Unless Iris, who was apparently on the blower to the site's owner last night, has offered to deliver one in the post.

Furthermore, as I understand it, a CPO has to be demonstrably in the public interest. There is no public interest issue at stake here. None of the higher-ups that Windy has been appealing to have shown any desire to keep Manston as an airport in the 'public interest'. Au contraire, they have tried to educate him about the commercial realities of 21st century Britain, rather than the Dambusters dream world that exists between his ears. Ann Gloag's commercial lawyers would make mincemeat of a CPO, and charge us poor council taxpayers a few Bentleys for the pleasure of doing so.

As for the failed bidders having 'every chance of succeeding', well that's just plain laughable. A consortium composed of asset-strippers, people who have failed twice before to make a go of Manston, and some chap the High Court has labelled a dodgy geezer, offering a miniscule percentage of what the place is worth as a development site, does not constitute a viable alternative.

Anyways, here's Windy's statement in full...

North Thanet`s MP, Sir Roger Gale, is supporting  calls for the compulsory purchase, by Thanet District Council, of Manston Airport.

Speaking following a weekend of discussions with local and national political leaders Sir Roger has said:

'Laura Sandys and I are of the view, which I have reason to understand  is shared by the new Labour Leadership of Thanet District Council and by the Conservative Opposition, that with the closure of the airfield the best way to secure a new future for aviation at Manston will be for a Compulsory Purchase Order to be placed upon the site which has, at present, planning consent only as an airport. This is detailed in the very recent draft of the local plan so there should be little difficulty in establishing existing use and thus for the local authority to acquire and then perhaps lease out or sell on the site at a sensible price.

'Clearly the Council will wish to prepare its own study of options based upon legal advice but the opinion that we have been offered is that a bid to place a CPO on the airfield would succeed and that it could be readily funded. If that is so then it ought to be possible to remove the airport from the hands of those who clearly have other objectives and to restore Manston to its rightful place as part of our airport capacity in the South East.

'From the work that has already been done we have good reason to believe that those who wish to re-open the airport and have the capacity to do so have every chance of succeeding where others have seemingly chosen to fail and we hope and expect that TDC`s senior officers, acting on instructions from elected Members, will take a very robust line.

We have to dispel the impression given, arising from discussions that apparently took place with TDC officers earlier in the year, that housing is a “done deal” and that anything other than airport use is on the agenda. As Iris Johnston has made publicly clear, it is not'.

Downed For A Pound

Thanks to reader Samantha for this snap of 'Hanton' airport, at Bekonscot Model Village in Beaconsfield.

It's clearly meant to be our very own RAF London Kent Manston Margate Tracey Emin Chas 'n' Dave Maggie Thatcher Schipol Skyport Poundland International Airport, as its planes fly directly over some Ramsgate houses...

Sadly both the airport and Ramsgate's Model Village are now history, the former ruined by what some might describe as corporate vandalism, the latter by actual vandals of the bovver-booted kind.

History might conclude that the decline of both was the development of an appetite by the British public for holidays in the sun, jetting off to the likes of Majorca and Benidorm from conveniently placed airports (for the majority) like Gatwick and Heathrow. In which case, we've only got ourselves to blame.

But that's history. And yes, we do seem to have plenty of history here in Thanet. Not only that, but a history of trying to bring history back to life - Dreamland, the Ramsgate Tunnels, Ramsgate Motor Museum and so on. Despite being a commercial disaster, the airport too has a proud history as an RAF base, and it's only fitting that the fly-boys should today be doing their best to wave it off in an appropriately disciplined manner, without the hysterical wailing and gnashing of teeth that has mostly accompanied the closure.

Who knows? Like the Save Dreamlanders, the Save Manstoners may one day, in the dim and distant future, get their airport back as an historic attraction. Albeit, most likely, on a much reduced scale.

