Grant Who a CPO for Manston Airport?

So the best Iris Johnston and Roger Gale could do to save Manston Airport was to invite Grant Shapps MP to Thanet for a couple of hours. Not a  “proper”  Government minister with an aviation or regeneration portfolio; nor an influential  heavyweight in  the corridors of power at Westminster; Shapps is the  Tory Party Chairman. A  post generally occupied by failed Tory wannabes who  didn’t have the talent to make it to the top table,  or for those politicians who have seen better days and who are being gently eased out of their senior responsibilities and retired from the A team.

Ever Get the Feeling You've Been Cheated?

But its not the fact that a political nobody turned up at Manston Airport last week, but that
this nobody said nothing, which should be of concern. His 2 minute speech was full of   gushing hyperbole, yet Shapps failed to give a commitment that his Government would support  Thanet Council’s moves to compulsorily  purchase the airport site. In fact he didn’t  mention the CPO once. And sadly the short film of Shapps meaningless rhetorical flannel illustrates, through the applause he received, that it is indeed possible for politicians to fool most the people most of the time.

Because  just like Thanet Labour who are cynically manipulating the Manston CPO to gain votes in 2015, here  was the Chairman of the Tory Party,  whose job it is to manage the Tory general election campaign,  doing exactly the same thing  in order to shore up  support against the UKIP onslaught in Thanet in 2015.  The spectacle of Johnston and Shapps shoulder to shoulder at Manston was nothing less than a shameful circus sideshow of  rank political opportunism by politicians from the 2 old fashioned  parties who are underwear soilingly fearful of the future.



Should You

 

 Trust Her??

The real truth is that both Labour and the Tories know damn well  that securing a CPO on the airport will be an incredibly expensive and high risk long shot with no guarantee of success. They know that there  is nothing they could do to prevent would be investor RiverOak, or any other investment partner, from acting in precisely the same way as Anne Gloag if they got their hands on the airport lands. They know that the  best brains in the aviation business; the cleverest airport consultants; the most well-informed aeronautical strategists have,  through expensive  hands-on experience and rigorous market evaluation, all  concluded that Manston Airport does not have a long-term sustainable future.  Shapps and Jonhnston know this too but have chosen instead to opt for political expediency and deceit instead of being honest and open with the people.

To mislead and to give publically funded false hope  in order to protect your political party's arse  is manipulation and cynicism of the first order, which in my opinion verges  on the immoral, if not possibly the downright criminal. Yet  this is precisely what the  Labour and Tory parties,  through the personages of Shapps and Johnston, appear to be doing.  I make this allegation  because whilst espousing the Save Manston mantra and leading the  CPO battle cry the Labour and Tory parties  have been formulating policies based upon having no airport at Manston for at least a year  before Anne Gloag owned the site and long before she announced it was going to close!  Here’s the evidence of the deceitful game played by old fashioned  Labour and Tory politicians.    

First, in December 2013, 4 months before the airport closure was announced by Anne Gloag, the Kent and Medway Economic Partnership (KMEP), a secretive organisation made up of Kent’s Council Leaders (including Clive Hart and more recently Iris Johnston)  and senior Kent  businessmen, including several developers builders and financiers, published a document called “Unlocking the Potential; Going the Growth - Kent and Medway’s Growth Plan: Opportunities, challenges and solutions”. This 71 page document contains lots of interesting ideas for  improving the economic fortunes of Kent, many of which I agree with. But most intriguingly it includes  a list of 32 locations in Kent where plans for economic and population growth will be located.

This list of 32 includes “Manston/ Thanet Central Island” where, according to the document, there is a large supply of commercial and residential land available. However  the viability of this land, so the report argues,  needs to be improved by public sector intervention including the speeding up of the HS1 rail-link to London, the development of Thanet Parkway Station and support by the Council of large housing projects such the East Kent Opportunities development at New Haine Road which was recently subject to a planning appeal,  and the forthcoming Manston Green development which comes before TDC Planning Committee shortly, and which is  situated extremely close to the airport runway. It may well be that discussions, earlier this year,  about building 1000 houses on the airport’s northern grassland are not unrelated to the KMEEPs document as well. But quite clearly the direction of travel of this document is for a major commercial, industrial and residential development in the Manston/ Thanet Central Island area which could  not realistically be accomplished with a  commercial airport operating in the middle of the same location.

KMEEP’s  large, well-researched, comprehensive document  must have taken many months to prepare. There would have been extensive discussions between senior politicians and council officers such as Thanet‘s then Labour leader Clive Hart and, currently indisposed  Chief Executive, Sue McGongigal. There must have been detailed discussions with the developers, financiers and builders from  KMEP who’s ears must have been become embarassingly erect in anticipation of the exciting  and increbily  profitable opportunities likely to be coming their way on the insider track. There must also have been plenty of unofficial discussions with the owners of the rolling acres of real estate in Manston / Thanet Central Island area, including Infratil, the largest landowner of them all,  to help formulate, facilitate and shape the KMEP policy document. This process most have taken at least year or longer before the December 2013 document was finally published.

So as early as 2012 senior politicians, council officers and businessmen were already actively discussing and planning for the  Manston/ Thanet Central Island area to become  a major  centre for residential, commercial and industrial growth  without the need for an airport.

