It was disappointing that Doug Oakervee wasn’t able to attend the London Assembly’s Environment Committee meeting on the 11th of March to defend Boris Johnson’s proposal to build a new airport in the Thames Estuary. Having undertaken to do this many months earlier, Doug Oakervee informed us of his withdrawal at the last moment by the rather odd means of a letter from his employers, informing me that “Mr Oakervee is unlikely to be available to your committee for some months to come”.
Doug Oakervee’s apparent lack of enthusiasm for defending the estuary airport proposal in front of the Environment Committee is perhaps unsurprising. It is clear that there is no business case for it; there isn’t enough room for it anyway in the Thames estuary; and according to the Feasibility Review prepared by Oakervee, if it’s to happen it needs to start this summer.
Now judging by Medway Council’s survey, many of the airlines won’t go there and more importantly the regular users of airports in London won’t be going there either according to the GLA Economics Report, Come Fly with Me. So the Mayor is pushing an airport that will attract neither airlines nor passengers. And the members of the Estuary Airport Steering Group set up by the Mayor are expecting Boris to put up possibly a further £5 million to fund a full review via the LDA (see the minutes of their meeting in December).
As for where the airport would be located in the estuary, that’s the £40 billion question. The coastlines along Essex and Kent are designated conservation sites under EU law and a sanctuary for bird life. We also have very busy shipping lanes in which traffic can only increase with new ports being built. And finally we have wind farms being built there like the London Array. The map above well illustrates that reality (click on it to see a larger image). So it’s not surprising the Feasibility Review doesn’t even attempt to answer that one.
The one thing the Feasibility Review appears to be very clear about is that work on the Thames Estuary Development Study needs to start no later than the summer of 2010. Now given the long term unavailability of Doug Oakvervee because of his pursuit of other commercial interests in the Far East, we can safely say he won’t be around to bury the plan once and for all for Boris.
March 18, 2010
They say that political loyalties can change but never football ones. So it was a strange experience to find myself at Old Trafford as a Cockney Red changing my colours to green and gold (“till the club is sold”) in protest against the Glazers’ control of Manchester United and the mountain of debt the club is under. Tens of thousands of supporters were wearing the old colours of Newton Heath, United’s forerunner club. The penny has dropped for all those singing: “United we love, Glazers out” along with the chants for the players on the pitch. And Manchester United fans are even joining forces with arch-rivals Liverpool to make club ownership an electoral issue in the north-west of England.
We have been here before at Old Trafford, when supporters groups and fanzines helped to thwart Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to take over the club in the wake of the glorious 1998-99 treble season. That battle was won, only for the Glazers to buy the club for £790 million in the summer of 2005. Basically, this was borrowed from the bank and then laden onto the club in order to complete the takeover. Manchester United is no longer a public limited company. It is a wholly-owned family business. And the supporters have been made to pay for this with higher prices for tickets and replica kits. Recently, the Glazers restructured the finances of the club, with investors stumping up £500 million in bonds in order to pay off high-interest debts. Meanwhile, they have extracted millions in “consultancy fees” from the club.
In hindsight, supporters should have challenged proposals to turn United into a PLC in the first place. This was back in 1991 under the Edwards family – when this whole sorry saga began. The ideal now would be mutual control of the club, with Manchester United owned and run by its supporters and investors. Something similar already happens in Spain with Barcelona. According to Barcelona’s statutes, the club exists for the pursuit of sporting excellence. It is run by a body elected for a term of five years whose annual reports have to be reviewed and approved by a general assembly of representatives of the membership, which numbers well over 100,000. The assembly is responsible for fixing entrance and subscription fees and has to approve various other matters, including television rights and mergers or takeovers.
The current debate among Manchester United fans is about how we can achieve something similar. There is talk of a group of “Red Knights” – wealthy United supporters – riding to the rescue and then selling back their holdings incrementally to the fans over time.
It was such new forms of mutualism that the late Tony Banks, Labour’s former sports ministers, argued offered fertile ground for expansion in football. He proposed that greater supporter ownership of clubs would provide a solution to a number of problems in the sport. This is an idea whose time has clearly come – for small clubs and big clubs alike.
