Sunday
Sep302012
Fan mail
You are so backward sorry
I live in Ramsgate & am on the flight path. I have no problem with flights between 6am & midnight. I am on the approach & realise that for the future we need to allow Manston to expand a bit. So if a fire station or Ambulance station was to open near you would you complain about the sirens at 3am???? Perhaps if I was your neighbour & you had to have an ambulance at 3am I would stop it due to the noise from the sirens.
Your
Alun
Cheers, Alun - you're a pal.
Sections: 
Manston, Night flights
Manston, Night flights
Reader Comments (12)
Not least of which that Ambulances and Police cars and Fire engines are restricted from using their sirens between 8pm and 8am and can only use them when approaching blind corners or heavy traffic.
That said, if the airport were to be generating enormous amounts of business growth and regeneration then none of this would be an issue. But it isn't.
SO let me throw another hypothesis your way. Would you object to the building of a chemical plant near your house if that plant was going to be working on highly toxic and hazardous materials?
Would you object if that said plant were subject of an EU study that prevented its building throughout Europe because of the risks to local inhabitants?
Would you object if that said plant were actually only going to result in only 10 jobs despite promising 1,000 new jobs and that it was to be the regeneration nirvana of the area, even though the employment figures they promise had never transpired elsewhere, nor could they guarantee the growth they predict, based as it was on statistics that could only happen if there were a LibDem landslide at the next election and the Queen was going to be made Empress of Mars?
Are you for or against the building of the plant now? Knowing that the chemicals that leak into the air around you will result in mental deficiency and illness. That it would adversely affect productivity for all other businesses in the area and seriously damage the one local industry that actually genuinely does create employment?
Knowing all that, are you still going to get behind the building of a chemical plant in your area? Are you?
Maybe, just maybe, others are not so naive as to not weigh up the benefits against the cost.
Substitute chemical plant for Manston Night Flights, the issues are exactly the same, the damage exactly the same and the empty promises by Manston, exactly the same.
Last night I was woken at 1:42am, the previous night it was 1:34am and again at 4:20am by flights coming into Manston. It is already affecting my business and income levels and I am not even in the flight path. We have double glazing units and a white noise fan to block the noise, yet still the 'allegedly' quiet jets break through into my consciousness.
Where is the benefit to the local community? No more jobs, no growth and fast turnaround of cargo means that even local businesses have no part to play in this business plan. The only thing that the local area gets is noise, pollution and lies.
Alun, you may be gullible enough to believe the sheer weight of lies and spin that Manston put out. But not a single claim they have made is evidenced or based on fact.
Manston could become a major European hub airport. Like many other provincial and major town airports it can achieve it without having to succumb to night flight traffic. The reason Manston wants it, is because no other council in the UK would put up with it.
Ask yourself why?
You would happily see the deterioration of education, health and livelihood in Thanet for what benefit?
Look at the figures, look at the evidence and check the business plan. The numbers don't add up and Cargo traffic gives nothing to the local community, simply because it doesn't stay around long enough to be of benefit.
So lets look at one simple figure - 15-20% of people suffer from varietal forms of sleep apnoea or are simply light sleepers sensitive to low level noise. In Thanet that equates to 20,000 people in Thanet that will be affected.
I am glad that you 'have no problem' with night flights. Seems a very selfish attitude to so casually dismiss the 20,000+ people who will though, don't you think Alun?
So to clarify, you are happy for 20,000+ people to live in abject misery so that 10 people might possibly get a job?
Maybe it's me. Maybe, because I took the time to actually look at the facts and evaluate the risk it has made me cynical. I don't think so. I think it is more important that I take a stand and fight the vacuous and gullible all the way to save my health and my sanity.
BTW Alun, it isn't between 6am and midnight, it is all night they want, every hour of the day any day of the week. Read the bloody detail!
You have to keep asking these difficult questions, when something like this proposal is sugar glazed in very thin veil of jobs etc.
