This nonsense with the high speed train passing through Deal and Sandwich without stopping highlights the mess that privatisation has made of the railways. The trains were empty and returning to, or starting from, the depot in Ramsgate. Any manager involved in any remotely rational system of operating a railway would not think twice about actually getting them to stop and pick up passengers, which is what trains are supposed to do.
The heavily subsidised Southeastern franchise is minutely supervised by the DfT which sets out in the franchise precisely what services it is required to run. Any entrepreneurial activity such as making these two additional stops is stymied because Southeastern has to pay for the small modifications and minor extra running costs entailed but has its subsidy reduced in view of the extra revenue it thereby receives and winds up losing money. That is why they would not do it until somebody else finally coughed up an extra subsidy, in this case KCC (meaning us).
http://www.trains4deal.com/