Ramsgate plan is just short-termism

I READ with interest your leader column on November 13 about Ramsgate harbour being picked as an alternative to Dover if there’s a no-deal Brexit. Ramsgate is a town where no government agency has spent as much as £200,000, let alone £200 million, in the past 40 years.

This is yet another one of the many pet schemes that are periodically foisted on a town where its aspirations are crushed by constant recourse to short-term policy making. So far we have had an airport controversy, an unwanted parkway railway station and now this harbour.

As for JMW Turner, who as you say painted Ramsgate, he lived next door in Margate and he would notice quite a few changes to Ramsgate harbour, some good, some not so good.

Van Gogh did, however, stay in Ramsgate for a short period.

George Nokes