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Chris, your last line goes beyond your authority as Town Councillor, and comes under incorrect information as a partisan for the p/p cause. The fact that the referendum is carried out through the Town Council should even more so require you not to give such a totally misleading comment.
To not take part in the referendum does not mean being in favour of a port privatisation.
The P/p plan would put the ferry operators under enormous strain to pay up regularly in order for the Port of Dover to pay back 400 million pounds of debits at regular rates.
Seafrance for one is in a situation of insolvency, but has to pay back its debits by law (laws regarding free trade and commerce and the financing of businesses).
This insolvency situation has been momentarily dealt with on the grounds that Seafrance presented a large scale-back of its spending and number of employees, and that they MUST repay their debt.
Should something not work out - for example the price of oil could go up even more - and any of the major ferry operators in Dover have problems in paying Dover Port for berthing, Dover Port could go very quickjly into insolvency under a P/p ownership!
Now of all times, with so much uncertainty as to the cost of oil in the immediate and long-term future, and the economy worsening rather than improving, and with infllation at over 4%, people would be well advised to steer clear of the referendum, and accept that Dover Port's best chances are in remaining a State asset, with the possibility of a future amendment to the royal charter in order to benefit the local communities.
It is most unlikely that the Government will decide to sell the Port, with all the ecenomic troubles that are falling on our economy and on the worl economy.
I reiterate my previous post, and underline what I have stated in it, that the financial situation, in western banks in particular, has never been as uncertain as it is now.
People like Barry W explain away how everything is based on financial transactions of which most of us do not - and will not - understand 99%, because we cannot understand it. The 2008 banking crisis that hit almost every industrialised country is proof that the bankers themselves do not understand most of what it all stands for.
Shares do not exist unless they are vouchered for by paper money somewhere in some financial institution, or possibly through other shares, which in turn have to be vouchered for by yet other money or shares.
Barry's version that everyone who disagrees with his expertise does not understand anything, should be in itself a further invitation to avoid the referendum, because the P/p plan is paved with hidden financial obligations that would go much further than Dover Port.
There is probably no-one here who fully understands what all this implies, and how quickly fortunes could change, once the dented wheels of such financial borrowing-obligations started to turn.