(almost certainly by Echo Editor MARTIN McNEILL, who has opted not to put his name to this drivel)
IT is depressing, though hardly surprising, that protesters have come up with a further cunning plan to delay Southend Airport’s expansion.
They have, after all, publicly declared their determination to bring the plan to a permanent standstill.
However, their latest move is very much a rearguard action by a lost cause in full retreat. The protesters are no longer in a position to thwart the airport’s expansion as such. The final planning hurdle for that process was cleared last year.
Campaigners now seem to believe they can thwart the airport by indirect means, by challenging the the temporary [permanent] closure of [a section of] Eastwoodbury Lane. The airport’s operators show every sign of being unfazed and are proceeding as planned. They are quite right to be unconcerned. The case against the stopping up of Eastwoodbury Lane is hooey.
The closure will cause some inevitable disruption, but it is likely to be less disruptive and less prolonged than the Progress Road and Cuckoo Corner schemes, and nobody claimed they were going to wreck Southend. [You obviously weren't listening, then, Martin]
The closure should be viewed as part of a road improvement [building] scheme. Indeed, this project qualifies as worthwhile in its own right. [Except that no-one at the council has been able to justify it to date]
It is set to be one of many benefits generated by the expansion programme. The protesters’ desperate attempt to present it in a negative light, looks like nothing so much as clutching at straws.
[...] shrill and desperate the Echo sounds these days when trying to defend the expansion of Southend [...]