With the planning application for the China Gateway finally approved, I can't help but think this is a victory for the silent majority against the vocal minority.
All that Thanet needs now is for the Airport's expansion plans to come to fruitation, and hopefully Planet Fanet will not become a retirement village.
Click to expand the historic Thanet pictures, some thoughts on shops and
shopping in Ramsgate and of course a Christmas ramble
-
So starting with some archive photos of Ramsgate shops.
Of course back in the day Ramsgate was full of, "are you being served"
shops, a situation base...
4 hours ago
11 comments:
How sad. The 'silent majority' will be proven to be those whose heads were so far up their own fundaments they never saw what they had until it was gone.
If by that you mean an exodus of our talented youth, and an invasion of OAP's looking for a quiet retirement ' I say let it be'.
As you rightly state, I do use the roads alot. What I can tell you is, that what Thanet has in terms of access is the most under used A road dual carriageway in the country (Thanet Way). The A299 puts a lot of the countries motorways to shame.
Maybe I'm being niave, but why would the HGV's be going through Acol, Minster or Ramsgate.
The Thanet Way the most under used ????? Tell that to my husband who has to sit on it every day to go to work !! It shouldn't take over an hour to drive 30 miles to Sittingbourne.And that's on a GOOD day. There have been times when it's taken closer to 2 hours. The A2 is just as bad but if they ever decided to widen it, it'd cause even more chaos.
It might be under used at some point in the day, but not when the majority of people actually need to use it. It can be nose to tail every inch of the way.
The vocal minority were the (largely) same folk who opposed westwood X. Perhaps now they will go away and bother some other community . The people of Thanet deserve some of the good times, that have for so long passed them by. With the world trying to climb out of the credit crunch, its nice to know that Thanet will be leading the pack
RVM I am assuming that it would be uneconomic to fly in most of the Chinese goods, as the main reason people will buy them is because they are cheaper, so most of them will come by ocean going freighter. So the HGVs will bring the goods down the Thanet Way from Tilbury and the like, they will then put into the warehouses for distribution in Europe via Dover, Ramsgate and the Channel Tunnel or back up the Thanet Way for UK distribution. The main bottleneck being Canterbury Road West and Sandwich Road.
Thanet doesn’t look like a sensible place for a European or UK distribution hub and I would imagine at some point the Chinese will realise this, it is much more suited to a central European ocean going port with good European road and rail connections, what worries me about this application is the aspects that don’t make sense or are technically impossible.
3.20 The miracle of WC is that its retail sales are restricted by its lack of infrastructure, successful out of town shopping centres need adequate roads and car parks. Bad planning in this instance makes WC very vulnerable particularly with the coming recession, the idea was to attract business from other parts of Kent. Now with China Gateway bad planning is once again the main issue, the surface water runoff problem appears to be impossible, and the question is where does the water go without an answer to that one all of the rest is meaningless.
Absolutly spot on michael.WC was supposed to have shops that were not in our high street(to lure people from canterbury)ie fenwicks and the like,not shops in our high street ie m&s dorothy perkins river island etc(which we were promised would not get permission-but guess what as soon as wc opened all the high street shops were allowed to pull out the high street and go up there(leaving our high streets deserted)I am told that m&s and all lot of the shops are not doing as well as expected(when m&s were in the high street they did better than canterbury and ashford!Also I hear ken wills already has 5,600 hgv's so god knows what the thanet way will be like with the chinagate oooo
About 20 years ago most of the area was designated for industrial use in those 20 years Cummins is virtually the only firm to take up residence. Now someone wants to do what was proposed all those years ago and more besides. Am I upset yes I am no longer able to work due to ill health. If these factories had been built 20 years ago I might have been able to have worked on them rather than rushing all over Kent buiding factories and houses. Manston has the biggest lump of tarmac this side of Gatwick. Bring it on lets see some use made out of our asset because if we dont welcome them someone else will
21:59 I travel to Sheeerness every morning and return for a school run, max time 1 hour. I would ask hubby what he does with the other hour!
03:20 If there was a register for protest meetings, I'm sure the same names would keep cropping. Also it would be interesting to note the average age!
Micheal, You are making presumptions on the destination of goods. What percentage to Europe? What percentage to UK? How much warehousing?
It could be classed as either making people aware of possibilities or scaremongering. I'm sure the Chinese do not need a Geography lesson. But pushed too far, I'm sure they would invest elsewhere, leaving Thanet as Londons retirement village.
06:44 WC has brought Thanet finally into the 21st century.
Ascu75 Hopefully Thanet's youth will finally have a chance of work that does not include wiping peoples backsides.
Since you concede that the majority were silent RVM, I wonder by what mechanism you were able to conclude that this was a victory for them ?
Rick
On the assumption of democracy.
The silent majority allowed their elected representitives to do their talking for them.
Post a Comment