Representation by Gualtiero Nobili Vitelleschi
- Date submitted
- 4 October 2018
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
It is with profound sadness that I am witnessing a situation, in Thanet, of greed, ignorance and lack of respect for the environment and the people living in it. This is what Manston Airport will certainly bring to us, if reopened as a cargo hub. Surely few people, businessmen and politicians, stand to be making a very tidy profit in this enterprise, while the majority (everyone else), the environment and ultimately the country as a whole, will be paying for it. Ramsgate lies under the flight path of Manston Airport. Ramsgate is thriving without much help from the government or the National Lottery. People are moving into the area with their own capital (money), refurbishing properties and paying taxes, increasing little by little the local wealth. If Manston Airport reopens, these people will go elsewhere with their capital, and the ones that arrived in recent years will relocate. Consequently the area will fall into a new - localised - recession, and become a sad story, as well as a place to avoid. Do we need a freight hub in a distant corner of the UK, unable to serve the dountry as a whole, and badly equipped by insufficient road links - to London ( which is already served by several profitable airports)? Do we want air and sound pollution to destroy the environment in which we live? Do we want to spend millions of pounds of our public money for a failing enterprise? Because we would, with the devaluation of property and ultimately, when the airport fails again, the tax payer would have to foot the bill. I hope for the best...