KCC 4 star council? ****

This last few days Paul Carter has taken the trouble to justify the salary of his council's chief executive Peter Gilroy by referring to the Audit Commission's award of four stars to Kent council for value and service.

What I want to know is how many stars would Paul Carter require to respond to my e-mail request for him to elucidate what money went into the Manston/Virginia flight project.

When failure of this project was first announce I contacted someone at KCC and asked how much of taxpayers money had been spent. Now I understood the answer I received was ''no taxpayer money was involved'' (perhaps I misheard), since this person had the word communication in their job description I assumed they knew what they were talking about.

Several local newspapers now report a figure of £90,000 having been spent on this project, this being the case shouldn't KCC's own news pages reflect and acknowledge this. I have made several phone calls, trying to get an answer including one to Peter Gilroy (surprisingly he was unavailable, even before the hoo-hah over his pay), perhaps I'll just have to wait until council get a 5th star.

In the meantime here is a copy of my rambling e-mail to Paul Carter including the original misspellings and grammatical errors.

From: "Bignews margate" My email address
To: Paul Carter's email address
Cc: Press office email address
Subject: Manston Airpor flights to Virginia
Date: 02 March 2007 16:35

Dear Mr Carter

I have a fairly keen interest in matters concerning Manston Airport, and reading KCC's report on the almost inevitable failure of flights to Virginia; I got the strong impression that KCC had not invested in this enterprise.

However I hear on last nights news that money has been supplied from some "Regeneration Fund".

From what I can make out, at some point KCC has disposed of assets (owned on behalf of Kent people), and has put this in a fund which presumably is held in some sort of account administered by KCC.

Could you elucidate whether money, originating from local taxpayers or public assets, has been used in promoting this venture.

It is nice that Kent Council appears to grudgingly, accept that there is a world outside of the cosy affluent towns of Maidstone, Tonbridge & Tunbridge Wells, and although its nice to have money sent to east kent a little local involvement wouldn't go amiss.

Finally I would like to know what the obsession is with Virginia, and have you ever considered running these ideas past normal people rather than I'm guessing in this instance "travel consultants".

Manston I'm sure will one day have more traffic, but it will take time, in my opnion spending money on EU Jet was a worth while risk and at least many taxpayers did get a nice uncrowded weekend away including me so thanks for that.

Best regards tony flaig - Bignews Margate

Other background from this site "Mr Puss calls for calm
in local authority Fat Cats row! " "Quote of the Week" "MANSTON AIRPORT HOPES CRASH LAND"