Although of course no-one was stupid enough to say this out loud, it’s not inconceivable that Infratil, a company with close associations with Anne Gloag’s Stagecoach, or perhaps a politician or  a council officer,  may  possibly hvae briefed Gloag about KMEPs  emerging plans for the Manston/ Thanet Central Island area. Gloag would have immediately realised just how massively  lucrative buying the airport and closing it down it could be for her, as the land she owned was central to  KMEPs plans for the area. Its entirley possible that Labour and Conservative polticians, or senior council officers  closely associated with KMEP prvately encouraged Gloag to  buy and then close the aiprort  with promsies of a touble free planning application process nas astronomic profits.  But of course this is purely conjecture on my part.

Speculation aside, KMEPs  plans for major, commercial, industrial and residential growth in the Manston/ Thanet Central Island area were eventually  fed into the South East England Local Economic Partnership’s (SEELEP), bid for  Government Growth Fund money in early 2014. The SEELEP  bid document “Growth Deal and Strategic Economic Plan”,  was submitted shortly after Ann Gloag began the  consultation on the future  of Manston Airport , yet even  though the airport was  not formally closed,  the  document appeared to describe  a future without it.

The document pointed out that “the area around Manston and Discovery Park contains extensive land suitable for residential and  employment use, and is well connected by new infrastructure”. In order to open-up this land, and make it more attractive for developers, the document  requested the Government to

·       provide “£3.5 million Local Growth Fund finance to support commercial development at Manston and Discovery Park

·       invest “in Thanet Parkway station as a priority to reinforce the success of Discovery Park and support investment at Manston”

·       invest  in the Westwood Relief Strategy, eliminating a major bottleneck impacting on residential, employment and commercial growth in Thanet Central Island.

 

So, well over a year before  there was  any mention of the airport closing  and shortly after Gloag opened the closure consultation, senior  Conservative and Labour  politicians of the 12 Kent District Councils; Medway Council;  Kent County Council Leader Paul Carter;   and the developers, builders and financiers who together make up the secretive KMEP and SEELEP network (about which I will write separately in the near future) had already decided that the future of the so-called  Manston/ Thanet Central Island area would be  a large commercial, industrial and residential area with no room for an airport.  Indeed the closure of Manston was  manna for the planners, allowing them to develop grander more extensive strategies for the rural open spaces of Thanet than the inconvenient  presence of an airport would otherwise have allowed for.

And therein  lies the jaw-dropping hypocrisy and deceit of Thanet’s Labour and Tory Parties. Because the political bosses of these parties and senior council officers, knew damn well that significant and extremely serious plans were  emerging within the KMEP and SEELEP network to transform Manston and Thanet Central Island into a major commercial, industrial and residential centre with no airport. But instead of telling the truth and being honest with residents they gambled on no-one knowing about the secret machinations of these shadowy bodies and instead chose a path of deceit, dishonesty and political corruption over the fate of the airport.

So where does this take us? Well I think the big question is how will this game play out. My guess is that that the last thing the local Tory  and Labour parties want is to be caught with their knickers down and be exposed for their deceit before the 2015 election. What they have probably done is use their influence with Ann Gloag to ask that she holds back her planning applications for the airport until after  the election has taken place, with the promise that her plans will be  fast tracked and expedited for being patient. The “nobody saying nothing”,  Grant Shapps, may also be persuaded to use what little influence he wields with Government grandees to hold back the announcement extending the Discovery Park Enterprise Zone to Thanet. That way nobody will sniff out the  rat-like stench associated with the double game being played by our politicians. In the meantime RiverOak or whoever becomes TDC CPO partner, will be played for a fool, at great public expense, by Thanet Council who will delay and drag out the legal process until after the election, when of course support for this solution will collapse in face of Gloags plans and Thanet’s  new Enterprise Zone status.

Alternatively  it may be possible that  I have credited Thanet Council and its  politicians with too much intelligence and cunning to have planned such a Machiavellian course of action. In which case Gloags plans for the airport, the intentions of KMEEP and SEELEP for Manston, the announcement of the Enterprise Zone extension and the collapse of the CPO may, bit by bit, become known before the election takes place. Indeed this appears to be happening already. The Government announced in July  £10 million in principle funding for the Parkway station even though they knew that Manston  airport had been  closed. The controversial East Kent Opportunities planning application for 550 houses at New Haine Road is in Secretary States, Eric Pickles, in tray for decision shortly. The 850 house planning application for the Manston Green development will be discussed by  TDC planning committee in October or November. And any day now I am expecting to hear about plans for  the development of a major logistic centre, depot  and vehicle repair hub for  east-Kent  monopoly transport outfit Stagecoach buses in one of the hangars at Manston. Which of course will create hundreds of new jobs, and enjoy the benefit of zero business rates when the Discovery Park Enterprise Zone is  expanded north-eastwards into Thanet. And perhaps 1000 houses on the northern grassland might be thrown in for good measure.

Either way there is no doubt in my mind that the 2 old fashioned parties, Labour and Tory, have cynically manipulated and deceived the people of Thanet about saving the airport and securing a CPO for political gain. When this stinking , politically corrupt game became evident to me is when I stopped arguing for the CPO and began calling for a public discussion on Plan B for Manston. Because whether you agree with my politics or not I believe above all else that public affairs should managed in an open and transparent way.

As one my heroes Johnny Rotten once said “ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated”.