That Rejected Airport Bid In Full

Terminal Decline

Holy airports! With just 24 hours to go until the big 'Save Manston' meeting over on the seedier north side of the island, news that he's a 'confirmed guest' appears to have come as, well, news to Councillor Biggles, the island's self-styled resident expert on all things aviation.

In response to a story in The Gazunder alleging that he'd be attending along with usual suspects Sir Roger Gale MP and Laura Sandys MP, Simes sent this rather sharp tweet back to the hacks: 'I have not confirmed anything other than I am working on Saturday!!'

In all likelihood he'll be up in his teeny-tiny plane, hand on joystick, tugging a banner over Old Trafford. Which seems to be his regular gig these days.

Hey-ho. Support for the 'Save Manston' campaign has hardly set the tarmac on fire. I've seen only one 'Keep Calm and Save Manston' poster displayed on the island (in Westgate, natch!), and the mini-mob in the photo seems to be composed of a few old gippers and some embarrassed children who've been dragged along by their grandparents. Do they really think they're going to fill the Winter Gardens? I expect some of you will tell me tomorrow!

Meanwhile it's been revealed via one of those Freedom of Information thingies that Kent County Council couldn't be arsed to even look at the legals when the current owner, Scottish squillionaire Ann Gloag, bought the place for a quid off Infratil last year. Neither, indeed, did KCC's Tory leader Paul Carter, aka Sir Paul Ruddyfaced-Man. And they're not even bovvered about casting their glass eye over any of Sir Rog's current 'negotiations'. Here's what KCC's FOI response says:

I can confirm that neither Mr Paul Carter, nor any officer of Kent County Council (KCC) holds any information relating to the Heads of Terms or the sale by Infratil of Manston Airport. Also, neither Mr Carter nor any officers of KCC were they shown any Heads of Terms either by the buyer or the seller or any third party. Furthermore, KCC holds no information on how many and which businesses who asked for the closure of the airport were prevented from taking it over and in response to your third question relating to negotiations reported in the media, KCC holds no information that you requested. KCC has not been and is not a party to any of these negotiations.

Which is quite surprising really, given the kerfuffle KCC and Sir PR-M have made about Manston. What with their talk about a new railway station, planes 'flying straight out to sea', 'longest runway in Britain', and the like. Not to mention all the lovely taxpayers' lolly they've lavished on it over the years.

The words 'washing', 'their' and 'hands of it' spring to mind. You do have to wonder whether they were just using the place as a stalking horse to chase off Boris Island, thus keeping their lovely, northwest Kent cottages nice and peaceful at night.

Needless to say, Paul Carter, like Biggles, is not a 'confirmed guest' for tomorrow's meeting. Happy landings!!

Smokin' Future For Manston?

The results of my big poll on the future of Manston are in! And the winner is.... well, it's a dead heat actually.

Asked what you thought RAF London Kent Manston Etc Airport should become now that its days as a runway are rapidly coming to a close, 22% of you went for 'leisure', while another 22% of you opted for a '700 acre cannabis farm'. Hmm. I suppose the two aren't incompatible. And when you add in the 15% who wanted the airport to be returned to agriculture, I think we have a pretty darn good consensus!

That should please Councillor Ian Driver, our appropriately Green local representative who is campaigning for a cannabis caff to open up on Kent's Ramsgate Peninsula. I mean, cripes! With 700 acres of the stuff on his doorstep, he could open up a cannabis superstore!! Here are the results in full:

Question: What future for Manston?

700 acre cannabis farm: 22% (32 votes)
Leisure: 22% (32 votes)
Renewable energy: 16% (23 votes)
Agriculture: 15% (22 votes)
Housing: 12% (17 votes)
Industry: 10% (14 votes)

Personally I would have voted for renewable energy, which came in third. But then, what do I know? Well, what I do know is that it will almost certainly become a mammoth housing estate, which came in second to last.

