I'm quite happy for the highest authority to examine DPPT, search the hearts of the members and reveal their truest intentions because nothing that hasn't been said and made public would be revealed.
The communities of Dover will own the P/P Trust (leastways everyone that has become a member of DPPT) and every member will have a stake and a say in what it does and will be able to keep the board of directors (both appointees from local organisations and community directors nominated and elected by the membership) accountable. Local businesses and local expertise will be sourced and used whenever possible and available, benefiting our local economy. The "money men", as someone has described them, just want their low risk long term investment interest and debt repaid, they don't want ownership or a say in the management of the port. As has been said many times, the money is not in the form of equity, which entails a say in ownership, but in the form of debt, which does not entail a say in ownership. The simplest analogy is this: Does your mortgage lender tell you how you can decorate your house, do they tell you how to dispose of your household income once you've made your monthly payment to them, do they tell you what improvements you can make to your property, are they involved intimately in the distribution of your household budget? I know that my mortgage lender doesn't and neither will the "money men" with respect to our port.
Vic...to the owners go the benefits...take another look around our town, talk to the young people who have no job and few prospects locally at the moment or to the young people, our brightest and best, who are looking to leave as soon as possible for what they view as better prospects elsewhere, then tell us that the people of the communities of Dover are currently the owners, because if we are already so, then as owners we have got a pretty poor return to date. DPPT is all about making the people of the communities of Dover owners in fact and effect so that the benefits of ownership flow to where they belong, to the economy and people of the communities of Dover.
If people don't vote, either yes (obviously I hope yes) or no, then they are absenting themselves from the democratic process that has been put in train. The most democratic consultation that Dover has seen in generations has been enacted. I wish that I could vote, but due to the legislation that we currently have to work with I can't because I am on the electoral roll at Eythorne. The lead role in this process, for good or ill, has been given to Dover and the people of Dover Town, it is an amazing chance for leadership and I am trusting that Dover will grasp and use it to the fullest extent.