It’s always nice to report from Medway, where they don’t tend to fall for the glamour of Boris playing SimCity in the same way that unsophisticated metropolitan journalists do. They’re more interested in the concreting over of the countryside by a man who doesn’t represent the area and hasn’t apparently bothered to ask permission first.
So they’ve been putting the FoI requests in, and have unearthed a series of four meetings between, variously, Treasury officials, Boris, George Osborne and representatives of Foster and Partners and Halcrow, whose grandiose scheme we’ve previously covered, and it seems that the PR blitz in November 2011 was a good while after the start of things:
But it seems the Treasury was actively involved in listening to the case for an airport several months before. The first meeting officials had with representatives of Fosters and Partners was held in May, followed by a second just a month later.
Still, I’m sure the government and Mayor committed to transparency will be eager to tell us what went on?:
In its response to our FOI request, the Treasury confirmed “the issue of an Estuary airport was covered to an extent” but said there were “weighty arguments” for withholding the information.
Ah, they won’t. Neither have there been any answers to the questions of cost, environment, replacing Heathrow, surface access, accommodating 250,000 people in Kent or what to do with the Thames Valley industry cluster that grew up because of Heathrow then. Still, Boris, eh? He’s a legend, right?
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Just spotted this on the Mayor’s Report for next week’s MQT; whilst in Davos: “I met with Rafael Del Pino, Chairman Ferrovial, on 27 January to discuss Aviation”