Meanwhile airport champion Sir Roger Guff has been meeting with airport owner Annie Get Your Gloags today in a bid to save the place. Initial reports are that Sir Rodge has said there is no offer on the table. Believe me, Rodge, there's not only no offer, there's no table, no chairs, not even a room to put them in.

Still, one cloud hanging over the future of the airport as a non-airport, which may in the end prove to be the ace up Roger's hole, is the very well-founded rumour amongst the fly boys that there are unexploded pipe bombs on the site, left over from the war. But then again, if they've been landing planes on them for decades, I can't see it's much of an argument really. Anyone for a housing boom?!?! (Geddit??!!!!!??!?!?!)

Manston Owner Backs Brownfield Village Plan

Yes folks - it's Manston Week in your super, soaraway Eastcliff Richard! And here's yet another clue to the future of our lovely airport. Its minted owner, Ann Gloag, is behind plans to build homes, shops, offices and a restaurant on a brownfield site that used to employ 100s of people.

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.

The Unspoken Truth About Manston

I've been holding back on this because it was just a niggle until today, and it could prove rather incendiary.

But at last somebody on the Save Manston Campaign has said what they're really afraid of, should the airport close - 'bleedin immigrants'.

Yes folks, we have a long and proud tradition of xenophobia on our septic isle, with 'Hating Foreigners' somewhere near the top of many people's favourite pastimes. Now a leading pro-Manstoner has posted this on the Broadstairs! Facebook page:

'Who the hell wants 12,000 new homes in thanet.......what you gonna fill them with bleedin immigrants ..........SAVE MANSTON.'

Now don't get me wrong. This person clearly feels very strongly about the airport, and I'm most certainly not accusing her of racism or anything like. But I get a definite feeling that, when people use the argument of last defence about the airport closure, it generally comes out as something along the lines of: 'Well, what you you put there, a sink estate?'  The implication being that such an estate would be full of the brown, black, eastern European or otherwise non-British, non-middle class, non-Tory voting dregs of society, possibly bussed in from London.

As if the white, Tory, British middle class haven't already produced enough of their own dregs. Many of whom are on daily display in Thanet. Kuh!

Update: To their complete credit, the lovely people at the Broadstairs! Facebook page have now removed this woman from their group and deleted all trace of her odious comments. Before she was booted out, I told her I was going to blog about it, and she intimated that as she was 'loud and proud' I should go ahead. In which case I have no compunction about naming and shaming her, so step forward Annette Hearn-Gibson!

Game Over For Manston?

Yikes! Despite Sir Roger's Wind's best efforts to talk the airport up with rumours of a mystery 'consortium', it seems that existing users are voting with their feet and heading swiftly for the emergency exits.

The only scheduled passenger services, operated by KLM, are unavailable on the airline's website as of Wednesday 9th April. And from next Monday, Saudia Cargo will no longer be running its twice weekly round trips between Manston, Kenya and Saudi Arabia, according to the Kent Messenger. Cargolux are also rumoured to be tanking up and taking off for pastures new in the very near future.

Meanwhile, another airport business has been overheard in one of the local pubs discussing its imminent and permanent departure from Manston.

So Sir Rodge had better hurry up and ride to the rescue, otherwise there won't be anything worth saving. Mind you, if he had an ounce of business sense, he would have known he was backing a loser 15 years ago!

Buchanan Skips Town?

One of my lovely readers has sent in this pic and asks:

'Would this be evidence of Charles 'Smiler' Buchanan, the boss of Manston Airport, clearing out his office? I think we should be told.'

Well, er, I'm not sure about that. A quick check of the old telephone number there reveals that it's Scottish. Although, of course, the airport's Scottish owner may well have sent him his P45 in a bloody great orange metal envelope!

Meanwhile Norf Fannit Tory MP Sir Roger Wind appears to be gallumphing to the rescue, saying he has interest from a buyer, backed by a consortium, who wants to take over the airport. That may well be because he's told them Manston has the 4th longest runway in the UK (it hasn't, it's only the 14th longest), and that 'planes fly straight out to sea' (they don't, they go over a town of 40,000 people and 2,500 listed buildings called Ramsgate).

