2/23 Here as promised is the woeful tale of the Brexit lorry parks contracts. Those of you who are expecting to read, say, about Johnson awarding them to a firm owned by is dominatrix are likely to be disappointed. This is more a tale of the UK's abysmal infrastructure management
3/23 and developers pitching grand ideas on a wing and a prayer, and government mismanagement resulting in procurement processes being torn up.
4/23 Let me begin by noting that the DFT was obstructive at every stage and refused to release the major value contract docs on spurious public interest grounds. However they grudgingly supplied details of who had what contracts and some e mails with which the lower value
5/23 contracts were "procured."
6/23 The Manston lorry park contract is the key one here, an airport that has been hung in limbo. The park is operated by its former owners Stone Hill Park Limited. The consultants working on the construction are Gleeds Advisory Limited. There are also contracts for medical
7/23 Services at Sevington are provided by Medevent Medical Services Limited and catering is provided by The Event Umbrella Limited.
8/23 The current owner of Manston, Riveroak Strategic Partners, has also been handed millions for the use of the site.
9/23 The lower value contracts were awarded hurriedly with e mails being sent round and quotes provided in reaction to the lack
10/23 But who are they and who are Stone Hill Park Limited?
11/23 RSP, who acquired the site from SHPL in 2019 planned to reopen Manston as an airport but that has been torpedoed for the foreseeable future... SHPL had
12/23 If you follow the ownership of RSP through companies house you find it is like a series of Russian dolls and connected to Helix Fiduciary AG, founded by Nicholas Rothwell (and a colleague) who is in turn a secretary at Riveroak Strategic Partners...
13/23 So ultimately we do not really know who owns them. However, there are links to Riveroak Investments LLP a US firm.
14/23 Their plans for the site to be developed as an airport may never be realised- despite the fact that consultations undertaken by the firm showed that 90% of the local population supported the reopening of the airport, despite the fact that it has been identified as
15/23 nationally important etc.
16/23 The information below consists of my own research and a now deleted blog post by Thanet Eye
17/23 Stone Hill Park Limited had owned the site since 2014- they too had planned to relaunch Manston airport... the company is really a corporate vehicle owned by two
18/23 to ‘regeneration specialists’ Chris Musgrave and Trevor Cartner.
19/23 They had previously developed Wynyard Business Park in North East England, and who acquired Discovery Park, Sandwich (the old Pfizer site) in 2012.
20/23 The Kent media were exultant at the thought of the airport being opened and talked of 4000 jobs etc.
21/23 However an examination of the accounts of Wynyard Park LTD and other companies linked with Chris Musgrave and Trevor Cartner shows that these entities had mortgages and other assignments of security registered in favour of Bank of Scotland.
22/23 Even after the bank collapsed it kept rescheduling and refinancing Wynyard Park debts... there are some interesting financial manoeuvres by these entities.... including assets sold for 1 pence, links to personnel at RBS and Ann Gloag ... you can read more in Part 2 which I
23/23 will post next week if enough of you are interested...
1/9 #Ukraine and #Russia- a thumbnail sketch of the battle for language
2/9 It is almost impossible to find a popular history in English which gives an accurate account of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine. I am, therefore, trying to cram a thousand years of history into a twitter thread.
3/9 Ukraine is the successor of Rus, a medieval Slavonic kingdom whose capital was Kyiv and which encompassed what is now North Ukraine and parts of Belarus and western Russia. The country was Christianised by Bulgarian missionaries in the tenth century who brought their language
1/21 On 29 March 2012 Latvian investigative journalist Leonids Jakobsons was violently attacked in Riga while he was accompanied by his eight year old son.
2/21 He was shot in the face with a gas pistol and badly beaten. His son was terrified but unharmed. Reporters without Borders condemned the assault the following day, describing it as a murder attempt,
3/21 Latvian politics is still affected by the country's soviet occupation and the corrupting influence of its neighbour Russia. Two years before the attack, a Latvian journalist and politician, Grigorijs Nemcovs had been murdered in an apparent contract killing. No one has ever
1/21 On 29 March 2012 Latvian investigative journalist Leonids Jakobsons was violently attacked in Riga while he was accompanied by his eight year old son. He was shot in the face with a gas pistol and badly beaten. His son was terrified but unharmed. Reporters without Borders
2/21 condemned the assault the following day, describing it as a murder attempt, by Stephen Komarnyckyj for EU Today.
3/21 Latvian politics is still affected by the country's soviet occupation and the corrupting influence of its neighbour Russia. Two years before the attack, a Latvian journalist and politician, Grigorijs Nemcovs had been murdered in an apparent contract killing. No one has ever
You are right, Neo Rauch, the edges of our world
Blur into smoke, the sea will break against the cairn
Shadow’s dent the fisherman’s arm, and over the sleeper
The woman with lobster clawed hands will stand,
With the drumsticks forever cocked over the drum,
The man in the lime green jacket will kneel
Bearing on his back the wings of a dark angel
Children will levitate above yellowed diamonds,
And the earth will split the perfectly level grass
To reveal ochre strata, then darkness, then
Darkness… who is it with the green waistcoat
Working the bellows and whose arms sprout,
Into a sack and flute where is the landscape,
That slips in and out of perspective until
The viewer feels themselves breaking free