Sunday 31 May 2009

Wot! No noise monitors or air monitors at Manston?

Our politicians wouldn’t allow the removal of safety measures from Manston would they? Nor the civil servants?

These are the people supposed to both represent and protect us aren’t they?

Then how can it be that in 10 years of Manston as a normal commercial airport the requirement for mobile noise monitors has never been provided?

The public have requested them. KIACC and the parish councils have requested them.

Penny Button of TDC is even photographed with a hand-held mobile noise monitor checking noise levels in the local Tesco.

Yet Brian White and our local councillors have never provided one mobile noise monitor in 10 years.

They aren’t expensive. A few hundreds of pounds. A few thousand if you wanted a top of the range one, or a few of them to take noise readings.

The reality is that mobile noise monitors would be deployed to the towns and the readings taken on a regular basis.

As with Manston and other airports you could move them to the wrong positions or fudge the data for a while - but the readings would be clear fairly quickly.

The readings, given the low-level of jets landing and taking off – when they are the noisiest – would be off the scale.

Hearing loss. School learning interrupted. Cancer count. Increased illness and death rate. Disruption to quality of life and so on.

Yet there is a rural end to the airport? But of course that means increased fuel costs in not landing in a straight line from Ostend or other cross-Chanel cargo airports.

Manston has always been a cargo airport with a few passenger flights to sweeten the pill or make grand claims as some kind of New Gatwick.

If the town centres were a factory or the airport itself the public would be issued with ear-defenders. The trade union would be called in at the dangerous noise levels.

An airport can’t develop if the noise monitor readings at the outset are off the scale.

But no monitors means no data means no problem.

Richard Samuel was even Chair of KIACC in 2006 as the Infratil Board removed the noise monitors from the school and tower blocks around the airport. And said and did nothing.

No monitors means no data means no problem. A bit tricky for corporate manslaughter though: removing monitors that are required to be there, and not providing the full noise readings is very tricky.

And no air pollution readings at all?

Our sheep-councillors have MORI surveys and public meetings rejecting night flights yet still they suggest the public want night flights.

The reality is that the Dept of Transport were correct and that Manston cannot be developed as an airport as it’s too near the towns (they weren’t aware of it being built on the drinking water supply) and would have to be developed from scratch.

All the necessary health and safety safeguards would rule it out almost instantly.

And then there’s the air pollution. Aviation fuel at low-level being dumped on the local population.

That’s why airports have a “Cancer Circle” of leukaemia, blood disorders, genetic birth defects and so on.

As you’d expect from 747 fuel and noise, it’s very dangerous.

So why have our civil servants and councillors refused to call for full monitoring, display of the noise and air records?

No monitors means no data means no problem. If you want to skimp ion the safety aspects of developing the airport.

Hustle it through with claims of thousands of jobs (maybe you’re foolish enough to believe there would be thousands of jobs) and see if the public don’t raise a fuss until it’s too late.

Clearly the tales of millions of passengers and thousands of jobs are mere nonsense.

Looks good on the political CV as a glory project though. And supposedly solves all the economic and social problems in Thanet in one fell swoop. Supposedly.

Much better than organising street cleaning and the like.

Don’t mention the cancer though.

KCC Board meetings detailed the expansion of the airport. Our councillors and civil servants are supposed to fall in line. Even if it means they skimp on the noise and air monitors. And the lung cancer. And blood disorders. And birth defects. And likely death toll among the young, ill and elderly.

The only question now though is which councillors and civil servants have knowingly and deliberately endangered the public?

Infratil’s flight logs with the CAA would reveal how much danger through breaches of the 106: the volume, type and patterns of flights and the likely discharge of aviation fuel at low-level.

A simple calculation of the trade-off of jobs versus noise and cancer.

Where are the noise monitors after so many years? After so many rushed decisions to approve night flights? After such a danger to health as an airport?

No votes in poisoning your own citizens.

Which councillor feels capable of asking Messrs White and Samuel and the rest of the Gang of Four?

Steve Ladyman stays silent on the noise monitors. As does Silent Sandys and Roger Gale the “Manston-Olympic-Airport” MP.

Idiots.

As MP I will call for a Parliamentary and Police Inquiry into Manston and Infratil.

Let’s hope a plane doesn’t miss the runway in the meantime.

Failed. Failed. Failed.

Time for Change.

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