Little known, even in the world of football, is the Football Association’s Rule 34. This stipulates that, in the event of a club folding, its assets should go to other local sporting institutions. Along with other provisos, such as imposing articles of association that debarred profiteering by club directors, this rule was drawn up more than 100 years ago to protect the integrity of the game. Perhaps it’s time to resurrect Rule 34 when clubs go to the wall, particularly with regard to those currently in administration.
These issues have been raised in raised in the House Commons by Tony Lloyd, the Labour MP for Manchester Central, with an Early Day Motion and a debate in Parliament that had representatives from all sides insisting that the Government must intervene. However, it is questionable whether this is realistic in light of the demands on the Government from sectors of the economy that have fared far worse than the Premier League in the global recession.
Nevertheless, the enforcement of Rule 34 should be considered, as the FA already has the power to carry out the role of the regulator, but appears unwilling to act. This is unsurprising, given that no one has ever failed the FA’s “fit and proper person” test when it comes who is able to own a football club. However, pressure on the FA to intervene when a club is in trouble would surely assist fans. Pro-supporter legislation in the next Parliament would also help.
In 1997, the incoming Labour Government set up the Football Task Force as a direct response to widespread public concern over the health of the “people’s game”. It was honouring a pre-election pledge. It’s time for Labour to go for something similar again. This would undoubtedly go down well with fans at Old Trafford, Anfield and Fratton Park. Otherwise, the business side of the people’s game will still be able to go laughing all the way to the bank – suggesting that, at least as far as Manchester United is concerned, it will be “till debt do us part” for the fans and the Glazers.
Published in Tribune, 5 March 2010
March 5, 2010
Medway campaign poster on Boris fantasy island
The debate over airport expansion in London has rightly concentrated on the plan for a third runway at Heathrow and its potentially damaging environmental consequences. However, for the citizens of east London, a more immediate concern is the noise and nuisance caused by flights into City Airport following Newham council’s decision to give planning permission for an increase of flights from 80,000 to 120,000 a year. So I was pleased to move a motion at last week’s Mayor’s Question Time which called on Boris Johnson to show leadership on the issue by initiating a review of the impact of flights into City Airport. The motion received cross-party support and was passed unanimously by the London Assembly.
The depth of local feeling on this issue was made clear at the Mayor’s “Environment Question Time” event in Ilford in January, where I was on the platform as chair of the London Assembly’s environment committee. During contributions from the floor, speaker after speaker complained about the disturbance suffered by those living under the City Airport flight path. In reply, Boris told the audience that he felt their pain, but unfortunately there was nothing he could do about it. The planning authority in this case was Newham council and he had no powers to intervene.
But Boris’ expressions of regret were the purest hypocrisy. Under his predecessor, there was a clear and robust policy on City Airport expansion. Ken Livingstone’s administration had urged Newham council to reject City Airport’s application for an increase in flights on the grounds of environmental impact and noise. If the council did not agree to this, the Mayor’s position was that the government should call in the application and convene a public inquiry, and that the Government Office for London should prohibit Newham from granting planning permission pending a decision by the Secretary of State.
One of Boris’ early decisions as Mayor was to overturn this policy. In July 2008, in a letter to Newham council, he paid tribute to “the contribution London City Airport makes to London’s world city status, and the benefits the airport offers to the City and Canary Wharf”. In light of that, he continued: “I offer support for the expansion sought by London City Airport…. I shall therefore be writing separately to the Government Office for London, withdrawing earlier objections, and confirming my support for the current proposals.”
So while Boris was bidding for popular support by opposing airport expansion at Heathrow, he was giving it the green light in east London. To cap it all, Doug Oakervee, the architect of the Mayor’s plan for a new airport in the Thames Estuary, has declared himself unavailable to defend that proposal before the environment committee, suggesting that Boris’ fantasy island is dead in the water. The Mayor’s lack of any coherent strategic policy towards airport expansion in London is plain to see.
Published in Tribune, 5 March 2010
March 5, 2010