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Alex, no one is pinching anything that you have proposed. I am an international port operations development professional, I've been working in the maritime and ports sector for nearly 30 years all over the world, rail plays a vital role at many ports around the world, including those that I was involved with developing back as far as the mid 1990's. Rail is not something that you alone have come up with or proposed, linking to rail would be an important consideration for any serious potential owner/operator of the port. The idea that DPPT would wish to poach your ideas and claim them as our own is simply ridiculous. Your proposal on transference to local government ownership does not solve the issue of free access to the markets to raise money as required. Your proposal for a port toll has been tried elsewhere in the Uk and has been successfully challenged in the courts by the freight industry. The ports that tried it have been forced to discontinue.
Where have you been actively campaigning? What broad support for your ideas have you gathered? I ask because campaigns that are likely to be successful normally generate headlines, appear in TV news bulletins, are featured on radio programmes, etc.
The invitation extended by the Secretary of State is a clear one and was publicly made, neither DPPT or any of the other groups and individuals received a personal invitation letter....did you receive a personal invite to take part in the first consultation? I think not. You did not contact the DfT after the Secretary of State issued the invitation, yet others did. This indicates that you were either not paying attention or that you just ignored the invitation. If this is the level of your professionalism and dedication to ensuring that the port is not sold to private equity interests, then there is no hope whatsoever that you will be successful in challenging the government after they have sold the port over your head.
I prefer to try and ensure that the port is not sold to private equity interests by promoting a cogent, funded, well supported campaign to have the port pass into ownership that meets all of the criteria that have been set forward by the government in spirit and truth.
You prefer to sit back and watch the port be sold, after your views have been taken into account of course and then placed on one side as being impractical, failing to meet the basic reasons given for a voluntary privatisation and promoting an idea already discredited in the law courts. Of course, once the port is sold you will be able to raise £6 or £7 million pounds to pay the legal fees required to mount a legal challenge against the government, which, even if successful will take so long to reach a conclusion that the port will already have been releveraged and resold at least once and the people of Dover and its surrounding communities will have, once again, found themselves to have been royally screwed.
If you believe in your proposals and believe that they are deliverable, viable and sustainable. If you believe that they will deliver long term sustainable development and growth to our port and more prosperity to our communities, then prove the ideas, study the legislation, prove the finances and then gather support for them from the other stakeholders and for goodness sake mount a proper campaign.