Infratil top brass come to Kent

Kiwis fly in

All along the flight path, the whispered words are spreading like wildfire: the bigwigs of a company on the other side of the world are coming to Kent on Monday. I'm thrilled at the prospect of these well-travelled, high-spending visitors plastering shop counters with their New Zealand dollars, but I can't help wondering why exactly they're coming, and why now? I find myself being drawn to two options: end of deal; or, just possibly, a new deal.

Infratil already have their own hand-picked representative on Planet Thanet, in the form of the recently appointed Charles Buchanan. He has already been negotiating with TDC for some time. If Infratil HQ wanted to confer/plan with Mr Buchanan on strategy or progress, it would surely be easier to bring Mr Buchanan to HQ, rather than vice versa. If Infratil weren't happy with his performance or negotiating skills, they would simply parachute in an "advisor" to operate Mr Buchanan from behind (as Rod Hull does Emu).

No, I think Infratil HQ has dragged itself half-way round the world because they have the authority to strike deals with TDC that Mr Buchanan doesn't, and they've realised it's time to jolt Manston from its steady decline. Infratil have used up their supply of hype - I don't see what else they could offer TDC, or hold out as a plausible forecast. Having promised them the earth, there's not much else left.

So, having run out of carrots, it's stick time! Infratil's bigwigs will be putting the frighteners on TDC in a curious form of reversed mugging - give us everything we want, or we'll leave you alone. They will say that without night freight, they won't be able to build the passenger traffic they need for long-term profitability, and would have to pull the plug. TDC will shit their britches at the prospect of Infratil leaving: huge political capital has been invested in the airport as a high profile strategic contributor to east Kent's long-term growth; and if billionaires can't afford to make a go of it, Manston will be seen more clearly for the poisoned chalice it is. I'm assuming that TDC's first instinct would be to sell us all down the river.

Which brings me to the second (more interesting and hopeful) option: a new deal. Infratil have done their sums and have realised that Manston will not be a commercially successful airport. Infratil will know that aviation industry players, pundits and observers will have reached the same conclusion (probably before Infratil did) and as a result it will be impossible to find anyone willing to buy Manston as an airport. Unable to sell it as it is, and unwilling to just leave the keys in the front door and walk away, Infratil may well try to "re-purpose" Manston.

One of Infratil's core businesses is energy production, and increasingly now green energy production. I would be completely unsurprised to find Infratil seducing TDC with promises of free energy from the Manston Solar/Wind Farm, coupled with absurd over-projections of the resulting employment.

[Infratil may even offer to sell the site to TDC  for a small, or even nominal, sum. Doubtless, Infratil's fancy-pants negotiators will run rings round the TDC old guard who have been wrong-footed, and wrong-headed, so often in the past.]

Sleepless in Thanet

Steve Dawe

Clipping: thisiskent

MANSTON airport proposes to have more night flights. To do this ignores the known health impacts of aircraft noise. Research shows exposure to aircraft noise is damaging to health and even impairs learning in children.

How productive will people in Thanet be if their sleep is disturbed, perhaps by noisy freight-carrying aircraft at night? The health evidence collected by researchers throughout the world is that there is a strong association between aviation noise at night and blood pressure problems.

There are also associations with increasing stress and anxiety. Some studies show increases in allergies – especially amongst children.

But more worrying is evidence that the learning ability of children is appreciably reduced if they live near busy airports. Near major airports, elderly people are more prone to die at earlier ages from heart and circulation problems.

Manston may opt for more air freight, bringing in higher-value lightweight items that are passed on to the China Gateway for distribution. Since employment in warehousing is low density (perhaps as little as 13 jobs an acre) and airports similarly use large areas of land for very little employment, we should all look sceptically at claims of significant jobs from Manston's expansion – or the China Gateway for that matter. We are still very much in recession and no regional airport in the UK is doing well at present. If successful, Manston and the China Gateway could potentially generate a lot more local air pollution from increased traffic. But oil prices are rising again as we head rapidly to the global peak of cheap, recoverable oil supplies, so success from these initiatives seems very unlikely.

Any perceived gain in jobs for Thanet at Manston has to be set against the losses of productivity and skills which are created by ill-health from noise and associated air pollution. What about the alternative of a combination of Pleasurama in Ramsgate, a revived Dreamland and Margate sea front and the creation of all-weather leisure facilities at Manston instead of airport expansion? Couple this with the Turner Contemporary and the possibility of a creative quarter in Margate copying Folkestone's and you might have an overall economic strategy that is more sustainable than more warehouses and more aircraft. Promotion of the No Use Empty approach to empty commercial properties – renting them at low rents rather than keeping them empty – to local arts groups and other locally-based organisations could help fill up long-term empty properties. Thanet's tourism has been day tripper-based for too long: more leisure and cultural facilities could change this.

It is a practical impossibility for the UK to cut greenhouse gas emissions if aviation use is not constrained. If aviation emissions are averaged across households, then each UK household is making about one third of its carbon emissions by the flights its members take. This is accomplished by a small proportion of households making a lot of flights and accounting for a lot of emissions in consequence. Even more surprising, the UK is top in the world for aviation emissions per adult – far ahead of the USA and other rich countries. Currently, each UK adult averages about 603 kg of carbon emissions from aviation use per year whilst the US average is only 275 kg per adult per year.

Journeys to Europe can be made by rail. This alone would cut emissions from aviation significantly. Domestic tourism and rail travel to the continent can substitute for flights, helping to boost UK tourism revenues. Kent Green Party wants all of Kent's airports converted to other leisure uses to support domestic tourism, not international flights. Wake up to this Thanet, or be woken up by night flights!

See more on: Health

Manston eco-village

Inventing the future

Grab a hefty chunk of the TDC Regeneration budget. This is the prize money. The competition: affordable, quick-build, long-life, green housing. The location: Manston's runway, 2.7km of high performance concrete and tarmac, ready-made foundations for just about anything. Established manufacturers attracted by the kudos can offer designs straight from their existing catalogues. Newcomers, green building groups, small design firms, etc will be drawn by the money as well. Large and small alike, all these people like winning competitions, particularly if there's a cash prize.

The criteria can consist almost entirely of popular buzz-words: zero carbon footprint; recycled/sustainable materials; easy assembly; reproducable; removable; practical; flexible; and so on. A key condition is that each competitor puts up at least TWO identical copies of their buildings - one is to be used as the walk-around exhibit, the other(s) will house real people.

The TDC environmental people, aided and abetted by utility companies, Government departments, and the like, can pepper the inhabited houses with environmental and energy monitoring gadgets. The real people living in the new green houses can give a running commentary (video-blog?) on how live-in-able their homes are in practice. These two factors are added to the mix (cost, green-ness, impact on local economy, etc.) when choosing the winning design, which will receive a quarter of the prize pot.

If there are enough proposals of a high enough standard, one or two dozen designs could be chosen to be built. At a stroke, you have a green housing showcase, open air research lab and attention magnet rolled into one.

Re-run the competition at three month intervals. By the end of the year, you will have a green housing exhibition park with 50 to 100 different innovative green homes, on show and being lived in by real people. There's nothing like it anywhere in Kent, probably anywhere in the country. It will attract interest, visitors, businesses and investment. Affordable housing is necessary, and will probably remain so for a while. Green housing is increasingly popular. House-building is a tried and tested way of generating local employment, and supports its own ecosystem of trades, suppliers and services.

As an alternative use of the Manston site, this ticks a lot of boxes. Agree?