Dear Alun, please appreciate that NNF is not against all growth of the airport. It is just against night flights and as such they are a proven anti-social scheme - this is a FACT and not spin! Thanet as a whole has enough blight as it is, and many in Thanet fear the worst for very clear reasons taken form other examples of airports around the world!
Frankly this airport is only going to expand if huge amounts of public (tax payers) money is poured at its surrounding infrastructure, and in times like these perhaps money should be better poured into the local schools. Personally I feel there is more room for improvement there!
The airline industry has enough tax breaks as it is (e.g. NO VAT on fuel!!!) and all I ever hear is that the airline 'service' industry needs more tax breaks and help. Common sense tells me that this is not sustainable so I will look for alternatives to improve Thanet's economic portfolio!
Now if they were proposing a nighttime service like EuJet who ran a fleet of quiet passenger aircraft from Manston but no night freight flights then I suspect there would be little opposition...
I mean, look at where it is! Look on a map at all the other airports and see their proximity to arterial networks, towns, cities etc. Manston is nowhere near anybody. Who would use it? Why would you use it? As a passenger airport I just cant see anyone wanting to use it. It's miles from anywhere. There are at least 4 alternatives that are closer and easier to get to for most of the south of England.
So that leaves us with cargo and I fail to see how enough jobs will be created by lorries taking stuff elsewhere. And do we want more and more lorries clogging up the single road in and out of Thanet?
Drive up the M26 at 0630 for a few weeks and you'll get your answer.
Thanet is not geographically suited for this and doesn't have the infrastructure required to make it viable. That has been proven over the last 50 years. No amount of spin or rhetoric can say otherwise.
The regeneration of Thanet is paramount, so thinking of ALL the alternatives and not jumping into a solution put forward by big business for big business is what's required here.
How do you think the residents that live under Heathrow/Gatwick/Stanstead etc that are unable to sell their houses feel? Do you think they'd advise us to take the increased air traffic? I doubt it.
People who live under flightpaths are plagued by noise and trapped in homes that devalue so much they are worthless.
I mean, who in their right mind when looking for a house chooses 'subject to perpetual noise' as a feature? Nobody.
Part of the answer to this problem lies in making Thanet more attractive to people. Get more money from the City down here. Sell Thanet for it's beauty and it's potential to be something special. Get people with money moving here. Get more Tourism here. Take pride in Thanet. Make it something good rather than a run down backwater with an airport.
One other thing I'd like to mention to all the naysayers about the job creation...
What type of jobs will these be? Low skilled menial work. Is that the answer to Thanet's problems? Do we really need more employment like that here? Will more jobs like that change Thanets prospects? Of course not.
Now, if enough of those sorts of jobs were created then maybe we'd see a difference but a handful of ground-crew and some ancillary staff are not what we need here.
It is difficult to envisage a solution to this problem. We aren't going to be able to dilute the gene pool for stupidity. Who in their right minds would breed with these Neanderthals? And they won't go away to live anywhere else, because they can't conceive of travelling to work like the rest of us. They can only imagine work if it is created for them on their doorstep. If Boris Island goes ahead perhaps we could build a little village for them at the end of the runway? Does anybody have any other ideas?
Any business worth its salt would carry out due diligence, population and traffic analysis and SWOT analysis without resorting to a survey. You might want to ask, how many people travel to Europe from Kent, but then you need only look at the traffic figures from EuroStar train from to see the passenger footfall for Belgium.
However, you might want to hold a survey if you were preparing a political argument for Airport growth so that Todd Carter can get his Wailway Station.
Another interesting snippet to consider is the growth plans for KLM Cargo. What they don't say in the article, and I liked the throw away remark about the 'quiet' cargo planes, is that KLM have been buying out a number of cargo freight runs and airlines to establish a global network to rival DHL et al.
Those purchases include the, not so quiet, Congo, Korean, Martinair, Rwandan cargo planes.
I think we can see which way this is going... The fight isn't over.
What a ridiculous short sighted and utterly ignorant comment. May I ask what constituency you were elected to represent?