If the only hope for Manston is the guff emanating from Roger Gale's nether regions, then sadly, in all likelihood, it's doomed.

Click here to read more about Roger's 'consortium' in Kent Messenger.

BETRAYED

Yep - that's what the headline in today's Isle of Thanet Gazunder screams, complete with photo of multi-millionaire Manston owner Ann Gloag, who bought the place for a pound last November.

Inside there's lots of Facebook comment from deep thinking local builders, bakers and taxi drivers about how bad the closure of the airport will be for our septic isle. Well, if you want to fly to Thailand to get pissed and turn into a lobster, and aren't prepared to schlep the hour or so to a proper airport, I guess it is a bit of a shame.

But, y'know, I think they've got the wrong person. It's not Ann Gloag who has betrayed us poor, beknighted Thanetians. All she's done is make a tough business decision.

Surely it's the endless procession of local councillors, MPs, hacks and other duffers who have all lined up over the years to pay lip service to the idea of a thriving, international airport on their doorstep, without even stopping to think or find out whether it was ever going to be a goer, who have betrayed us?

Sad to say, it was never going to be a goer. So isn't it about time to finally stop attempting to breath life into this dead dog? It's been dead for 15 years now. It's practically rotted away.

Mannston News

Well, there I was, all ready to bring you another of my regular round-ups of news nibbles concerning Ann Gloag, the millionaire owner of RAF London Kent Manston Margate Tracey Emin Chas 'n' Dave Maggie Thatcher Schipol Skyport Poundland International Airport...

But now we hear the airport is CLOSING! The curse of ECR strikes again!!!!!

To be honest, from what I've monitored of Ms Gloag over the past few months, she seems much more interested in property development than running an airport. Perhaps the picture above will give her an idea of how to move forward. Although, if you ask me, a 4,000 home sink estate is more likely to be on the cards!

Click here to read about Manston closure.
Click here to read my previous jottings about RAFLKMMTEC'N'DMTSSPI Airport.

Manston Owner Denied Planning Permission

Cripes! RAF Kent Manston Margate Tracey Emin Chas 'n' Dave Maggie Thatcher Schipol Skyport Poundland International Airport's new owner Ann Gloag has lost a planning battle to build a row of new homes!

Hmmm. Well. It's a bit of a slow news week. So the story, which I spotted in The Scotsman, relates to a patch quite a few miles north of our septic isle. Somewhere called Kinfauns, in fact.

According to the paper, the 71 year old former nurse, one of Scotland's wealthiest women, wanted to build a row of three bedroomed houses on a green belt site which objectors said breached 'just about every planning policy for the location'.

Stagecoach tycoon Ann, who shares in an estimated £650m fortune with her brother Sir Brian Souter, bought RAFMMTECNDMTSSPI Airport in November for £1. It's not the first time she's been criticised for blight planning. In 2012 she obtained planning permission for another development which Forestry Commission Scotland warned would ruin an area of ancient woodland, and which locals said would cause property prices to plummet.

Talking of blights, what on earth, or, indeed, in air, was that unmarked plane doing the rounds over Ramsgate this morning? My Plane Finder app had it down as HFI 651K, but unusually, when I popped that into Google, instead of the usual slew of anorak data, all I got was the one hit - for a number plate vendor.

It's ironic, as Annie G won a landmark case in Scotland in 2007 to keep ramblers out of the ten acres of grounds surrounding her castle. She seems to have no problem sending planes over my cliff top mansion, though!

Ah, but maybe, as one of my Twatter followers suggested, it's covert practice for a bombing run over the Pleasurama Eyesore at the end of next month!

Update: Yikes! The day after I wrote this, Ann Gloag cancelled this year's Manston Air Show!